Hello Everyone,
This week was kind of a long week. I'm so tired today.
Last Monday we had a switch off. I was with Elder Freese who's way funny. He's been here for a long time now and he doesn't speak the language super well. He pretty has a pretty good attitude about it and he's way fun to work with and get along with. in the morning we taught this super drunk guy named Dia, which means short. After spending some time with him we were inviting for a way long time in that neighborhood trying to find another guy named Soap, which means fresh. We spent a lot of time biking and inviting until lunch. We had some way good food. We did our studies at the church as well as we had to get some stuff done for the sisters, which included putting some audio files on an SD card for an investigator a bunch of other errand-y stuff. After that we had a teaching appointment with an investigator that Elder Freese actually taught for a long time when he was in a trio in the city. And that was fun. She's was really good. Then we had an appointment with a recent convert to the church who is way awesome. His name is Poom. He's our age. He has his own personality and it's way fun to teach him. After we taught him, we had a PI appointment with a lady at around a six. She was going to come to the church, but then around five 45 it started raining really, really hard. So we called her and she didn't pick up and she never ended up coming. We ended up sitting at the church while it rained and poured. And we talked with Bro Poom for like another 45 minutes. It was way fun. We couldn't really go anywhere because it was raining so hard. And if we did go anywhere, no one would talk to us because it's raining.After a while we braved the rain to go to a recent convert's house. We had dinner with him briefly and then tried to talk to his mom, but she kind of wasn't talking to us. It was really hard to hear because they have a steel roof and the rain was pounding on it. After that we met with the other elders and just got drenched. We're making our way over there and were just so drenched; we were so wet. Like I could take a shower and I would not be more wet.
The next day we got up in the morning and we had a teaching appointment with the sisters. They have a guy that really doesn't want to feel like a burden if he goes to church. And so they tried to bring us over to come and help him out; help him not feel like a burden and encourage him to come to church. It was a good idea, but the investigator they have doesn't seem super interested so it didn't work as well as everyone wanted it to. Also Elder Milang kind of argued with him and it was just a very long process. We had to change up some plans since we were running out of time. So we went and tried to find this one guy to set up an appointment with. He has a farm kind of place and we're going to go serve him, but then he wasn't there. We had district meeting at 11 am, did our studies, and as soon as our studies were over we just booked it out of there. We got some ice cream and found a new place place to go invite and then taught this guy who is really old and wants to bring his kids to church. Really cute guy. I like him a lot. Then we had a fun English class. It's the end of our 12 week course and we celebrated for all the people that graduated and had some review games. Then we came home and got transfer calls and I'm staying here. So this is it, last transfer here in Ubon, training.
Wednesday we got up and ran at the track, had some fun there. Then I got a suit fitted for me. I'm going to get a khaki suit and I got some cool inside fabric and that was a process that took a while. We had a final district lunch together at our favorite little restaurant that has way good food and that was fun. In the evening we went to Non Noon's house. This kid is 16 or 15 or something and he's a kid and so he's not really coming to church. After that we invited some and I found a way cool guy who talked about all these cool spots to go vacation in Laos and it was way fun. Then we met this other kid named Bloom. He's 17. We'll see what we can do with him. :) We also met with a member and made a return appointment to go see him on Sunday.
