Week 48. Missionary work is awesome!

 Hi y'all. Still alive. Doing great. If I could wish for one thing it would be for Washington to get AC units. Here are the highlights:

ZC - Zone Conference was awesome! Had some amazing speakers about teaching like the Savior, being more like kind dogs that live on roofs, and becoming a butterfly. Those last two sound silly but were actually super awesome. Talked about our own spiritual metamorphosis and how we are going to have those hard times to make us into something beautiful. Reminds me of a song: Diamonds by Hawk Nelson.

DC - super awesome, I didn't have to teach. More in spiritual thought. But apparently at lunch beforehand I was voted most likely to be an English teacher if I were to teach.

Hansen - this is the old returning lady and we met with her again and talked about the plan of salvation more and she loved it. She showed us how she got Book of Mormon tapes and then we even looked up some of her family for family history and there's some work to be done so that's awesome!

Watch party - we were invited to watch 2 devotionals with our district. Unlike General Conference, our attention wasn't the best. Luckily I already watched one of them. It was a great time though. 

Saturday - we had a ward breakfast and that was fun. Then we went to Bellingham for a social media training and that was pretty great. Talked to Sandra again. And got dinner at the place that used to be a Taco truck but they upgraded to a building and it was super good.

Spiritual thought - so this Sunday was all about missionary work and that's what we talked about in District Council too. But what was cool was how Elder Hansen related it to farming and how there are a lot of hard steps and when it comes time to harvest it happens to be the easiest and fastest times, but how we have to do the hard things to get there. 

First we have to cultivate. Cultivate relationships with others so they know how much you care about them, so when the time comes to share they know you do it out of love. Plant the seed. This one is pretty easy and there are a couple of ways to do it, just slowly introduce the gospel, whether it be by example or talking about it in natural ways. Helping that seed grow is one of the hardest and longest times. We may get discouraged a lot because we can't see anything come of it. But just because it hasn't broken the surface yet, doesn't mean it isn't growing, doesn't mean we stop. We keep doing our best to help them feel the spirit and support them with their goals and questions. 

Eventually comes the harvest: they love the gospel just as much as you and realize, recognize, and have felt the joy that comes from it. Too often we think too much about the hard work that goes into it, that we forget why we are doing it. We do it because we know it brings joy, eternal happiness, and eternal blessings. Don't forget that you are giving the greatest gift when you are helping others come unto Christ. It's hard, but so worth it. 

I love you all and I hope you're doing great too. Talk to ya next week.