I love being a missionary.

I love getting know to know people, share the Gospel with them, and hear their stories (even when they take 45 minutes to tell them). I'm grateful that the Lord has given me more patience to listen. Yesterday, a man told us about how he recovered from brain surgery with God's help. It's hard for me to comprehend how God can be so good to so many people. Yes, there is more suffering, hurt, hate, sin, and ugliness in the world than we can grasp or would like to think about, but I can testify with certainty that our Heavenly Father also loves His children and works miracles--real, inexplicable miracles--every day. 

      One of the most satisfying and exciting things I've experienced as a missionary is hearing about previous areas where I have served. Just today I was looking through the list of people baptized in the mission, and I saw a man from my last area that wouldn't even sit down and talk with us when I was there! I also received the news that a woman that I taught for about 5 months passed her baptismal interview and is planning to be baptized in two weeks! 

     The most exciting thing we saw this week was Elizabeth and Martin G. come to Sacrament Meeting. They both work like crazy, and when they aren't, they are remodeling their mobile home/doing errands/dealing with 2 extremely wayward children, etc. They only let us come by on Saturdays when they're both off work. They face a lot of difficult situations, but they love the church and have told us they don't want to go anywhere else. 

     Other than that it was a pretty normal week though. We had our last meeting with President Durrant which was pretty sad, but he showed us some clips from his basketball days at BYU, and another of when he gave a talk in General Conference right after his mission which lightened things up a bit. We also had the opportunity with 4 other companionships in the our zone to teach about a chapter from Preach My Gospel at the Longview Stake Youth Conference (I think dad should have gotten a picture from a sister there), which was a good experience. 

      Have a great week! and act on those promptings to help someone or share the gospel! 

Love, 

Elder Gaughan