The next day was Thursday, the beginning of this last transfer and it was really like a call to arms or like a wake up call back to reality. The past couple of weeks we've had a lot of things happening. Two weeks ago we had zone conference and then stake conference and so we were out of our area for like three days straight. We came back to a Wednesday p day. We really only had like three days where we actually worked pretty hard. And then this last week we were out of our area Friday and Saturday for our super cool meeting with Elder Ballard, which was honestly really cool. It was such a good meeting. The spirit was really strong. And we had a baptism on Sunday (Sis. Whale) and things kind of fell apart from there. I feel like I had run as hard as I could, we had that baptism and man, I just fell to pieces. I was so tired this whole last week. On Monday we got up and we got running again, so to speak, keep moving. So we worked Monday, had our switch off Tuesday which was kind of a normal day, Wednesday we had our p-day day and Thursday it was like, all right, we gotta get back to work! I'm really tired and these next couple of weeks are going to be more back to the grind kind of a deal just because they're normal work weeks instead of p day one day out of the area one day, back the next day kind of deal. **In the voice recording Ethan probably yawned 15 times and kept losing his train of thought. I did a fair amount of editing to keep his thoughts straight. :)**
Anyway, back to Thursday. We got up an went to see our RC, our favorite noodle place, sweet old lady She's way, way nice. She struggles to keep the sabbath day holy because she's worried about her ran, her store. Elder Milang talked about some things... it's good that he says if you don't keep the commandments you can't be blessed because he can't bless you. But Elder Milang's idea of God, it's just so unmerciful. I feel like his idea of grace is not correct. The idea of grace he has is we do everything we can and then God helps us. But the thing is that I've learned and that I've found is that it's not that just he's waiting at the end ready to take the stick at the end of your relay race. He is there the whole time, he's the reason you're running. He's pushing you along. Anyways, we talked with her and she doesn't want to go to all the Sunday meetings (after sacrament meeting) because her husband is always drunk and he can't do the ran, the store, and she's worried about losing money if she's at church for too long. Anyways, that's her complicated story. After that we went to go find this other guy who's Super Buddhist, but he kind of expressed some interest after we taught the plan of salvation with him. So this time we go in there and basically he says he's not interested, and I felt like we should go. But Elder Milang started talking and basically said, well this is why you're wrong. It's good that he can be so fearless but also it's uncomfortable and we want to respect people. After that we had some inviting time before an appointment and my back tire went completely flat. I don't know what I ran over or what happened, but it just went flat as flat can be. So we had to walk to the hospital to meet our RC who just got baptized to talk about the Holy Ghost that she would get on Sunday. It was a good lesson. It was short, which was unusual. It was good. We had some lunch after that, did our studies, weekly planning. And on our way out we spent an hour trying to fix my dang bike. I found the hole and patched it up, went downstairs, put it back together, pumped it up and there was another hole! So we take it all down again and I don't know how I missed the other hole but it was on the inside of the rim. It wasn't on the outside, so something on the outside didn't puncture it. It's from the inside somehow. Then the first other patch fell off or just didn't work. I guess I misplaced it or something. So then I had to put two new patches on and then we left finally. It's been fine since, but man, that was kind of stressful there for a bit. We went inviting at the school park where we were going to go say goodbye to a recent convert who was going to go back to Bangkok. He's actually from Bangkok, but his family is in Ubon. He wasn't there and we called him and his phone was off. It was very sad, but we found a cool guy that we talked to instead. That evening we went to dinner with the other elders because they're moving into our house. When we got home we got to work on setting up bunk beds and moving everything because we are switching things around. What used to be the study room is now going to become the bedroom and the bedroom is now becoming the study room.
Friday we got up and we went to visit our drunk guys, watermelon patch guys. They weren't there. We did some inviting, found some cool PIs, saw a less active member and talked to him. He had my ties finished that I had made for dad and the boys. We studied, invited and found a couple people. We called our man Samuel, Filipino guy, and invited him to our basketball night on Saturday. We taught this guy's Grandpa who's super nice said he's going to go to church. We talked to this other guy who sells meat balls who is a way nice guy, not interested, but he was nice. Then we headed to the church to let the sisters in because we have the keys. We tried to find this really strong family but they didn't pick up the phone and we never could find them. We went back to the church, did a planning session for our fireside, got some dinner, went home and worked more on getting the house ready to go.
