Weekly Letter: August 24-30, 2010

So another week has gone by. It was funny, it seems like yesterday that my companion was like "ummm, what happened to the second week of the change?" and I was like, "oh, yeah, this is crazy. Time is moving so fast!" And guess what? We just finished week three! What happened?! The thing is, that every week, my companion and I are motivating each other to work harder, faster, and more effectively with the time we have. The thing is, when we do that, the time passes even faster. I literally can´t believe how fast this week has gone. I feel like nothing has happened since the last time I wrote but then I think about all things we did day by day, I can´t believe how we were able to do all this in one week.

Even though this week didn´t have the fruits that I thought we would have, we worked harder than we have before in the mission. The thing is, we couldn´t find very many new people this week because we had so many appointments with so many people. We´re going to make some hard decisions this week, and deciding who isn´t progressing and leaving them. We literally had so many appointments this week, that we weren´t able to keep in good contact with someone who was going to get baptized this week, but because we were so busy we weren´t able to get everything ready for them. So, yeah, we had a hard lesson in learning to put priorities, but got to learn in some way, right?

Anyway, I´ve been learning a lot from Elder Gamez. I´m really lucky to have him as a companion. There are a lot of Elderes in this mission that are focused in different thing, such as leadership and stuff like that. However, he is perfectly content how he is. He says that leadership is just a bunch of responsibility and less time to focus on the people. I agree completely with his way of thinking. The thing is, I´m really happy to see other people I know getting leadership positions, both Javier and Childers are District leaders in their respective areas, and I´m so happy to hear that. Also some people that arrived at the same time I did have become senior companions, and one is District leader. I´m really happy for them, but whenever people tell me that I´m going to be raised up, too, I get nervous, and my head starts thinking in things that are not my current responsibility. Whenever I catch myself thinking like that I get angry at myself and try to think of the people I have in my area. That´s the thing that I always fall back on in the mission, when I think too much of home or whatever, I think about the people in my area.

So yeah, neither one of us likes the idea of being a leader, which is funny because Gamez is the senior companion, and he´s always asking me to make the decisions, and I´m always like "You know the area as well as I do, you tell me what you think." Anyway, I might sound a little lazy, but I really don´t like the idea of having to split my time between taking care of both the investigators and the missionaries, being that I don´t have that much time as it is for our investigators.

Anyway, that being said, Elder Gamez really shows the capacity of being a really good leader. He´s really humble, he has a lot of knowledge, and he gets along with people very well because of his patience. I really admire these qualities and I´m working on developing them more like him...not because I want to be a leader, but a better missionary.

It´s truly a great experience the mission. We learn so much from our study. We learn so much from the people we meet, even more from those we teach, and even more from our companions. I really haven´t learned this much in my life! I´m really glad for this opportunity to serve the mission, and even more so when I think about for whom I´m doing this service. I´ve said this before, but the Lord doesn´t need us to do His work, it´s a gift to work for Him in bringing blessings to His children.

Thanks for all the love and support. Truly I´m so grateful that I have help in this work, if it weren´t that way, I would only be wasting time, but as it is, with the help I have, I´m able to see miracles.

Cariños,

Elder Thomas Blackham