Luke's Letter June 1, 2009

June 1, 2009

Hey Family!

Thank you for the emails mom and dad, I appreciate them. You can attach pictures to your email so I can see them. And I do need to take pictures cause I can also email them to you as well I´m pretty sure. Sorry that I haven´t done that yet. I´m excited for Telly to about have her baby. I would love any pictures you could send. Thank you for the bit of email from Julie, it made me laugh. Thank you for all those little things you do mom, like forwarding my emails, talking to people so I can hear from Patrick and maybe Jessica and stuff. And with staying in touch with Brittany every now and then, thanks. So you finished the Great and Terrible series, both of you? That’s cool, I´ll have to finish it when I get home as well. That is one thing I look forward to when I get home is being able to read something new! Haha.

About time you went and played some basketball Thunder, haha. I´m glad your Achilles is feeling a little better. We have been trying to go running in the mornings here and usually do 2-3 times a week so that’s good. If we don’t I actually do stretches and stuff and am trying to become more flexible. I was going to ask you dad for a favor, if you could type of a summary of the P90X ab workout think with each exercise name, and maybe a short description so I can remember it, and how many reps and all that cause that is a really good workout thing I could do while out here. Plus I need to get my body back in better shape haha. But if you could do that for me that would be cool cause I can print it off and take it back to the apt so that would be nice to have. I can´t believe that Orlando beat Cleveland in the East, and they beat Boston too, that came as quite a shock, I would love to see Orlando beat LA in the finals. I kinda just don´t ever want Kobe to win a championship haha. But I would expect LA to win but I haven´t really seen Orlando play so who knows.

So our baptism this last week didn´t happen. The couple wasn´t able to get married because of some stupid paper work stuff so then of course she couldn´t get baptized, so in probably another two weeks. This week has been a hard one for me. My companion has been sick since Wednesday, so we really haven´t gone out and done anything, On Thursday we had zone conference though and the mission president was here so that was cool. But its been frustrating because we´ve had appointments that we´ve missed and not been able to tell the people that we´re missing it cause he´s been sick. What kinda bothers me though is he doesn´t really act sick at the apartment. Like, I know he is, like he is weak and has headaches and he had a really bad runny nose for a couple days, but its just frustrating. But I´m dealing with it, I think also we´re just getting to that point where its like, well… I´ve been around you for 3 weeks now and am starting to find some of those things pretty annoying, or now he´s starting to do things he didn´t do before because he feels more comfortable and stuff. But the hardest thing is just sitting in the apartment thinking of the people that we can be out helping but can´t really do anything, plus I don´t get much practice with my Spanish when we´re just in the apartment because we don´t really talk in Spanish there cause he wants to talk about world of warcraft or something, which also gets annoying. Sorry, I´m venting, haha. I just really hope he can get feeling better cause I´m sick of sitting in the apartment all day only reading scriptures or stuff like that, it gets old real fast.

We do have a 10 yr old investigator named Sebastian, who is planning on getting baptized the 20th, we just need his parents permission but his grandma says it shouldn´t be a problem so that´s pretty exciting. We have a lot of investigators but haven´t been able to do much this week with them so nothing new has really happened.

I don´t really know if my Spanish is getting better, I guess it kinda is, but I still understand about the same and can speak about the same. I get frustrated trying to teach in Spanish and communicate with investigators. I only feel like I´ve really clicked with one investigator, and it was hard when I was trying to talk to her cause I knew what she was feeling but then my companion kinda jumped in and took over because I couldn´t quite understand her replies. Sometimes I wish he would just try to interpret for me a little bit and let me continue to talk, but I think its hard for him. Ugh, yesterday was also a frustrating day because he wanted to debate about stupid stuff that doesn´t matter and I did with him for about 5 minutes then I tried to change the subject and he won´t quit. Its dumb, so it was hard for me to feel the spirit yesterday while studying, which was frustrating.

Ok, sorry, I shouldn´t be writing this stupid stuff but its kinda what happened this week haha. Zone conference was pretty cool though ,even though it was all in Spanish I was able to understand the talks and everything I think and then the next day everyone has an interview with the mission president and he said (I think) that he was impressed with my Spanish for just a little over 2 weeks and that I was a really good example and that I just needed to keep up the same work and attitude and that I´d be fine. At least I think it was something like that. He doesn´t speak English so there´s no way for me to be sure haha. But it was nice to hear that from the President.

I wish I had more to tell you about this week. I started reading the Old testament haha and am halfway through Exodus… I dunno how long that will keep up but its something a little different to read while in the apartment.

I love you all, thank you for the love and support. I´m really trying my hardest to be the missionary that Heavenly Father needs me to be, but I have a ton of weaknesses right now I´m trying to overcome. I´ve never prayed so much in my life. I really need the blessings that He has in store for me, but I also find sometimes that in my prayers I don´t even mention myself because there are some people here that I worry about so much cause I can just see how much the gospel will help their lives. I love this gospel and am so thankful for the chance I have to share it with the people here in Chile. I really hope that I can become what Heavenly Father needs me to become, cause right now I feel incredibly inadequate and unsure of what the heck I´m doing. I know I´m doing the right thing by being out here but I´m not sure how to go about doing what we need to do. I always hear stories about how missionaries are led by the Spirit and are prompted and stuff and I just don´t feel like I´ve felt that… cause I´m really lost a lot of times. But I trust that the Lord is directing me because He did call me to this specific place. So I am trying to be patient and trust in Him, and I am trying with all my heart to understand the Spirit and be able to listen to it and follow it. Its hard haha. Thank you again for everything, I love you all so much and can´t wait to see pictures of little Benjamin and any others you might send. Love you!!!

Love Luke