Saturday we got up and got going. It's kind of weird waking up with two extra elders in the house. It threw our regular planning schedule off. But it's kind of fun. Interesting. A fun way to go out. Anyways, we went to a printer shop and printed off some papers that we need for Sunday and went inviting a for a little bit. Then we enlisted the help of a member in moving a bunk bed out of this sister's apartment into our apartment so we could use it because we have more people in our apartment. Then we were going to go to our appointment. We called to confirm it and he didn't pick up. We weren't really sure what was going on. We call again and his wife answers she said he's in the hospital. I asked where he was and we tried to find him but we just could not follow her directions for some reason. It was a mess. We waited for like an hour because she said she was going to come but she never came. After that we studied and we got some lunch and it was fun because I got to talk to this way nice lady that we were sitting next to waiting for our food and it was awesome. We went to teach our investigator Sister Tepe and she said she'd go to church tomorrow and then she didn't come. But it was really good lesson; we talked about the plan of salvation. Then we met with Bro. Poom. I want to be better at planning lessons and making us stick to the lesson. It's hard though. I really can't control the lessons because I'm not a native speaker. And when a native speaker is there, he kind of takes over the lesson because I can't speak as well as he can. And so he kind of just dominates the conversation and sometimes it goes way off track. Anyways, after that we were going to go teach a drunk guy, but we got a call from the first counselor in the bishopric and he asked us about the guy we tried to visit that morning, Eddie (he's a member). We told him we couldn't find where he was. Then he told us exactly where we needed to go. And said, meet me there in 30 minutes; I'm going to get some food for them. So we hung up and went to meet him. We talked to Eddie and he's just wasted. He had some food poisoning or something and was not feeling good at all. The bishopric member brought the food for him and we gave him a blessing. Eddie is actually the ward organist/piano guy. The first counselor said, well, I don't know what we're going to do for Sunday now. We don't have someone that can play the piano. Elder Milang points at me, and said, he can. And so I played for church. It was fun. Ever since I left Asoke I've played in every ward I've served in- Bangnaa, Chiang Mai and here. It's fun. If it was an organ, I couldn't do it. But piano is fun. I like playing piano. It's been kind of fun playing piano on the mission. Anyways, after that we ran home, changed our clothes, and play ball at the park with some investigators. We had a lot of people commit to come and then no one came. Sad. But we found these cool guys and we played ball with them. Finally an investigator did show up and we talked to him and played some ball. It was really fun. We won every game because I was on the team, against a bunch of little Thai guys. It was really funny. I would jump really high and they'd think I was going to dunk but I can't dunk cause I'm too fat.
Sunday we got up first thing in the morning and went to the church so I could practice the songs for sacrament meeting. Church was good. Sis. Whale was there for her confirmation and we all got up there and the bishop said, all right Sis. Whale please come up to the stand, we're going to confirm you. She came up and we told her what was going to go on and it was all good. Then bishop looks at me, he's like, you've confirmed someone before? And I was like, yeah? He's said, all right, will you do it again? I was like, uh, sure. I would rather have a member do it but then he made me do it anyways. I said I hadn't done it in Thai and he said all right, well here's the words. Then I was like, okay, whatever. It was great. I blessed her that her family would follow her example and be baptized, classic missionary right? But I did that because the first counselor whispered in my ear that I should bless that. I agreed with that and I did it. I was fasting this whole day so when it was time for lunch I didn't eat, but I watched other people eat. I got the baptismal record all filled out and ready to go and talked to a crazy little grandma. After that, when we went to Central (a mall) and we invited there. There's tons of people at the mall on Sundays, I dunno what it is. After the mall
we came home and did our studies and then we went to find this member. His house is way far away. It's not super far from the church but it's like really deep in a street and we just could not find it and no one was answering our calls. Finally we find out what his wife's number is and called her and she told us he wasn't home. Dang it. That was after an hour of looking for the house. Then we talked to an LA after that and met with him and helped him with his garbage. I'm trying to get him back to church. The sisters took us to our next investigator's house because they knew where they lived and I didn't. Later we were meeting with this guy who is a strong member. His grandson was there and I was playing with him and talking with him. Somehow the conversation turned and just went off on a crazy tangent and that was one of those times when I wished I could speak Thai better. Don't get me wrong. I love the kid. I feel a lot of love for him. I understand where he's coming from. Sometimes I feel like he's just very socially awkward and has only really ever had one particular person teach him the Gospel. And so he really only has that one person's advice about how the gospel works and I feel like I'm not doing a very good job of teaching him anything. I need to be better. But man, sometimes he says things that are just out there. Anyways then we invited a couple more hours at a park, and then we came home and went to bed. And I just could not asleep Sunday night I was feeling awful, I felt so sick. I had fasted all that whole day and I hadn't had any water and I was thirsty out of my mind. I could not fall asleep until like 12:30 and then I having these crazy weird dreams.
