May 22 Time to Improve

Parental Note:  Chad has been “thinking” about ways to better himself and improve on his missionary service.  I debated including his post about his struggles, because we think he is doing very well!  Chad has always pushed himself hard in the sports arena and I guess being a missionary is the same to him.  He wants to be the very best.  – The Mom

Hola Padres!                                                       23 May 2011

Don’t worry, you are the first on the list today and you will get a nice full thought email without worrying about time! I am glad to continue to have all the emails from home and to hear about everything there. I am so grateful for your support.  (We gave Chad a difficult time because our letter home last week was pretty short.  He had spent most of his time sending emails to his friends and left the parents to the very last and almost ran out of time!)

Well we had an excellent week, I really enjoyed and I am trying to find the good in everything and not the bad. Last week I said I was thinking a lot, well this week was full of doing and changing. The change is the hardest part, but it will be for the better. It all started when I went on exchanges with one of the Zone Leaders, Elder Pressgrove. He was my Zone Leader, my first two transfers in Hurricane. He came to my area and we just talked about a lot of stuff and he really opened my eyes about my mission. He is about ready to go home, so he was trying to share all his insights and trying to help other missionaries become better, and in my case it worked! He gave me a talk by a mission president called "The Fourth Missionary". This talk honestly changed my mission. Before, I guess, I was kind of taking my mission for granted and doing things that I wanted to do, but this talk helped me realize that I didn’t come on a mission to do things I want to do or have a vacation. I came on a mission to do the Lord's work and this is His time not mine. I really am understanding how important it is to submit to His will and not ours.

There are many missionaries that just cruise through their missions and never benefit or change at all from their experiences. I definitely don’t want to be one of those missionaries who reaches the end of their missions and starts to regret how they should have done more. I want to come to the end of my mission and say that I know I did my best and not have a regret. In the end I will be accountable for how I spent the Lord's time. So now my mission will never be the same. I changing to be that missionary that I want to be and know I should be. I could try and put the blame on others or say that my mission was influenced by this or by that, but in the end with everything in life, I am accountable for my own actions. Change isn’t going to be easy, but it will definitely be worth it and it is definitely necessary.

Well back to the missionary efforts.  We are back to walking again. After 4 weeks with a car, it has been sent back to Salt Lake and we aren’t going to get another one. It is definitely different to be walking again. I walked for 6 weeks with Elder Bravo, but it is like conditioning with anything else, if you don’t use it, you lose it! I definitely lost my walking stamina, especially since it is a little hotter now then it was 4 weeks ago. Also the first day that we started to walk again, it rained all day long. So we learned that no matter the weather outside, the work must go on!

Elder Lopez and I had some crazy lessons this week. It ranged from meeting drunk people and making a grown man cry. We have changed our teaching styles a little and we have been bolder in presenting the messages. (Hence that is why we made a grown man cry for calling him out.) Well this month, we have really been studying the importance of church and why we go. So through all that studying, I have come to find a better knowledge of why church attendance is important to me. I realized that our Savior sacrificed everything for us, so why can’t we sacrifice a few hours to go to church and learn of Him and remember Him? The Sacrament is so important to us and why we even go to church. Jesus himself set up this sacred ordinance for us and I feel bad to look back at my life when I didn’t understand why all this happened.

A mission is truly a learning and changing experience. I know that I will never be the same person again because of my mission. That is definitely not a bad thing either! I love my mission more then ever and this love will continue to grow. Thanks for all the support that you have given me! I love you so much!

Vivalo, Amalo, Predicalo! (Live it, Love it, Preach it!)

Tu Hijo         ELDER D