¡Que No Caiga más Nieve!

January 8, 2014

Hello all!

It is cold here in New York! And windy- I think the wind chill was
about -20 degrees yesterday. We went out knocking as a district and
about freezed to death, but it was fun! So yeah that's what is going
on here.

This past week was pretty good- we're still getting back into he
groove of things after the holidays but things are definitely going
up. There have been a couple of sicknesses that have slowed us down
(we usually switch things up and have somebody stay with the sick
person while the other two go out and work, so we've all been taking
our turns with that). Thursday it dumped snow- we got a good eight
inches worth. Got boots just in time. We went out before there was too
much on the ground but we were sliding around pretty good so we
decided to come back and stay in for the night. I'm getting some good
snow driving experiences. We spent some good time on Friday shoveling
snow, maybe enough to make up for my lack of doing such as a kid. This
past week we've started to do a district language study- there are two
companionships of Spanish missionaries and two of English and one of
an ASL/English zebra companionship. So anyways, we're teaching the
other guys some basic Spanish so that they can contact others and
we're all learning sign language from Elder Davenport. Sign language
is sweet- not too hard to pick up. We're having a good time with it
describing our daily activities (I chased some deer, that is crazy, I
teleport, hallelujah are among some of the things I can say at this
point). I love learning languages and I feel like it's a blessing I
have. We'll see what happens with sign language- I might come home
speaking Spanish, some sign language, some Italian and a little
Portuguese- that's be cool. I'm grateful for the gifts that God has
given me and for letting me discover them.

After being out for a little bit of time, the ruts come more often and
you have to keep things moving to not be stagnant or boring or just
routine. I guess the thing lately that has caught my attention a
little more lately is being like Christ. I haven't put to much thought
into that recently, but luckily Heavenly Father is looking out for me
and had led me to study and apply those principles. Trying to be like
Christ has been  an answer to many of my prayers and has been helping
me out a ton. Treating others with kindness and love, being obedient
and humble, having faith in God and being diligent are so important
when we're serving others and serving with others. On top of that, if
we expect to be joint heirs with Christ, we've got to be like Him- how
else would we be able to handle everything that is promised to us? I
know it's what God wants, us to be like His Son, and as we live the
gospel we can do exactly that.

Things are great and getting better! I look forward to a fruitful rest
of January. Thanks for the support and have a great week!

- Elder Griffiths