The Beach: All That Is Asked is to Do Your Best

This week was really good. We got to visit a lot of people that I hadn't met still. Robert is doing great. He is excited to keep learning and takes notes in church and when we teach him (haha its the best) He got confirmed this week in sacrament and a member gave him a new quad which was really nice.

Our other investigators are doing good but not really progressing. Hopefully we can get them going because they like being taught but don't keep commitments.

We picked up a great new investigator this week. A member in my last ward referred us to her friend. We went by and she is one of those people where if you didn't know she was Mormon you would think she was Mormon. She's christian and she has family members who are Mormon but didn't really know anything about what we believe. She had lots of questions and the first lesson about the restoration answered them all. You can tell she has felt the spirit before and this church would just give her the added truth that is missing. We really hope that she keeps learning cause she was eager to read the pamphlet and Book of Mormon we gave her. Hopefully she doesn't get anti-ed or anything.

This week we had our ward picnic which was awesome because i feel like I'm starting to get down who is who in the ward. We had a young women come out with us who just turned 16 so that was super fun.

This week we have a mini missionary!!!! Her name is Sister Lavea and she just graduated high school and she is from Compton and she is Samoan. Our mission has the mini missionary program where youth over 16 in the stake can come live with the missionaries for a week or 2 and see how mission life is. So she is with us for the week seeing how mission life really is. Today we went to the temple which was awesome as usual. Also I saw my old bishop from the Fountain Valley ward which was cool. There were a couple of boys going through the temple for the first time and it reminded me of when I went through for the first time.

This week was a lot better mentally/emotionally. Sometimes I think that I think too much. I got to go on exchanges with Sister Perry who I have pretty much served with my whole mission so it was just really fun and I learned some good teaching tips from her. We ended up going with her and Sister Bauer and Sister George to get Yogurtland. It was really fun we were singing Newsies and High School Musical and Annie. Ya I know they weren't hymns but sometimes you just have to have fun too!!

This week in church there was a great talk by one of the sisters in the ward. She talked about how in life there are lots of different doors that could lead us different ways. We might open one door and see that God wants us to scale a huge cliff. Some of us might just start recklessly climbing others might not try to climb at all thinking they are inadequate. But if we rely on the Lord he will help us make it to the top. I also like that she talked about stripling warriors and how they weren't stripling they were young boys who didn't know how to fight and they were weak but the trusted God and had unshakable faith and that made up all the difference. Then she also told a story of this baseball player who was the last hitter of the game and they were going to loose. His first two hits he didn't really even try. Then he found out that his son was watching in the crowd. He wanted to be a good example so on the last hit he really tried but he missed and they still lost of the game. Afterwards he didn't really care that he hadn't hit the ball he just felt bad that he hadn't tried his best the first two swings. I think that this totally applies to a lot of things in life. Sometimes we are too focused on hitting the ball that we feel like a failure if we didn't hit it when all that matters is that we tried our best. Sometimes we hold back and don't give our all thinking "what's the point" when in reality as the long as we try we have already succeeded. I just really liked this because I think that it is easy to hold back sometimes from reaching our full potential. Whether we are too scared of failure or we think we aren't good enough to try, or our expectations are too high, or we aren't confident in ourselves. I love that all God asks of us is to try our best. He doesn't demand perfection and he understanding of our weaknesses. Someone told me not too long ago that the best missionaries they know aren't afraid to mess up. I love that. I think sometimes we hold ourselves back because we think that we will look dumb, or we won't accomplish what we want, or we want things to go a certain way and they don't. We just have to be willing to do what we should and not be afraid to mess up as long as we are trying our best.

Well I hope you all have a good week.

Love,

Sister Washburn