Pin out of finger (Jan 18)

Thanks everybody for the birthday wishes! Haha it's weird to think that it's my birthday already once again, and that I'm 20, not gonna lie I still think I'm 18, in fact when I have to put ages on stuff I still have to think before putting 19, and now I've already got to put 20, weird.

Anyways, this week was interesting. It has continued to be a little bit of a struggle for me, and I've been trying to figure out why. It's not so much that it's just hard to try and find people recently, because that's how it was for all three transfers in Olney, so I think there's been something else going on. I think I just haven't been as grateful as I used to be for the little miracles we see each day.

It was interesting because last week in zone conference that's one of the things they said, that the people in the days of the church in the Book of Mormon lost sight of the miracles, and their hearts were hardened. Luckily the Lord told me so I could try and stop it in its tracks. I'd never realized how vital gratitude is in our eternal happiness and in just our general attitude towards life. We need to be grateful for everything the Lord gives us, and as soon as we are our entire perspective on life and situations begins to shift. We see the good instead of the bad and because of that we're happier.

Other than that this week has been fairly eventful. I finally got the pin out of my finger! Haha that was weird, the doctor just grabbed some needle nose pliers and pulled it right out, didn't even numb me or anything, even weirder, I couldn't feel a thing! Haha super strange, so now the nail on my finger has fallen off, it's slightly swollen, and pretty ugly! But at least I can use it, and it's straight!

We've had some pretty cool teaching experiences. This Saturday we were on exchange, I brought Elder Bigelow to my area and as usual we saw a ton of miracles! We're teaching this lady that actually lives in Langley Park but we teach her on Saturdays because she lives in D.C. during the week and comes to our English class. Unfortunately she just has this problem with drinking coffee, but has been praying to know if she should really leave it behind. Unfortunately she was asking for a dream from God telling her that coffee was bad. Turns out she's had dreams before, something hispanic people just seem to have a lot of! But it was cool because her dream from before was very applicable to her situation now and we were able to help her see what's at stake, Coffee or Eternal Salvation! She's now going to stop drinking coffee!

We've also had some cool experiences with our [older lady]. Haha last night we were teaching her and she had a friend over that has met with the missionaries before but had some issues with wanting to keep just about all of the commandments. So he started asking us a bunch of questions about it all and Maria just started testifying about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and everything, it was like she was a member at our lesson with this guy even though she's not baptized yet! She's super solid, and it was cool that God provided her with that opportunity to bear testimony of the truths she's come to know!

We also had a fairly interesting lesson with a part member family. The family has been members for 14 years and the father just won't get baptized. We read with him in Doctrine and Covenants 39:7-10 (Jessica if you have any tough investigators this one is pretty legit:)) and he was touched. We spoke on the importance of the priesthood and how he has to help his family endure to the end. Unfortunately he seems a little reluctant to leave behind the world. A little too content to try and be serving two masters but we'll see what we can do for him!

As for our recent converts, they're all doing well, which was one of my goals this transfer, to strengthen them and make sure they don't just drop off of the map. ... Oh we also had kind of a sad experience. We were teaching this other little old Lady... Unfortunately she's probably one of the most negative people I've ever seen in my whole life! She literally just has this negative aura about her. However, she's normally been fairly pleased to see us. However, the other day she dropped us... Her words, in a not so nice tone were "No se molesten en regresar" Or in other words, "don't bother coming back" It was super sad, and slightly frustrating. She just doesn't seem to realize that her negative attitude is going to continue in the hereafter... As Elder Sterr and I contemplated it we realized that she will literally be sad and negative for all eternity unless she chooses otherwise.... It was super sad, and we're going to see if we can't try one more time to try and at least cheer her up. We'll see though...

Still, it's been a cool week! We finally found some pretty cool new investigators that hopefully start to progress here this week! Oh as for birthday plans, I don't really have any, haha but we'll see if we go do something.