Time Zone Fuzziness:
Dear Josh,
I'm writing you from a comfy lounge chair in the airport at Amsterdam on our way to meet up with Grandpa and Grandma Bruce. Their mission officially ends on July 26, and we'll be there in Kaunas, Lithuania to hear their farewell speech. Is it okay for a daughter to be proud of her parents? Well, I am. I will be glad to share in their mission a little bit and experience new cultures. We'll see Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and a bit of Amsterdam on the way back because we have an 18-hour layover (I'm not complaining though).
I will also get to see my good friend Marija again. It's been a bucket list item of mine to go to Sweden to see her since I was 17. Pretty excited. Updates about the trip next week since we are barely getting started.
(Currently, the boys are roaming the airport playing Pokemon Go. As far as I understand it, it's an app like geocaching but instead of caches, you find Pokemon. You catch it and store it on your device. It's big and you've probably already heard of it.)
I had a fantastic experience on Friday climbing Mount Galwey in Waterton. It's 5 km straight up... really similar to the Petain Basin hike we did at Elk Lakes. Lots of scrambling through shale. We (Siobhan, Jamelyn and I) were almost to the summit after scrambling for over four hours. We rounded a bend and saw a window in the mountain. It was so breathtaking. We had to climb through it to find the trail on the other side, THEN we basically had to free climb, knowing if we slipped it was certain death. I learned if we looked too far ahead, it was really discouraging. If we looked back, it was scary, but if we looked directly in front of us and kept taking little steps, we eventually got to the summit. I think life is like that sometimes. We lose vision of we keep our heads too much in the future or the past, but if we can face what's directly in front of us, it doesn't seem so bad. And we can progress!
In other news, Bailey just got her mission call to London, England and reports November 9. She'll be a great missionary. Also, Dad and the boys got back from Trek. I'll let Dad tell you his experience there.
And life is going on. We love you. Keep moving. Keep trying. Is training getting any easier? How is the humility factor going? 😉 Any faith promoting stories to share? Are you getting better at listening to and responding to the spirit yet?
I have a nice comfortable hey lady feeling right now and I'm not sure if I'm making much sense. I'll say it again, we love you and remember pray for you every day.
Much love,
Mom
From Josh:
I love the change of names on your boarding passes.
That Pokemon Go app is a blessing and a curse for missionary work, the blessings, we can talk to much more people on the street just walking around, there is a pokemon gym in the church parking lot so we can invite people to come check out the church, the curse, not a lot of people want to talk because they are about to catch pikachu, and I want to play it so bad. :)
These past few transfers have been hard for me, because I have been really doubting my ability to work and to feel the spirit and be a good example to Elder Postelnicu, but recently I have had to change my attitude to one of doubt to one of faith and trust, humbly trusting that the Lord will do his work through me if I am just trying my best, with sharing the Gospel we don't have to worry about anything we do because we have the spirit, as a missionary I am lucky enough to do this 24/7 but you guys get to share this whenever it comes up, it is our duty to share what we know, we have been inviting members as much as we can to share their testimonies, and to bring the gospel up in any situation, it is as simple as "What did you do last week? I went to church" Are we doing enough as members of this Church to share what we know to be true? it is a question we have to ask ourselves along with "what can I do more?"
This last week we have met a lot of rude people and there is onething that I have heard multible times, "we pray for you" and I asked one guy, why, and he told us straight up that we were teaching a false doctrine, he gave his reasons and I asked him if he had read the Book of Mormon, he gave a response I am getting used to hearing "Bits and pieces" and we just invited him to read it, and he said he knew it was false becaue of what he had heard, and I got ticked and bluntly told him that he can't know if he didn't read it all the way through, and I just walked off. I should have just left it.
Life is well, training is hard but not too hard that i am being crushed under the stress but just enough stress that I can grow more and more. I love this work! and I am excited for the many more chances I will have to grow and hasten the work.
A couple things that sent the last day's shivers down my spine was a comment made by a member yesterday that the Last two prophets have made a push for temple work, setting up the smaller temples and getting more people easier access to them so that we can hasten the work of family history and helping those who have passed on to make those covanants, we truly live in the last days, so may we all hasten the work in every aspect that is available to us.
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