Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Finalmente... Las Mangas Cortas!

Hello!

Time is still flying.  I hit my seven month mark last week, and although I've still got a little while left, I feel like it's just going to wiz by.  We'll see though!  Transfers are in a week, so we'll see how that mixes things up.

Things are getting beautiful!  Well the city still is the city with some trees and stuff, but the weather has been great this week!  Things were chilly and then all of a sudden Monday was nice so we all broke out our short sleeved shirts and it has been glorious.  I feel like the weather will be nice for a couple weeks and then it'll just get hot.  And hotter.  But we'll enjoy it while it lasts!  Another fun thing going on- Yankees games started last week.  We get on the Subway where Yankees Stadium is (we also run over to a field right across from the stadium to run and work out and stuff- pretty cool!) and so I think at least twice now as we've been heading up to our chapel, we've been bombarded by tons and tons of Yankee fans getting off going to the game.  There's one game in June that's on a Wednesday before 6:00, so I'm hoping we can go hit that up- we'll see!  Oh and last week we went to the Bronx Zoo.  It was pretty cool I guess.

Anyways, the weather is nice and the work of the Lord is going forward!  Thursday and Friday were good days with some good lessons.  I don't think anything out of the ordinary happened.  Saturday and Sunday we had conference and that was great!  I loved the speakers and I just felt uplifted listening to the servants of God.  We taught a couple of lessons in between each of the sessions, so that was good.  Even with General Conference, we tied our record high for number of lessons for our area.  This week we're trying to get yet even more lessons, and making them effective too.  Monday we had a long zone meeting to which President Morgan showed up.  It was really good- talked about planning and learned a lot of good insight about that.  Better planning has helped Elder Longmore and me to really make the most out of the time God has blessed us with.  After the training we had a couple of lessons, but nothing too exciting.  Tuesday I went on an exchange with Elder Richards, my District Leader who lives in the same apartment (we just pick up and switch our mattresses with the bedding and all when we do intra-apartmental exchanges).  It was great!  We were pretty much just going from lesson to lesson, being guided by the Lord to specific people to teach them the specific lessons they needed to hear. We dropped by one less active that Elder Longmore and I had been trying to get in with for a little while, and he was there and let us teach a little lesson.  He started talking and the scripture that I had felt he needed to hear went perfectly with a situation he was telling us about that had happened two days before so it was great seeing the hands of the Lord in that!  A funny thing about that visit, though, was that he has a pitbull named Olive and she just gets excited when people come over, so I think I can kind of say that I got attacked by a pitbull.  I like Olive though- she's a lot fun!  Anyways, yeah the exchange went well, I learned a lot and best part was that our investigator, Rafael, had his baptismal interview and so he's on to get baptized on Saturday!  We're excited about that, and now we're just making sure he's good to go.  Hopefully next week I'll have the opportunity to send some pictures from that.  That pretty much brings us to today.  We were going to go down and check some stuff out in Midtown (Elder Jenson, Elder Richards' Trainee hasn't been down there yet), but Elder Richards woke up with some back pain, so I'm chilling with him and Elder Longmore and Elder Jenson are going down into the city.  It's nice just having a break and now having to worry about getting back in time and stuff like that.  But yep things are going well!

I think one of my favorite things about serving this mission has been being blessed to see God's hand in the work.  As missionaries, we spend a lot of time planning, but things often times don't go according to plan.  Our plan at least.  When that happens it can be frustrating, and even depressing trying to figure out how to handle things when everything falls through.  When we look to the Lord, however, and are able to say that we gave our best efforts, he leads us to do the things that He intended us to do in the first place.  Sometimes it's not until the end of a long , frustrating day that we as missionaries can see that we happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right message, and that's how it was supposed to be.  God is involved in each and everyone of our lives and as we really look for His influence and His blessings, and then give Him the glory for such, we're so much better off!  So look for the good, even if it seems like it's a small little coincidence that made things a little nice, thank God for it and you will feel more of His love in your life.  I know He loves each one of us and is cheering us on and we keep pressing forward.

Thanks once again for all the support!  I'm looking forward to sending off a report of where I am and who I'm with next week because things could be switched up!  I'm excited to see what God's plan is for me for the next six weeks- transfers are always exciting!  But I wish you the best of luck with the upcoming week!

-Elder Griffiths

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