The new area…more details! yay!

Well, this week was good. I don't remember if I wrote you before or after we got to phone call, but the trainee, Elder S, got emergency transferred while we were emailing yesterday, so there's just two of us now. Me and Elder F. I wasn't training Elder S just for the record though. It was Elder F.

Anyways, this week has been good. There isn't a whole lot to report I don't think. This ward has a ward pianist, so I just play the piano on P-days now, which is why this email might be a little bit short. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we went on exchange with another missionary, and I stayed in the area and tried to navigate the bus/train system. We mostly walked... XD But I have a map, and I have re-learned everything I was supposed to have learned in Scouts, so it was fine. :)

On Friday, we had interviews with President Preston and I played the piano in the chapel while Elder F had his interview. I am getting really good. I also discovered that the chapel has an organ and you don't need a key to turn it on, so I might learn to play the organ while I'm here.

While we were doing interviews, it hit me that I had been super pridefull about my last area, because in Middleton we had been teaching about thirty lessons every week, which was about twice as good as most districts were doing in the zone. But it finally hit me that really, none of that could have happened anyways if God hadn't blessed me with all of those investigators and stuff. I realized that I really wasn't doing any more work than most of the other missionaries, although I think that that did definitely have something to do with it, but I didn't really have anything to do with me. I'm finally starting to understand that Heavenly Father really does love me, and that Faith is not measured by our sucess, it is measured by our work. President Preston quoted Elder Oaks saying that we don't worship success, we worship God. So I am much more humble now. And even though we spent all day knocking doors on Saturday and we didn't get one new investigator, I don't doubt that God loves me or that he doesn't want to bless me or answer my prayers, he's just not doing it the way I think he should, which doesn't matter anyways. So yeah.

We are having a baptism on February 1st. It's a woman that was referred by a member. She's super good.  It's really amazing what member missionary work can do, I think it's really the only way missionary work can be done effectively here, because nobody wants to let a stranger come in and preach to them…

Have a nice week! If you aren't a full-time missionary, have a good time intruducing friends to the gospel and making new friends! Or repenting if that's what you want to do instead...? Bye!

Elder Ferguson