January 24th

My dear family it was wonderful to hear from you :) It souinds like every body got a nice break with the snow days and MLK day and i'm soo happy for JIMmy and Katie with UOP!! man that must be a huge relief. Next fast sunday you will make it into my prayers ;) (you always do). That sounsd awesoem to mom that you are going back to school. That will be such a cool thing to do i'm really happy for you! Everyone is still busy it seems with sports and school and work and even going out with the missionaries. I bet it's soo freezing for those poor guys over there haha it gets nasty over here with the rain but never that cold hah!

This week was another up and downer. Early in the week it was rough for some reason. I was just kind of getting on myself again for "not being good enough" but i seriously am just lame like that sometimes ha. Every week i feel like i get a little chastisement from HEavenly Father as to why i would even think that way for a second. But, we had a sweet Mission presidents training on wednesday. that was a total boost! We talked about the doctrine of christ and the importance of church attendnce, and receiving a testimony throuhg the book of mormon and by the holy ghost. It was really cool but what made it personal was when we talked about LOVE! There are a lot of things that we do that it is easy to do for selfish reasons. Say we have an investigator that isn't progressing and we have to "bench" them for a little while. In the past when we would have that conversation with them it was always kind of awkward and even done selfishly. it was just a cool lesson on how we need more love in everything we do. It also requires losing lots of pride. I always thought of myself as a more loving sensitive kinda dude but at the same time Love is totally what i've been lacking. I was still so concerned at putting up numbers to show people that we are capable. I wanted more lessons taught and nothing was ever "good enough" for me. It even affected my faith a little bit and during the week i would just not take the time to talk to everyone cause i would get kind of scared or something and honestly i was just being a wuss! man it gets me frustrated thinking back but really, if i really love these people, i wouldn't be so selfish as to think that i am too scared to share the gospel with them or too embarrased. I realized that there was so much that i was just being selfish with. If we think about how important it is that everyone hears the gospel, then there is never a reason or excuse good enough not to knock a door, not to talk to somebody, not to invite somebody to take action. Man it was just soo what i needed to hear and esecially coming from president it's easier to focus in on every word that comes out of his mouth.

So these past few days have been better but also with ups and downs. With the whole love in mind i've been trying to get closer with elder gomez too and we get along and stuff but there are also little things here and there that frustrate me as with everyone :) So i'm trying to be more patient and just not let things bother me or even just talk about it which i've gotten a LITTLE bit better at ha. As with everyone that knows me i hate confrontation and it's so hard for me sometimes to just tell someone when something is bothering me. I tend to beat around the bush or just make references to it. And then the other times when i try and tell them exactly whats up, i have a tendency to be too bold or harsh and i just look like a punk hahah, so i'm still trying to find the happy medium. But yeah the last few days have been good. We talked with Roxanna this week and something has definitly been bothering her so she finally let us in on what was going on. Things were super weird with her for a while but now are better. She is still kind of flaky but does keep commitments so we are still trying to figure out what we want to do with her.
But here is a cool story with kind of a bummer ending but thats still okay cause we still have the highest hopes.

Miguel and Maria had a baptismal date for yesteday and we hadn't seen miguel all last week but we did see maria. He had a crazy work schedule and we just weren't able to see him. Finally on saturday we call them and ask when they will be around and they are like" oh we will be in and out all day so i don't really know, we will call you". So now i'm wondering if they are trying to avoid us a little bit, i don't know. But anyway, we go up to independence to visit some other peeps, and we are like okay we need to just go stop by, they are supposed to be baptized tomorrow!! So we go over and before we get out of the car we say a prayer. Elder gomez prays and asks that they will be there so we can see them. And we get out of the car and walk into their complex and right when we step foot in, we see their red car pulling in as well and are like what the awesome?!! Boom answered prayer h aha so no we are like, okay there is definitly a reason that we are here. So we go in with them and are talking for a while and kind of update miguel on what he had missed that we taught maria. He is down with it all, he loves the commandments and stuff and was just totally down and then wefinally brought up their baptismal date again and were like okay, it's tomorrow but you guys are so ready! They were kind of hesitant so after talking for a while we were just like okay, Miguel we are not going to convince you guys, can we kneel down right now and pray and ask if tomorrow is the day? He says okay then...