This morning the alarm didn't go off so we got up at like 7 which was okay it was a p-day. But man, I just felt awful. I got up and I got some food in me, got some water in me and I really hope I get those blessings I was fasting for it cause I worked for them. That night was rough. So that was the week. My compaion... it's coming along. I feel like I have a lot of patience for him just because I'm going to leave the mission soon and I feel like there's things that he does that would have bugged me as a younger missionary but I've kind of matured I guess? I'm just trying to do the right things. I definitely couldn't have trained him first off the bat, there was definitely a reason I'm training him in my final transfer.
My find my spiritual thought this week comes out of 1st Nephi 22:26 and it says, "because of the righteousness of his people, Satan has no power; wherefore, he cannot be loosed for the space of many years; for he hath no power over the hearts of the people, for they dwell in righteousness, and the Holy One of Israel reigneth." This is something I've been thinking about a lot this week because I found that as we fill our lives with important good and clean things, it's better. It's easier to do the right thing. It's like the comparison that Elder Bednar talked about where you have a jar full of sand and the more white sands you put in, the more black sands are pushed out. I like that. And this is something that Bishop Moses shared with me when he was a bishop. He helped me to understand that. And so I like that scripture a lot. That's my spiritual thought. I know that the head of this work is Jesus Christ and there was no other person that could do it. Just him. He is the only person that can really make this all work together and happen, and I'm grateful just to be his coworker. That's it for this week.
Over and out, Elder Ellsworth.
This week was kind of a long week. I'm so tired today.
Last Monday we had a switch off. I was with Elder Freese who's way funny. He's been here for a long time now and he doesn't speak the language super well. He pretty has a pretty good attitude about it and he's way fun to work with and get along with. in the morning we taught this super drunk guy named Dia, which means short. After spending some time with him we were inviting for a way long time in that neighborhood trying to find another guy named Soap, which means fresh. We spent a lot of time biking and inviting until lunch. We had some way good food. We did our studies at the church as well as we had to get some stuff done for the sisters, which included putting some audio files on an SD card for an investigator a bunch of other errand-y stuff. After that we had a teaching appointment with an investigator that Elder Freese actually taught for a long time when he was in a trio in the city. And that was fun. She's was really good. Then we had an appointment with a recent convert to the church who is way awesome. His name is Poom. He's our age. He has his own personality and it's way fun to teach him. After we taught him, we had a PI appointment with a lady at around a six. She was going to come to the church, but then around five 45 it started raining really, really hard. So we called her and she didn't pick up and she never ended up coming. We ended up sitting at the church while it rained and poured. And we talked with Bro Poom for like another 45 minutes. It was way fun. We couldn't really go anywhere because it was raining so hard. And if we did go anywhere, no one would talk to us because it's raining.After a while we braved the rain to go to a recent convert's house. We had dinner with him briefly and then tried to talk to his mom, but she kind of wasn't talking to us. It was really hard to hear because they have a steel roof and the rain was pounding on it. After that we met with the other elders and just got drenched. We're making our way over there and were just so drenched; we were so wet. Like I could take a shower and I would not be more wet.
