September 19, 2011

Hey everyone!
It was kind of a tough week, but there were miracles as always! We have a new golden investigator named A. She's actually one of the family B's friends. She's an older (not super old) french lady who has lots of health problems and lives all alone and isn't visited often by her family. We gave her a priesthood blessing when I first got to Bergerac, then she left to another city to have some kind of treatment, but now she's back and she's been wanting to see us! She came to church the last couple weeks and we starting setting up teaching appointments. We've been able to see her often and she already has a baptismal date for the 8th of October! She's probably one of the sweetest ladies I've ever met in my life. She has hard health problems, mostly respiratory, but she says that ever since we gave her that blessing and we started coming over she has been so much better. She even did her grocieries the other day and it's been a long time since she's been able to do that! She's already well integrated in the branch, mostly thanks to the B's. Sister B goes over there once a week for her and does groceries for her all the time. She has lots of problems, but she prays every day for strength and it's amazing to see her faith grow! She always ends up crying during our appointments, then I end up crying too haha. But they're tears of joy of course, because we preach the Gospel of joy :). We're SO excited for her! She is excited for her baptism. The other day though she said she was a little afraid for her baptism. We asked her why... and she said it's because she's scared of water. Phew! That's gotta be the best reason that an investigator has ever given us for being scared of baptism haha.
Unfortunately, we haven't had any contact with the T's lately. Apparently someone said something to them last week at church and a couple other thigns happened that offended them. They haven't really talked to us since or wanted to see us. There's some members who still have good contact with them I believe, but for now, no missionaries. I'm confused about the whole situation because I don't really know what happened or why. All we can do is pray for them. Please pray for them this week that their hearts might be softened and that they might be touched by the Spirit. Thank you!
I did an exchange with Elder Dorton this week which is always a good time! The district is doing well and I'm loving being their district leader. I feel like I can do a lot better as a district leader though. There's a lot to learn on a mission! There's always ways to improve and things to better. Kind of like life in general. Thankfully God gives us weaknesses and helps us recoginze them so we can humble ourselves, work on our weaknesses, and progress in life. One of the hardest things to do though is to recognize and accept that you have weaknesses, but that's pride, and where there's pride, there's no progression! That's one thing I've learned recently. Humility = progression, pride = regression. When we're humble and realize we need to change things in our lives, we change, improve, become better people, and qualify ourselves for more blessings from the Lord. But if we constantly tell ourselves that we're doing fine and that our weaknesses aren't "serious" ones, we'll never do anything about it, and we'll just sit and never become anything. That's satan's plan. One thing I've learned on a mission is to never feel too comfortable with yourself. Of course you need to accept yourself and love yourself for who you are, but we need to always keep the vision of what God expects of us - to become like Him! That's God's plan. And I know that He will help us do it as we humble ourselves and exercise faith in Him by overcoming ourselves and our weaknesses! Well gotta go, but I hope you have a great week. I love the mission and I'm happy right where I am :) love you!
Love,
Elder Tudor