El Agradecimiento

Hello all,

Happy Thanksgiving! Time is flying, as always, and Christmas will be
here in no time.

Things are going well! We had a great week.  We've been having some
good experiences together- seeing The Lord guide us to where He needs
us to be. One instance in particular occurred on Thursday- it was our
turn to be on the bikes. We were riding around without a ton of
success- things haven't been working out as we had planned out. We
were contemplating what to do when I realized that had to go to the
bathroom pretty badly. For whatever reason the Alvarez family came to
mind, so we set off on the two minute bike ride to get there. Upon
arrival we found Javier, a less active who we had planned to see that
day, along with the rest of the family. It turns out that the dad of
the family had recently been admitted to a nursing home because he's
going downhill after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The mom was
feeling pretty down after that and so we were able to share a lesson
about living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which helped Javier and
Hermana Alvarez a lot. We also got some good hot chocolate and sweet
bread after not having a dinner and I was able to use the bathroom!
The Lord worked in a mysterious way that night and just killed four
birds with one stone. I love seeing that and I testify that this
really is His work!

And with Thanksgiving coming up, I've been thinking about gratitude a
lot. One of the lessons that God has been teaching me on the mission
is gratitude- I was not at all good about expressing gratitude and
being grateful before the mission. Now I've come to realize that the
times when I am happiest is when I'm focusing on what I've been
blessed with and expressing gratitude to those around me. Doctrine and
Covenants 78:19 says "And he who receiveth all things with
thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth
shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more." So be
grateful! If you're ever down, write a list of twenty things that you
love about life and then thank God and anybody else involved in that
list and then see how you feel. I can promise that you'll feel better
almost immediately. Don't save your gratitude for tomorrow and leave
it for the next year's turkey day. Develop an attitude of gratitude
and live will always be good.

So yep, happy thanksgiving! Hope you have a good one tomorrow and a
good week to come!

-Elder Griffiths

Sent from my iPad