Mom,

Yes, the block building is the little 'tindahan' where we usually go to 'eat out' in Taugtog. I'm good, just always tired and a little stressed out.

Me and Elder Sudweeks get along great, lots of work and laughs!

The work here...
It's hard, because the 2nd Councilor in the Branch Presidency has quit coming to church, the Branch Clerk is less active, there is no Ward Mission Leader, and the other organizations are all messed up too. We don't have enough people to be a ward, and our area is not yet a stake. So we are the only missionaries here in the entire branch. Yikes...

It's also good, we have started to fill up our calendar with baptism dates. Every Saturday starting with October 29 till November 26 ( i think ) has at least one of our 11 investigators who have baptism goal dates. That is really good, and I'm excited for them, and hope they can continue keeping their commitments.

The language... Ugh... I feel so worthless, so hopeless, so pointless. I can understand maybe 70% of what other people say, but it's super hard to be able to speak back to them. I have such a hard time every day, because I just follow Elder Sudweeks, listen to him talk, try and testify, he repeats my testimony, and repeat. But they tell me I am getting better, I am growing. Elder Sudweeks says the best way to learn the language is Time. But I can't help but feel that I am not doing good enough.

Conference was amazing, I felt like every other talk was meant just for me. We had to download it onto our SD cards, and then work those into the TV, because there is no BYUTV here, and the TV was to new to connect to the old Computer. The priesthood session was just us two, and so was the Saturday morning session. The Saturday afternoon session had 5 people, including us. Sunday morning was 47 people I think, and afternoon was about 15. My favorite talk was in the Saturday Morning session, from Brother Cornish; "Am I Good Enough? Will I Make It?" He spoke more about making it to the Celestial Kingdom, but it applied a lot to my life as a missionary.

This General Conference, I think one of the main themes, for me at least, was that we take too much for granted. We have been given the most correct book in the entire world, and we leave it sitting on the shelf. We have a living prophet in our days, but people don't want to watch because it's "boring". We have the same priesthood that Jesus the Christ did, and sometimes we don't want to use it bless others through the Sacrament. We have the Gift of the Holy Ghost, a member of the God head, and we don't listen to his promptings, and maybe even drive him away with sin. We have repentance, and forgiveness that's just a prayer away, but we are 'to tired' to kneel down for two minutes. I think that it is important for us to realize that we have a great thing here for us, and we need to be more grateful and happy to serve in the church, serve others, attend meetings, do everything that we have been asked, because we have been given everything!

One day, we were walking back home from one of our farthest houses. My feet hurt, I was wet, it was dark, my knee was hurting, I was hungry and thirsty, and embarrassed about the testimony I had just stumbled through. Elder Sudweeks was a head of me, talking to the member who was with us. I offered then, a little prayer, a tiny, complaint to God in my heart that I didn't think I could do this every day. I was suddenly flooded with a warm feeling, from head too two. My pain, and feelings of wetness disappeared. But my feelings of depression did not leave. I could practically hear the Holy Ghost saying to me; "How about now, will you still give up? Do you still not want this?" And for a second, I still didn't. I still didn't want to go and embarrass myself again, and get wet again, and have that pain again. But I knew, that if God could listen to an angry, complaining prayer, from my heart, He could do anything. He has called me to stumble through a weak testimony so that He can bring the spirit. I don't know why He wanted me here, now, to do this. But I do know that everything happens for a reason. Every single thing in life is supposed to happen the way that it is. I don't think we can ever know the whole truth, the entire purpose. I just hope that I can quickly learn, so that my purpose will not be to be embarassed, but instead to be able to teach and share.

I love you, and miss you. It's still hard. But this is where I need to be. I gave Sydni and Logan some challenges for the family, I hope that we can start to do them together.

Elder Potter