Monday, November 25, 2013

November 18, 2013


Hello Mother!
 
This week has been nice! I have been out of Laguna Beach a few times on exchanges with other missionaries. Some people get homesick, but I get elderheglandsick when I am away for too long. #companionseperationanxiety
 
That hashtag is for K.
 
Armando hasn't been able to get work off until December, so he will be baptized in December. Charles is going to have the choice to accept a baptismal date this week when we meet with him. He is a very curious and spiritual man. Tyler is chugging along and I always appreciate being able to go over there and have some very real conversations with him about our Savior. They should all be at church this week or next.
 
A few highlights(once again I can only really remember a day or two back):
Sunday morning the choir performed again, so Elder Hegland went to the Laguna Beach ward while I went and accompanied the choir in a different ward. It went pretty well. No one got baptized because of it yet, but we are still fine tuning how to make this choir effective as a finding, teaching and baptizing tool for the California, Irvine Mission. We have bi-weekly choir council meetings which I participate in and we don't want this choir to be a time-waster or anything less than the professional quality that should accompany the sacredness of it participant's calling. Basically it needs to be good and it needs to be effective. enough about the choir.
 
This week we talked to a few people and two young women said that they would come to our church and learn more if we would go to their church. So we said absolutely! Then they actually came. I was at the choir performance, but Elder Hegland confirmed that they came, so on my birthday I get to go to another church!
 
Last night we had a lesson with a family that got baptized earlier this year. So there is the single mom and two little girls. They are from Latvia. Think of Gru from Despicable me and that's the accent. Lona is blonde and 5 years old. we met outside. They have 2 fiesty dogs that want to get out of the house and get eaten by coyotes because they don't know better. Lona was in charge of keeping the dogs behind the gate. On accident Lona left the gate open a little bit and the dogs almost got out. Lona quickly shut the gate, turned around and sang: "Who let the dogs out? Hoo! Hoohoo, hoohoo!" We all laughed a lot. That family is one of my all-time favorites!
 
I will close with a thought this week from President Monson: I reread a few conference talks to make sure I am applying the spiritual impressions I had during conference and a line of his stood out to me from one of his talks. He mentioned the idea of the "distorted prism of pessimism". For some reason I really liked that. We can not look at life as something bad, or that is what it will become. We should choose to be happy and hold on to our hope for the eternal lito come even when trials come our way. I am so inspired by this work that I get to participate in and I am saddened when missionaries do not find joy in the work. I blame it on the adversary's use of his "distorted prism of pessimism". Let us use our agency to think good, act good and be good. Pardon my grammar and have a lovely week!
 
Love- Elder Chandler

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