January 11th, 2016

Well another week has come and gone. It seems like as I have been on this downhill part of my mission the Lord has continued to show to me that I don't know everything quite yet and there is still a long ways to go. This last week I came to realize how important it is to never sit back and feel comfortable. Just because you have less time left in the mission then that doesn't mean that it is time to sit back and relax. It doesn't mean that you go through the motions just because you know exactly how a mission is and what you need to do, in fact it is time to really look at how much God has blessed you in your mission so far and work even harder so that you are continually blessed by him. 

I'm not sure why that thought came to me the other day but I haven't really been able to think about anything else. I was thinking about the Savior the other day and how when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane as well as upon the cross he didn't give in nor give up. Instead he went through and completed his work. He came into the world to do the will of the father and was indeed exactly obedient. It makes me think about how we as missionaries need to be exactly obedient all the way to the end and truly do the will of the father if we want to continually see miracles and his blessing in our lives. It isn't enough to say that we have done enough just because we have had so much success or just because we have already seen so many blessing in our lives. The gospel doesn't work like that. That is why it is called Enduring to the END. 

This week for me was actually pretty good. We had a lot of success in teaching less actives. We weren't able to find a whole lot of new investigators to teach this week but we were able to see some progression in a few less active families. We also ended up doing a training for our ward council which was very edifying. We were happy to see a change in our ward council after that training so we decided that it was successful. Other than that the week has been pretty normal. 

Well, I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Thorpe