Season 6: Glacier Wilderness. Episode 1: Perspective

Me and Elder Duncan. I love this Elder so much. He is fantastic!

Me and Elder Meads. He isn't that tall, but he is still taller than me.

​I am sure one certain person got real livid when he saw that title :D

 

Wow what a week. Man, so much crazy stress. But the good kind. That kind that motivates you to continue going, to press foreword, and to better.

I had a lot of great personal experiences which have helped me to grow so much. I am so very grateful for all the opportunities that I have had and for the opportunities that will continue to come.

 

To report a little about my first district meeting, and it went great! The scale I am judging it is by if the spirit was present or not (because that is what truly matters). If I were to change my perspective (:D) to judge it by how eloquent I was, how well it turned out, etc then it didn't go very well. During district meeting I was really worried about how I was doing and putting myself down because I was really focusing on those type of things. Then I recognized I was being very selfish about the way I was focusing on how I was doing, and not focusing on how the district was. I think I was really focused on myself and not truly motivated by a desire to help me district out and to help them receive revelation. That was a powerful reminder of things I learned in the MTC and it drove the lesson further. After that realization, I focused more on my district and their needs and I still wasn't the most eloquent, but the spirit was present. (Sorry that paragraph may have just been all over the place.)

 

Training is a really great opportunity and experience and I love it so much. The combination of district leading and that is a good stress, so it is easy to be overwhelmed. But you need not be if you rely on The Lord and choose not to. One intense thing about training a missionary is that basically the things that you do, they will do. The habits (good or bad) they will develop. For example if you sleep in, they will most likely sleep in as well. If you only call missionaries by their last names, they will probably too. If you hang out with members, they will too. That realization that I will be a missionary that establishes habits for another was, has really changed that way I look at myself and my obedience and I am striving to be more and more obedient! It reminds me of the country song "Watching You." You should take a listen, I appreciate it very much. (One other country song I have come to love also is "Unanswered Prayers." Its so good :D I really do love things that teach strong moral lesson that I can apply to myself.)

 

Elder Meads is who I am training for the meantime. He is a visa waiter for the Belgium Netherlands Mission. He is from Salem, Utah and is learning to speak Dutch. So along with the 1 hour of personal study and 1 hour of companion study each day, we also get 1 hour for training and 1 hour of language study. He should be getting his visa pretty soon, so he may end up leaving in the next couple of weeks, or at the end of the transfer. He is very wonderful and I am striving to become more Christlike so I can better serve him. He is already teaching me so many lessons which I am so ever grateful for.

 

Sister Loftus' is going great. She had a concern about not being ready by August 1st, so we resolved her concerns and committed her to August 8th. That should be wonderful. We are going by tonight to work out some specific plans on how to best help her progress towards baptism.

 

One special experience happened on Saturday/Sunday. We were riding around in a neighbor hood and we stopped by a single sisters home to see if there was anything we could do for her, and she said we could come by and teach her children a lesson about the gospel because they were having a bad influence in their lives which is threatening their testimonies. When we came by on Sunday, she shared her side of what happened. She had been thinking about how to help her children and what she could do and thought about us coming by, and right then we knocked on the door! It was a tender mercy for her which I am ever so grateful that Elder Meads and I were able to be tools in the Lords hand in blessing her life.

 

Mission is wonderful and I am having some real great growth! Love you all!

 

Elder Sumsion