Week 105

Merry Christmas!!!!!

Today was pretty busy with a video call to my family and district pday. We played ping-pong in the morning and went to the senior couples' apartment for a Christmas lunch in the afternoon. Then we played games (some of which will be very good for dating in a couple weeks :)) and went grocery shopping. I love my family so much. I haven't seen them in so long and I can't wait to see them in real life in a week and a half.

I love the Christmas season. I love that we still celebrate the birth of our Savior 2000 years after he lived on the earth. He and our Heavenly Father love us so much that Jesus came to the earth to give us the opportunity to follow him and receive eternal life. Some people get a little side-tracked on presents and stuff like that, but please remember the reason for Christmas and serve someone.

Merry Christmas!!!!!
Elder Mitchell

Week 104

Hello everyone,

I'm basically dead. I have two more weeks as a missionary. The time has really gone fast and I'm working hard to make the rest of my time count. If any of you have forgotten what the life of a missionary entails, it goes something like this: wake up at 6:30 and try to exercise for a little bit. After that it's time to eat breakfast and get ready for the day. We study and plan until 10:00am and then go fulfill any appointments we had for the morning and introduce ourselves to as many people as we can. The hope with the introductions is that we'll find people willing to listen to our church's unique message and have interest in learning more. Then we have lunch and study for another couple hours. Then we go back out into the world to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with everyone. If we don't have any appointments then we're searching for new people to teach. And then we come back for dinner. Lately dinner has been at eight because people don't really like it too much when we knock on their doors after that. Curfew is at nine. And lights out is at ten thirty. There's sometimes a little bit of other drama. We have district meetings once a week and zone conference every six weeks. Sometimes we decide that it's a good idea to go to another area and work with other missionaries so that we can learn from each other. We also have interviews with our mission president every other transfer, and sometimes we have mission conferences like we did for Christmas a couple weeks ago. I think that's about it. I guess we have church every Sunday. We're supposed to go to that... :)

Some thoughts that I have: A mission is exactly two years. Sometimes people have reasons to go home early, and in rare cases missionaries can stay for an extra transfer or two, but it's a very well defined period of time. And time waits for no one. Some similar activities are school, careers, going on a run, and eating a pizza. It doesn't matter how much effort you spend on making them last, how much you try to enjoy it, or how much you try to do other things at the same time, they will come to an end. And at that point all you can do is move forward. We have to make the most of the time we have now. I'm not sure if that's sad but it's definitely true.

Here's a short miracle that my companion and I saw this week! We had a goal of finding three new people who we could visit again and teach about the church and we were stuck at one all the way until Sunday night with a few hours left. We knew that we needed to find two more people so we found a huge line of apartments inhabited mostly by graduate students at a nearby college and started knocking on their doors. For some reason we had several contacts that were very high quality, but none of them would let us come back and talk again. We got down to the last hour and had a 40 minute walk back to the apartment in the snow. We thought about leaving and just trying to talk to people on the street, but we decided to stay and do one last building. One of the first doors was a super nice college kid that we taught about the restoration and got a preferred return visit time! About five doors later we talked to a college girl that also had interest in hearing more! We ended up being late because of how long we spent talking to people in that apartment building and made our goal for the week!! We said a prayer of thanks to Heavenly Father and then walked home.

Lots of love!
Elder Mitchell

P.S. I got bullied into dressing up like Santa Claus.

Week 103

Hello,

The most exciting thing this week was the mission Christmas conference that we had near the American Air Force Base in Misawa. It was really fun and the food they fed us was fantastic. I've always been really grateful for how much support I've gotten as a missionary. One of my favorite ways to be supported as a missionary is to be fed really good food. I'm probably the only missionary like that in the whole world... or maybe not.

I've been reading the Book of Mormon lately and been really impressed by all of the great examples of faith in it. They often found themselves in really dangerous circumstances, and faced brutal opposition, but were always blessed by their commitment to follow the prophet and keep the commandments. It's so easy to see the pride cycle happen in the Book of Mormon because of how quickly it passes through years and decades. The pride cycle generally starts with righteousness, and leads to prosperity and happiness. But then the people get prideful and start to believe that they don't need God or the prophets. Sometimes it takes a long time for them to humble themselves and give thanks to God, but they are always grateful that they did. Righteousness does not protect people from trials and challenges in their lives (because we need those to learn), but it does bring the promise that God will be with us. I hope that I will always have the faith and the strength to do what I need to to keep God with me at all times.

Have a great week!
Elder Mitchell

I don't remember if the food was actually mine. It might have been. 

And the other one is all the stuff that the missionaries 

got from the members for what they call 'fruit basket'. 

I don't remember if I've explained it before. It happens 

every fast Sunday. They just bring us a bunch of food. 

It's pretty fun. Or at least I think so. :)

Week 102

Hey Family,

I feel like not too much happened this week. We did make a baptismal date with one of my favorite people in the entire world. That was pretty fun. He was a little bit difficult but we were difficulter. :) He ultimately agreed to the 15th by saying that IF he felt like the church was true before then he would join it but he didn't think that would happen. We made sure that he was willing to do the work necessary to find out that it is true, and he is!

The biggest obstacle we had with him is that he didn't want to pray because he felt like his heart wouldn't be in it and it would just be mimicking us. Yesterday he still wouldn't pray with us, but he said that he tried praying by himself and that it went well! He also now feels like he could actually decide that he needs to be baptized before the 15th!

I had my last fast Sunday as a missionary this last Sunday. That was weird. I bore my testimony even though I didn't really want to. Are you all proud? :) I don't think that anyone in the branch actually knows that I'm leaving soon. I've tried not to tell anyone except a choice few. And I swore them to secrecy.

I have a picture this week. That's pretty cool

I love you all the most!
bEn