Full-Purpose Missionary

Hola, mis amigos!

It's been a nice week! We've just been working in the metaphorical gardens of Ootsu and I'm glad to say that the metaphorical trees of our labor are starting to bear more metaphorical fruit again (hint: this is a metaphor). One of our investigators, for instance, is making some amazing progress and accepted to be baptized in August. He said that he still didn't know for sure if this is the right thing to do, but that he's willing to put in the effort to find out if it's true. Therefore, maybe not quite metaphorically ripe metaphorical fruits... but still metaphorical fruits, am I metaphorically right? I'm just happy to see some visible outcome of our work. Gotta keep working hard to get more metaphorical fruit (so I can finally get to making that metaphorical fruit salad).

We've had a companion exchange as well. This time, I went to Oumihachiman to work with elder Funaki (half Japanese, half Brazilian). It was a lot of fun and we got along really well. However... we could've worked harder during that time, even though our planned schedule ended up not going as planned. We must be things that act instead of things that are acted upon, like a wise man once said about 2600 years ago. I'm planning on following these words of advice and working to the best of my ability next time.

We then had a wonderful District Meeting, which consisted of a good discussion about an article from the November 2010 Liahona by elder Richard G. Scott called: "The Transforming Power of Faith and Character" (Clicky!) One of the principles that came across while discussing that I really liked was that "we become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day". When we do this, we exercise faith, which leads to building our character, which in turn increases our capacity to exercise our faith and keep building our character -- an upward spiral. So, applying this, instead of thinking: "I'll be a Full-Purpose Missionary later", I should BE the Full-Purpose Missionary I want to become. THEN will the upward spiral be initiated and metaphorically snowball into greatness. Sweet! We also received some training on asking good questions when teaching, which is exactly what I needed (something I had been trying to fix on my own before, but without a whole lot of success). It was just awesome! I learn so much from all the advice my leaders give me!

It has been a great week! Thank you so much for reading my mail, camaradas! Muchas gracias! I hope you have a wonderful week! Hasta la proxima semana!

Lots of amor,

~聖徒長老

P.S.: I made pizza again. 'T was good pizza.