Hello all!

Today we had the great opportunity to go through the temple- I love the temple!  Not many other places on the Earth that can get you feeling like the temple does.  It's just a good source of tranquility centered in the middle of a bustling city of eight million!  Now we're writing emails home in one of the Apple stores that's pretty close to the temple- one of those cool glass box deals.  So yep!

Anywhoo, this week was pretty good!  Elder Martinez is quite the character.  He speaks English pretty well, but not quite fluently so that's been kind of a challenge trying to develop a good relationship with the semi-language barrier.  But he's a funny guy with a good testimony, so we're just going forward with the work in the South Bronx!  Instead of talking about each day, I think there were just a couple good experiences that I'll share.  First of all, we had a good lesson with an investigator named Yohanna that I only saw once last cycle (people can be kind of flaky here...).  We really just tried to understand her more, ask her questions about her expectations with us and then use the principles of the Gospel to resolve her concerns.  We were able to help her understand how the gospel will help her and now she's excited to have us meet with her more often and wants to come to church for sure this Sunday!  I know as we take the time to listen to people and really strive to care about them, the Savior leads us to be able to offer our testimonies and words of comfort to help others move forward.  Another experience was with Grace who has been working with missionaries since like November or something.  She's had a lot of health problems and emotional problems that have impeded her from progressing as would be preferred, but after some bold promises of healing and other things, she came to church for the third time and she loved it!  Things went well and now she has a testimony of not only Jesus Christ and The Book of Mormon, but of the church as well, so that was sweet!  She now wants to get baptized "pronto" so May 4th is the goal!  I know that as we're patient when things don't seem to be going well, when we're not getting the answers we're wanting, that God blesses us for our faithfulness.  She now gets to enjoy the eternal blessings that come from baptism and the companionship of the Holy Ghost and it's exciting!  I've loved working with her and am looking forward to seeing yet even more blessings come into her life!

So yep things are going well!  I had some humbling experiences this week that have helped me to be able to better have an eternal perspective.  Getting caught up in the day to day things and stressing out when things aren't going as well as they could be going is pretty easy and natural.  Sometimes it can be a pavilion, though, and make us lose sight of the things that matter.  When we really come to know who we are and where we're going- children of God with a divine inheritance- we can develop the hope to keep going through life even when things aren't perfect.  Which is all the time, right?  But yeah it's like being in a race, knowing you're going to win it all, but wanting to quit because you have a rough stumble.  I know that as we develop an eternal perspective, we'll better do the things today that will get us to that hopeful tomorrow.

Thanks for the support back home!  I love hearing about all the mission calls and how everybody is going!  Keep on going strong and have a great week!

-Elder Griffiths