The next day we got up in the morning and we had a teaching appointment with the sisters. They have a guy that really doesn't want to feel like a burden if he goes to church. And so they tried to bring us over to come and help him out; help him not feel like a burden and encourage him to come to church. It was a good idea, but the investigator they have doesn't seem super interested so it didn't work as well as everyone wanted it to. Also Elder Milang kind of argued with him and it was just a very long process. We had to change up some plans since we were running out of time. So we went and tried to find this one guy to set up an appointment with. He has a farm kind of place and we're going to go serve him, but then he wasn't there. We had district meeting at 11 am, did our studies, and as soon as our studies were over we just booked it out of there. We got some ice cream and found a new place place to go invite and then taught this guy who is really old and wants to bring his kids to church. Really cute guy. I like him a lot. Then we had a fun English class. It's the end of our 12 week course and we celebrated for all the people that graduated and had some review games. Then we came home and got transfer calls and I'm staying here. So this is it, last transfer here in Ubon, training.
Wednesday we got up and ran at the track, had some fun there. Then I got a suit fitted for me. I'm going to get a khaki suit and I got some cool inside fabric and that was a process that took a while. We had a final district lunch together at our favorite little restaurant that has way good food and that was fun. In the evening we went to Non Noon's house. This kid is 16 or 15 or something and he's a kid and so he's not really coming to church. After that we invited some and I found a way cool guy who talked about all these cool spots to go vacation in Laos and it was way fun. Then we met this other kid named Bloom. He's 17. We'll see what we can do with him. :) We also met with a member and made a return appointment to go see him on Sunday.
The next day was Thursday, the beginning of this last transfer and it was really like a call to arms or like a wake up call back to reality. The past couple of weeks we've had a lot of things happening. Two weeks ago we had zone conference and then stake conference and so we were out of our area for like three days straight. We came back to a Wednesday p day. We really only had like three days where we actually worked pretty hard. And then this last week we were out of our area Friday and Saturday for our super cool meeting with Elder Ballard, which was honestly really cool. It was such a good meeting. The spirit was really strong. And we had a baptism on Sunday (Sis. Whale) and things kind of fell apart from there. I feel like I had run as hard as I could, we had that baptism and man, I just fell to pieces. I was so tired this whole last week. On Monday we got up and we got running again, so to speak, keep moving. So we worked Monday, had our switch off Tuesday which was kind of a normal day, Wednesday we had our p-day day and Thursday it was like, all right, we gotta get back to work! I'm really tired and these next couple of weeks are going to be more back to the grind kind of a deal just because they're normal work weeks instead of p day one day out of the area one day, back the next day kind of deal. **In the voice recording Ethan probably yawned 15 times and kept losing his train of thought. I did a fair amount of editing to keep his thoughts straight. :)**
Anyway, back to Thursday. We got up an went to see our RC, our favorite noodle place, sweet old lady She's way, way nice. She struggles to keep the sabbath day holy because she's worried about her ran, her store. Elder Milang talked about some things... it's good that he says if you don't keep the commandments you can't be blessed because he can't bless you. But Elder Milang's idea of God, it's just so unmerciful. I feel like his idea of grace is not correct. The idea of grace he has is we do everything we can and then God helps us. But the thing is that I've learned and that I've found is that it's not that just he's waiting at the end ready to take the stick at the end of your relay race. He is there the whole time, he's the reason you're running. He's pushing you along. Anyways, we talked with her and she doesn't want to go to all the Sunday meetings (after sacrament meeting) because her husband is always drunk and he can't do the ran, the store, and she's worried about losing money if she's at church for too long. Anyways, that's her complicated story. After that we went to go find this other guy who's Super Buddhist, but he kind of expressed some interest after we taught the plan of salvation with him. So this time we go in there and basically he says he's not interested, and I felt like we should go. But Elder Milang started talking and basically said, well this is why you're wrong. It's good that he can be so fearless but also it's uncomfortable and we want to respect people. After that we had some inviting time before an appointment and my back tire went completely flat. I don't know what I ran over or what happened, but it just went flat as flat can be. So we had to walk to the hospital to meet our RC who just got baptized to talk about the Holy Ghost that she would get on Sunday. It was a good lesson. It was short, which was unusual. It was good. We had some lunch after that, did our studies, weekly planning. And on our way out we spent an hour trying to fix my dang bike. I found the hole and patched it up, went downstairs, put it back together, pumped it up and there was another hole! So we take it all down again and I don't know how I missed the other hole but it was on the inside of the rim. It wasn't on the outside, so something on the outside didn't puncture it. It's from the inside somehow. Then the first other patch fell off or just didn't work. I guess I misplaced it or something. So then I had to put two new patches on and then we left finally. It's been fine since, but man, that was kind of stressful there for a bit. We went inviting at the school park where we were going to go say goodbye to a recent convert who was going to go back to Bangkok. He's actually from Bangkok, but his family is in Ubon. He wasn't there and we called him and his phone was off. It was very sad, but we found a cool guy that we talked to instead. That evening we went to dinner with the other elders because they're moving into our house. When we got home we got to work on setting up bunk beds and moving everything because we are switching things around. What used to be the study room is now going to become the bedroom and the bedroom is now becoming the study room.
