A Letter from Elder Pelton July 4, 2011

This week has been a very long week for me at least, with struggles with my companion and not getting chances to teach people and our attitude about finding people slowly decreasing. But I am keeping up beat about everything with my companion. He has now officailly dumped the whole area work onto me. I do most of the planning for the day and the week. I fill out the new teaching records and progess records, and update the area book. So times can get stressful. Then I don't get to write in my journal. That throws me way off. I love every night when I get to turn to my Heavenly Father for answers of what I should do and relax from all the stresses and things that need to be done. I love the feeling that comes over as I pray to put all that anger and frustration and the things I am struggling with on the atonement because then I don't have to let those things slow me down the next day. When I wake up, I can start over and try to make it through each day hour by hour, minute by minute. That is the true meaning of the atonement to me - to have that escape from the things of the world that slow us down and weigh on our souls. It is a blessing from God to all man kind.
There have been no really exciting lessons or events that have happened in this past week, except that one of our Zone Leaders and I might have figured a solution to helping my companion get more excited about missionary work. It comes through Charity being the True Love of Christ. Without it, we are nothing. We have come to the idea of helping him see the things he does everyday that are good so he will gain that confidence again and want it more. During the exchange with our Zone Leaders, I got to lead my area and we found at least 5 really awesome potential people and found a few new investigators to teach and had a bunch of lessons. It shows how powerful the gospel is when you have two missionaries that are seeking to find and have the faith to do it. (My companion is being annoying telling me to hurry up so we can leave but I am going to take as much time as I want to finish talking.) Anyway, we got a lot done that day to help this area grow.
The family that we are teaching came to church and it was so awesome to see all the kids and the mom sitting and listening. It was amazing to see the spirit work in all of them. We do have this one investigator that is taking forever to get baptized. He has no real concern that stops him from moving forward - he is just scared and the lessons we have with him take 2 hours sometimes. Those are going to stop and I am going to call him out and get him there. If he doesn't want to go to church, we are going to drop him. This area is so ready it just needs missionaries that want to do it.
I love everyone and I hope you are all enjoying life and can see the blessings of the Lord in your life.
Love, Andrew