Tuesday August 27, 2019
well having a lack of motivation to write because my beloved mother has failed to write me, this'll probably be a short email.
Not a whole lot has really been happening these past couple weeks. There was transfers but ya Elder Jones and I are still together this next transfer so no big changes or anything. We've just been going through trying to find ANYONE who will just let us come back and visit them. We keeping getting the same "oh ya you can come back sometime" followed up with never actually getting to visit them. It's been really kapoy but we just keep trying. I'm not here to force anyone to listen to me and I can't expect everyone to want to listen to me so we just keep going until there is someone who wants to listen. It's been hard, but I mean i guess if it wasn't easy for Christ then there's absolutely no reason it should be easy for me.
Right now there's really just one family that we're really focusing on. They already really believe in everything. They just are really shy about going to church. Because they've never been before. We're really praying though that we can help them to try at least once. They're daughters that have gone to church before are going to be back this weekend so we're hoping that'll reeeeeally help. I just want them to be happy and to receive everything that the gospel has to offer.
I'll maybe add more to this email later but I'm just going to send this for now so that there's at least something.
LOVE YA!
Elder Shirley
(He repented and wrote more ....)
But i think it's really just all in the attitude of the work. I think i've just been going around thinking to much like "oh things should be easier now, the area should be progressing, I should be having so much more success, I'm giving it my all, why shouldn't I be getting all that?"
The more and more i think about it, the more i realize that's an awful attitude to have, especially as a missionary and even more so as a trainer. Missionary work was never meant to be easy. Changing lives is never easy. Even if you know you have something incredible, that could make someone's life so amazing, that could make them so much more happy, that doesn't mean that people are going to automatically recognize that or are going to automatically accept that.
I think having a little success on my mission kinda made me think that I "deserved" more, but I think if anything it actually makes more required of me. I think I lost track of some of the most important aspects of the mission, that sometimes things'll be hard because they're meant to be hard. Seems a little ironic to have been going around teaching others that god loves them and that trials and problems occur because he's just giving us the chance to make ourselves stronger and then not fully appreciate that for myself. I'm still living my life here as well, I still get to experience trials too. Even if I'm on the Lord's errand there's no exception to that.
I most likely only have about 1 month left in my area here. I'm going to keep working hard, but I'm not going to work with an attitude of "I deserve" when I know that there's no such thing as deserving anything when you serve. That's the point of service; you sacrifice your time and efforts with no expectation to get anything out of it. I know that right now it seems like all of my efforts have been fruitless, that everything I've done these past couple months have seemed to have no effect on anything, but that's because I can't see the big picture and I don't need to see the big picture because i know god can and that he truly does have a plan for each and every one of us.
The mission is hard, but I'm glad it aint easy. I couldn't have the kind of appreciation I have on life and the gospel if things were easy.
Yup,
Elder Shirley