Friday we got up and we went to visit our drunk guys, watermelon patch guys. They weren't there. We did some inviting, found some cool PIs, saw a less active member and talked to him. He had my ties finished that I had made for dad and the boys. We studied, invited and found a couple people. We called our man Samuel, Filipino guy, and invited him to our basketball night on Saturday. We taught this guy's Grandpa who's super nice said he's going to go to church. We talked to this other guy who sells meat balls who is a way nice guy, not interested, but he was nice. Then we headed to the church to let the sisters in because we have the keys. We tried to find this really strong family but they didn't pick up the phone and we never could find them. We went back to the church, did a planning session for our fireside, got some dinner, went home and worked more on getting the house ready to go.
Saturday we got up and got going. It's kind of weird waking up with two extra elders in the house. It threw our regular planning schedule off. But it's kind of fun. Interesting. A fun way to go out. Anyways, we went to a printer shop and printed off some papers that we need for Sunday and went inviting a for a little bit. Then we enlisted the help of a member in moving a bunk bed out of this sister's apartment into our apartment so we could use it because we have more people in our apartment. Then we were going to go to our appointment. We called to confirm it and he didn't pick up. We weren't really sure what was going on. We call again and his wife answers she said he's in the hospital. I asked where he was and we tried to find him but we just could not follow her directions for some reason. It was a mess. We waited for like an hour because she said she was going to come but she never came. After that we studied and we got some lunch and it was fun because I got to talk to this way nice lady that we were sitting next to waiting for our food and it was awesome. We went to teach our investigator Sister Tepe and she said she'd go to church tomorrow and then she didn't come. But it was really good lesson; we talked about the plan of salvation. Then we met with Bro. Poom. I want to be better at planning lessons and making us stick to the lesson. It's hard though. I really can't control the lessons because I'm not a native speaker. And when a native speaker is there, he kind of takes over the lesson because I can't speak as well as he can. And so he kind of just dominates the conversation and sometimes it goes way off track. Anyways, after that we were going to go teach a drunk guy, but we got a call from the first counselor in the bishopric and he asked us about the guy we tried to visit that morning, Eddie (he's a member). We told him we couldn't find where he was. Then he told us exactly where we needed to go. And said, meet me there in 30 minutes; I'm going to get some food for them. So we hung up and went to meet him. We talked to Eddie and he's just wasted. He had some food poisoning or something and was not feeling good at all. The bishopric member brought the food for him and we gave him a blessing. Eddie is actually the ward organist/piano guy. The first counselor said, well, I don't know what we're going to do for Sunday now. We don't have someone that can play the piano. Elder Milang points at me, and said, he can. And so I played for church. It was fun. Ever since I left Asoke I've played in every ward I've served in- Bangnaa, Chiang Mai and here. It's fun. If it was an organ, I couldn't do it. But piano is fun. I like playing piano. It's been kind of fun playing piano on the mission. Anyways, after that we ran home, changed our clothes, and play ball at the park with some investigators. We had a lot of people commit to come and then no one came. Sad. But we found these cool guys and we played ball with them. Finally an investigator did show up and we talked to him and played some ball. It was really fun. We won every game because I was on the team, against a bunch of little Thai guys. It was really funny. I would jump really high and they'd think I was going to dunk but I can't dunk cause I'm too fat.
