Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Date: November 25, 2013 at 1:37:41 PM PST
To: Jim And Sandy Bever <jsbever@molalla.net>
Subject: Happy Thanksgiving!

So turkey here is pretty hard to come by so we´ll see if I´ll end up eating some or not this week, they say its more common to eat around Christmas here. This last week went by pretty fast and even though it was full of ups and downs, I learned a lot. We´re working with a really positive family right now and they were references from another young member family in the ward. The wife was going to get married and baptized on Saturday but after doing everything possible on our part we had to let them exercise their faith to take the last step and just do it. Its frusturating when sometimes people don´t choose what will really make them happy in the end, but we´re not going to be giving up anytime soon. We´re also working with another family that have similar circumstances as the first but there´s a funny story that goes with them. The wife´s name is Carla and she just had her baby last month (which is what made it hard for her to be baptized) and they were thinking of a name for their daughter. Elder Velásquez also has a sister who´s name is Emili, so for the last two months I´ve been telling our investigaters that their daughter would be born on the 18th of November and her name would be Emily. In the end she was born in October and they gave her the name Ashley instead. (We still call her Emily and more often than not the name sticks with the family and they end up calling her Emily by mistake when we visit them). I really love the people here.

This week I was thinking about time in the mission and how fast everything is passing by and I realized that right now in the time that I have to serve as a missionary in Nicaragua, I wouldn´t rather be anywhere else. I really am happy here and I think I always have been, it just took me a while to realize where I´ve really wanted to be.

As far as fulfilling callings and worring about how we we do, I frequently worry about that as a missionary, but I´ve realized that doing so only helps me to a point. I try harder and harder every day to be the missionary the I know that I can be and I realize that often times we can´t see things like the Lord can until we stop and realize how far we´ve really come. I heard someone give a talk in the MTC about another missionary in another mission once and he said that a lot of times we don´t know how good we really are. I think that applies to relief society presidents as well. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you eat lots of food for me on Thursday.

Have a great week,

Elder Bever