If I had a Beard, I'd Twirl it

Hello Family!

This week went well. I learned a lot and hope to be better off for having lived this week :). (I guess that's my hope each week of life; perhaps especially this week?)

Continuing to focus on finding new people to teach as President Jones has encouraged us, we taught two new people last Saturday - two of the teenage children of Moses, whom we had already started teaching. I had actually already met his daughter because she ran track at the high school. We thought that made for a good week (just one shy of the "standard of excellence", set at three new investigators per companionship per week). Little did we know what the Lord had in store for us Sunday where we began teaching three more people. Two speak only Spanish (Carmelo y Pedro) and are hard to teach not only because I'm the only one who speaks any Spanish but also because they work a lot. As in, more than I thought people were allowed to work in this country. I guess agriculture has special exceptions. In any case, it makes finding time to meet with them difficult.

But, speaking of lessons learned and beards twirled (isn't beard-twirling a natural result of lesson-learning?), I actually had a pretty rough week previous to Friday zone conference and our successful weekend. We had a few lessons that fell through or didn't go as well as we hoped and I was allowing myself to feel like an inadequate missionary, whose failings and lack of perfect diligence, knowledge, and planning skills were basically going to sink the ship. Anyway, some good chastisement at zone conference and afterward got me out of that slump. The summary for me came in our Sunday School lesson yesterday on the persecutions and trials of Missouri and Zion's Camp. D&C 101:16 - "Therefore, let your hearts be comforted concerning Zion [concerning your missionary work, Elder Cloward]; for all flesh is in mine hands; be still and know that I am God." No unhallowed hand can stop this work from progessing, not even mine. Especially not when I'm trying to do the opposite and relying on the help of the Lord.

Love you all, have a great week!
Elder Cloward