Living the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Absolute Best Solution to any Problem!

6-30-14

My hump day was alright.  It felt like any other day in the mission.  We were too busy to really celebrate or do anything.  I still need to take some pictures of the things that you sent me.  Thank you for all of it, though.  Elder Lawless and I ate through all of the Tootie-Frooties in the first day!  We don't have any traditions for it.  They won't let us burn anything either.
Right now it feels like these past few weeks have been super slow because I was nearing the year mark, but there have been a few things that I've really seen and learned over this last year.  The first thing is when you work hard, you're happy!  You're tired, but happy!  The second BIG thing is living the gospel of Jesus Christ is the absolute best solution to any problem you will ever deal with.  I've met so many people and members who either don't have the gospel or don't live it as they should, and they are in bad circumstances and they are unhappy.  Some of them realize it and they do something about it, and it's great to see the atonement work in their life, but there are those who have an extremely difficult time understanding that the simple principles of the gospel can help them and they turn away from it.  The best thing that you can do is to make sure that your testimony is centered in Jesus Christ and that you have a solid foundation of scripture study, prayer, and church.  Everything else is built upon that foundation.
I don't know what will happen this transfer.  I've been here for four transfers, but I could be here for another 1 or 2.  I'm guessing that I might leave, which would kind of be nice, since I've been here for so long, but I also don't want to yet because this is an amazing area!  We have had great work and we actually have 3 baptismal dates set with investigators for the month of July and one in August.  If everything was to go through as planned, we would have 6 baptisms this next transfer.  But, we will see what happens.  We have calls for transfers this Saturday, so I will let you know next week.  We still haven't met with that one family yet, but they are just working out some family things.  We should start teaching them again in a week or two.  One of the members is in contact with them frequently and she said that they are doing well.
I'm glad to hear that you are still learning new things during your personal studies and that you are all doing family prayer.  Keep it up and work on doing study as a family.  I hope that you all travel down to Utah safely and that everything goes as planned with all of the tests for Dad.  Love you!

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

P.S.  I love the book of Mormon quote book that you all sent me!  Thanks so much!