So we all kneel and he says the prayer for us. As he was praying it was soo cool i literally felt this little "swoop" up my spine and i just said in my mind okay, he is ready. And when he said amen, we all just stayed kneeling for like a minute in silence and just let the spirit whisper the answer to them. When we got up, he has tears in his eyes and we all just kind of looked around and smiled at each other and said okay, how do you feel? It was sooo awesome he literally had just got his ansewr right in front of us!! He told us he felt good and was ready, he knows this is the right thing. BUTTTT maria during the prayer was trying to get the kids to kneel down and keep them from making noise so she unfortunatly didn't have the same experience. When we asked them for the last time if they were ready tomorrow he looked at his wife and says i need to talk with her first. They said they would let us know in the morning haha that would be a craazy day if we had to set up a baptism on the same day we find out about it. But man it was such a cool experience with them and honestly, they weren't baptized yesterday but still the experience was amazing. Knowing that as missionaries, as representatives of Jesus Christ, we can literally promise that someone will get an answer their prayers if they sincerely ask. I mean i know it's a promise from the scriptures but just to have done it right there right as we were talking, it was just awesome.

So they didn't even come to church which is even worse but two of their little boys got fevers over night and so it was just a night of bad luck but thats okay. This coming weekend i think it will happen. Church was good too. We had what's called an invitational sunday where all the classes and talks are all meant to explain generally what our beliefs are and stuff. We had 6 nonmembers there in the english ward which was awesome! But we didn't get anyone for the spanish branch ugh it seems like whenever something good hapens, there is something that goes wrong too and i always dwell on the bad, it's a little thing i do that bugs me. It really was great though that we had so many people there and we were supposed to have 4 more, but they said they had to cancel when we got to their house to get them ready for church. bummer. But again, we had some great people there and our english work is picking up little too. It's soo hard to find the balance between the two.

So now, we are feeling good. Yesterday we did some tracting and for some reason after lunch i had this little burst of faith or something and i just was so pumped to talk with everyone!!! I realized AGAIn that i can't just go on in my own little world, that i need to step it up big time eespecially with my boy gomez and a district to lead, i want to be the example ya know? So it was actually really good and i know that just by talking to everyone, the lord will bless us with more people to teach. Right now we our teaching pool is kind of down and we are gonna do some major finding efforts this week. It will be a lot of funnn :D

Ahhh, so cool stuff this week, is that our sisters in our district are having another two baptisms!! they are tearing it up man. Also, on wednesday we get to go to the temple!! ahhh man i'm so excited and can't wait to just be there and feel the spirit there. I haven't done an actual session since the summer because last time we did baptisms for the dead so i'm excited to go through again. We are so blessed in this zone up here in the north to be able to go. There are only two zones in the mission that get to go to the temple and we are one of them.

Before i go, i wanted to ask you mom, were you sending me a package witha little sweater in it? Also, i don't want to be selfish and ask askask for things but a GPS would be super helpful. As a spanish missinoary they basically tell us that we will be in cars our whole mission so if there is anyway you could get one for cheap, that would be super sweet. Anyways, this week is gonna be awesome. I'm feeling on the up and up right now. I keep feeling like i am passing through tests of faith and honestly i don't think i handle them all the best but maybe that's why i keep getting them haha so i can finally get it right :) Seriously though i feellikenow especially, one second i can be doing so well and then the next i just get so frustrated and i just want to make the highs higher and the lows not so low, but i'm still trying to get there. I know it's all a process and i also know that i'm super impacient haha! It's not about me! that is one thing that i really am trying tolearn. I'm not out here for me. If i was then i would be doing it all wrong. Whenever i'm down or frustrated, it always seems to be about ME. So that is my quest at the moment. Lose the pride, its not about how good i'm doing compared to someone else, it's not about what i think i can do and can't do, it's not about being comfortable so that things are easier, it's about being uncomfortable, and sacrificing for the Lord so that others may come closer to the Savior. I just gotta remember that now.

I love you guys so much and seriously thank you guys so much for the emails and the love, you are amazing. I feel like i need the support and i totally get it from you guys and it's awesome. Thank you. I continue to keep you in my prayers and hope that you guys are having fun and being happy. I love you so much and i know that Heavenly Father answers prayers
Elder Edwards