Sunday we got up first thing in the morning and went to the church so I could practice the songs for sacrament meeting. Church was good. Sis. Whale was there for her confirmation and we all got up there and the bishop said, all right Sis. Whale please come up to the stand, we're going to confirm you. She came up and we told her what was going to go on and it was all good. Then bishop looks at me, he's like, you've confirmed someone before? And I was like, yeah? He's said, all right, will you do it again? I was like, uh, sure. I would rather have a member do it but then he made me do it anyways. I said I hadn't done it in Thai and he said all right, well here's the words. Then I was like, okay, whatever. It was great. I blessed her that her family would follow her example and be baptized, classic missionary right? But I did that because the first counselor whispered in my ear that I should bless that. I agreed with that and I did it. I was fasting this whole day so when it was time for lunch I didn't eat, but I watched other people eat. I got the baptismal record all filled out and ready to go and talked to a crazy little grandma. After that, when we went to Central (a mall) and we invited there. There's tons of people at the mall on Sundays, I dunno what it is. After the mall
we came home and did our studies and then we went to find this member. His house is way far away. It's not super far from the church but it's like really deep in a street and we just could not find it and no one was answering our calls. Finally we find out what his wife's number is and called her and she told us he wasn't home. Dang it. That was after an hour of looking for the house. Then we talked to an LA after that and met with him and helped him with his garbage. I'm trying to get him back to church. The sisters took us to our next investigator's house because they knew where they lived and I didn't. Later we were meeting with this guy who is a strong member. His grandson was there and I was playing with him and talking with him. Somehow the conversation turned and just went off on a crazy tangent and that was one of those times when I wished I could speak Thai better. Don't get me wrong. I love the kid. I feel a lot of love for him. I understand where he's coming from. Sometimes I feel like he's just very socially awkward and has only really ever had one particular person teach him the Gospel. And so he really only has that one person's advice about how the gospel works and I feel like I'm not doing a very good job of teaching him anything. I need to be better. But man, sometimes he says things that are just out there. Anyways then we invited a couple more hours at a park, and then we came home and went to bed. And I just could not asleep Sunday night I was feeling awful, I felt so sick. I had fasted all that whole day and I hadn't had any water and I was thirsty out of my mind. I could not fall asleep until like 12:30 and then I having these crazy weird dreams.
This morning the alarm didn't go off so we got up at like 7 which was okay it was a p-day. But man, I just felt awful. I got up and I got some food in me, got some water in me and I really hope I get those blessings I was fasting for it cause I worked for them. That night was rough. So that was the week. My compaion... it's coming along. I feel like I have a lot of patience for him just because I'm going to leave the mission soon and I feel like there's things that he does that would have bugged me as a younger missionary but I've kind of matured I guess? I'm just trying to do the right things. I definitely couldn't have trained him first off the bat, there was definitely a reason I'm training him in my final transfer.
My find my spiritual thought this week comes out of 1st Nephi 22:26 and it says, "because of the righteousness of his people, Satan has no power; wherefore, he cannot be loosed for the space of many years; for he hath no power over the hearts of the people, for they dwell in righteousness, and the Holy One of Israel reigneth." This is something I've been thinking about a lot this week because I found that as we fill our lives with important good and clean things, it's better. It's easier to do the right thing. It's like the comparison that Elder Bednar talked about where you have a jar full of sand and the more white sands you put in, the more black sands are pushed out. I like that. And this is something that Bishop Moses shared with me when he was a bishop. He helped me to understand that. And so I like that scripture a lot. That's my spiritual thought. I know that the head of this work is Jesus Christ and there was no other person that could do it. Just him. He is the only person that can really make this all work together and happen, and I'm grateful just to be his coworker. That's it for this week.
Over and out, Elder Ellsworth.
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