Hello to everyone! August 13
I wanted to call Austin the other day to see how he is doing and what is going on with his mission papers. Tell him I am excited to hear where he is going!! He will be such an awesome missionary. He has such a good attitude towards the work and serving other.
Before I go on I wanted to talk about my birthday tell you what happened and so forth. So in the morning I woke up and started to get ready to go, and My companion and I left the apartment to meet the sisters. We walk the park every morning. So we got out to the front of the complex and I called to see where they were. They lied and said they were to tired to walk so I headed back to the apartment, and they had snuck in and were decorating the apartment. Then they came over and made waffles on my waffle maker for breakfast. Sister Lao wrapped up all the presents I got from home- haha even though I had seen them already, oops I wasn't supposed to say that. Then at 11 after studies we all went and got lunch and had lunch at the park. It was nice. After that my companion and I went to the zoo, which is terrible... lol it's the second largest zoo in NM but it is pretty sad, compared to some of the ones we have been to.... It was neat to see some of the animals though. I enjoyed it. After that we went home and the sisters had bought papa Murphy's Chicago pizza and we had that for dinner. It really meant a lot to me that they went out of their way to make the day special to me. I was really grateful for everything they did! Thank you Sister Loa and Peterson! You two are the best!
I did get the cards from you and dad. The came Monday, but that's okay :) Thank you so much. Tell Linda and Rebecca Thank you also! :) I'll just buy a thank you card and send it to the office for everyone who thought of me. I loved opening cards for more than a week.
I got an email from Tyson, and then one from Brittany the other day. It was so good to hear form them. I miss them so much. I hope things start looking up for them. I love them both so much and I am so happy that they are happy. :)
The work is going good. I am thankful for all the people we are teaching!
Thanks for everything you do! I love you so much.
Love,
Elder Marshall
August 20
Momma, I miss your face too!
This week was SO MUCH BETTER. We actually had things to do and almost the whole week.
Last night was FREAKIN BOSS! We had a BBQ out in the court yard of our apartment complex. I made a couple blueberry pies that were delicious. There was so much food that not all of it was eaten. There were about 12 people that showed up. We had a lot of fun we were able to get to know the people around us better. We are now teaching a young soon to be married couple that lives in our complex along with their friends. It was very successful, and I couldn't have asked for a better night.
There were a lot of people that brought things like chicken to bbq and so forth. we put it together and planned it all out and talked to a bunch of the residence in the complex and invited them to come and bring something if they wanted. It was nice to meet so many of our neighbors.
OH just throwin a shout out to my good friend Sister Hinton's little brother! She told me that he was reading my blog. Sister Hinton and I were in the MTC together. She is a super missionary and ultra funny. She is always doing goofy things to get everyone laughing.
We had Zone Conference this past week and we were able to go to Lubbock for it. Elder Johnson of the 70 came and spoke to us. He did an excellent job. He opened it up to questions there at the end which was great to be able to communicate to him.
So I was thinking about the gospel a lot in church yesterday. Specifically how we become complacent in our beliefs. It is very easy to get into the habit and just do it just because we are expected to do it. Like going to church, reading our scriptures, or praying. Why do we do those things? Is it because we feel obligated to do them or we just do them because they are so engrained into our daily lives we just do them out of habit. We shouldn't be that way about the gospel. We should have a drive and a desire to do the things we are commanded because of the love we have for our Father in Heaven. Reading the scriptures just to do it won't be as effective or satisfying as when we pick up the scriptures with a determination to draw closer to God. The same goes with going to church. We will not get as much gain from it as we could if we are just going it to do it because we are expected to do it. I know that as we live the gospel standards with a drive to draw closer to our Father in Heaven our spiritual growth will drastically increase.
Oh for Austin to have a great object lesson to do I am going to try and record myself teaching a couple lessons one with a tea bag and the other with blocks. They have helped me out in teaching the doctrine that we are asked to teach. How is Austin doing with teaching the lessons? I hope he is loving being a missionary. It can be so rewarding! That's great that they are living at a members home. Definitely send him his ipod. I would die out here without mine.
As we learn to love the gospel we have a desire to live it. Living it bring the light of Christ into the world.
Transfers are in a TWO weeks--- in case anyone wants to mail me something.
Love YA
Elder Marshall
Did he get the CD I sent?
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