Attitude!

August 28, 2016

Hello everyone! I am so glad to be writing this email to you as a missionary because you know what? Missionaries are awesome! And so is missionary work! This week was jammed packed so listen up.

First off let's talk about Brenda, the lady we street contacted into last Saturday. She is so awesome, I don't know where she came from, but she is definitely prepared. She just wants to learn everything. We spent almost 2 hours with her last week teaching her different things. She is very excited to go to the temple. That's really just it. She is a golden investigator without being an investigator and she just get's excited about everything.

Today we have our Zone activity. We are going on a short hike and going bowling again!!! I forgot my camera today so I will get pics from someone else I am very sorry. (really I am)

We ran into this really cool couple this past week in a really weird way. We got a lot of referrals this week. The unfortunate fact is a lot of referrals don't always work out, but as we keep trying and have faith, weird but miraculous experiences like this next one happen. We had dinner over in Moundhouse which we never really go to, but we have started up some less active work there so we are now looking to find more work out there so it is more worth it when we go out there. We had dinner there and got a referral to go to the house behind the house we were eating at. When we went there a couple days later to knock on the door we were blessed to run into a lady who lives next door who was just getting out of her car. Naturally we talked to her and she told us to go try a house just along the main street in the community we were in. The first house wasn't interested so we went to try Chuck's house, the second one we were referred to. We knocked and they weren't home so we went and did the other work we had planned on and came back. When we knocked on the door Chuck opened it and immediately said "hey guys how's it going?" He welcomed us in and we got to know them for a bit. Turns out they used to have missionaries over all the time, but that had stopped back in 2014. We only realized it had been that long when we checked our former investigator records. Turned out they had been taught everything, but things had become more of a hang out than a teaching situation so the missionaries stopped coming. Since it has been essentially 2 years since their last lesson we see it as a miracle that we found them and that they could maybe even be ready to progress some more. We hope so and will try. It will also be a fun test of obedience since Chuck and Carole are really fun and want to have fun, but Elder Jones and I will be ok I think. We are both very dedicated to obedience. We will bring our new Ward mission leader in Dayton since he is not afraid to offend but is very loving at the same time to help see if they will be willing to progress. They are awesome people, but just need to learn the missionary purpose.

Lastly I wanted to talk about some learning I had this week about my attitude. I was not letting myself be happy. I was being way too negative because I want so badly to change. I want to be a great missionary so bad that I am not letting myself enjoy the good and focusing too much on the bad. I could, but I had gotten into the habit of saying "I'm not improving or changing good enough. Why can't I do this myself?" This Sunday I was thinking about just how great this week was. We had 10 less active lessons and 3 lessons with members presents which is amazing. The week before we had only 3 Less Active lessons and maybe 1 member present? We had been doing some great finding and have a few great potential investigators to try to turn into investigators this week. We are working great with the wards and more people are starting to keep commitments. I wasn't as happy as I should be and I knew that it was my attitude. I wasn't being happy Elder Kynan Sorochan, I was being grumpy Elder Kynan Sorochan (Elder McKenna would have told me to eat a pixy stick, that usually solved things.) Sunday morning I knelt down and prayed. I knew all the things about grace, I knew I needed Christ, but when I prayed the thought came to me "Let Christ change you" For some reason this worked. I have been happy since and not as tired. I have been just going forward, learning, and leaving the worrying and the changing to Him. I was trying to do this before, but for some reason now it is better. It will still take work and I will keep getting better, but for now I have reached the point I needed to and will now work to the next one.

I love you all and hope you all can, like me, keep coming closer to our Savior Jesus Christ.

Love,

Elder Kynan Sorochan