October 2, 2017

From Dad - Fall is here:

Hi Josh,

Hope your doing great this week. How are the people you are teaching doing? You mentioned some were close to baptism letter? Would love to hear some of those stories!

The leaves are turning here and it is beautiful out on the acreage. Fun to remember that a year ago we were just getting the basement walls poured and the house was almost ready to be put on. It's going to be fun for you to come home to a new house! We harvested our garden this week and even got a nice big pumpkin. It is pretty durable too, as I dropped it from our back step in the garage (6' up) and it didn't explode and with no visible damage!

As you are probably aware we are still looking into the BYU-Idaho possibilities. We will know more this week hopefully about whether it is at all possible. Not sure whether your mission president will feel inspired to let you come home to write the ACT or not, but we want to be sure it is worth it either way.

Really enjoyed General Conference this week-end and I'm sure you did too. Hard not to have President Monson there and sad to hear about Elder Hales, but not sad too. A life well lived and I loved Neil L Anderson's comment on him "Graduating" to the next life. We enjoyed having Auntie Liz join us for part of Conference as Lindey was up at a Choir retreat in Red Deer. The Rectors came over for the afternoon session. Enjoyed a good visit with them.

Ben played a fun piece "All of Me" by John Schmidt in a Leduc Showcase concert. He really played to the crowd and made it fun. He reminded me of you in some of his choir performances as well. He's pretty good in front of a crowd.

We finally got Sam's official mission call and there's a little confusion about whether he goes to the Provo MTC or the South Africa MTC. We'll get that cleared up this week, hopefully. Very exciting time for our family and it's going to be an amazing and crazy December no matter how it all works out.

I've been feeling some promptings to make missionary work a bigger part of my life. Given that I'll probably have boys on missions for almost 6 years in a row, I'd better start getting on board, don't you think? Funny how when you really start willingly thinking of who you can share the gospel with, names come quickly and I hope I can take some small and simple steps to share this amazing gospel that brings so much peace of mind and joy. You are doing a great work in California. You are making a difference. Keep sprinting to the end.

Sam may have shared this with you, but after conference, he came and showed me this saying he'd written based on the revelation he'd felt from the spirit during conference. He wants to make it into a poster for his room as an affirmation.

"I will not let myself miss a single opportunity to serve others and become a better person by educating myself and learning new things." 

We sure love seeing our children progress. There is so much power in the example each of you set for the other members of the family by being faithful and doing faithful things.

Love Dad.

From Josh - Decisions and Hopes:

New transfer, new companion, new experiences, same area. 

At the start of this new transfer I am still district leader, I am training a new missionary, we are preparing to have 2 baptisms in our area, a lot of which I have experienced before but some of which is pretty new to me, I am grateful for everything I have learned and everything I am learning, I am definitely at a different place then I was a year and a half ago when I first trained I got pretty overwhelmed and I struggled for a long time after I trained to regain confidence in myself, but looking back it was a necessary trial, and I am grateful to God for leading me and sending me tender mercies all throughout my time as a missionary, I am so much more confident and sure of what I can do to train and be a district leader though I am still figuring things out, I still get nervous and scared about the future especially when giving trainings but there are a lot of people around me who are ready and willing to lift me up and help me as I move forward. 

I have recently been considering with the option to go home early or not, its something my president does not necessarily want me to do, and has encouraged me to pray and seek revelation on it, I don't know I really want to stay and serve the Lord to the end and I am afraid of what the outcome would be if I returned home early, but in general conference I learned that we should always act, but never should we act in fear. And there are definite benefits to coming home early, I can take a test for school and squeeze possibly getting a head start on my education, I would be able to see Sam for a little bit before he left on his mission. I went into General conference with the question on what I should do, hoping to discern an answer, what I got was mixed results that I should stay and that I should go. I will need to pray on it more and maybe fast... I am just grateful that God answers all our prayers that we send up in faith. And maybe he is leaving it up to me.

Just yesterday we had an opportunity to teach a less active family, and they are a pretty chill family and really open, we had a discussion on obedience to the commandments of God and how being obedient will always bring blessings, there were a few statements made that caused me to think. One was a comment made by one of them "What if I don't want to be obedient?" after some discussion and thought, Elder Brown (my new companion) said "then you don't want the blessings"

if you are half obedient then wouldn't it stand that you would only get half the blessings, if you are less active you will get less active blessings, whereas when you are active in the church you get active blessings, each commandment is meant for the benefit of man and for no other reason was it given, when we see it like that it gets easier to do it. When you want to get skinny then eating healthier gets that much more appealing, when you want to get a tan, baking in the sun seems less of a trial. When you see general conference as God literally speaking through his servants then it gets that much easier to watch all the sessions then to just watch the Sunday morning session and call it good.

Something that has been fun is meeting people that we have already talked to and being able to share something new, I have knocked this area entirely once already and will be doing it again before my time is done here, most people don't recognize me but you get those few, its fun to be in this scenario, and its fun to see how new Elder Brown is and how much I was like him when I first came out. 

I love you all so much, and I am grateful for all the love I receive. 

Josh