Dear Family,
Hey what's up? You finally took
down the Christmas stuff? Sad day :( Well, it had to happen someday. I
guess it makes sense because it took you so long to put it up. Oh well,
we're all already looking towards this coming Christmas already, right?
Haha jk :)
I'm glad you enjoy my letters, Mom and Dad (and whoever
else dares to read them). I always feel like they're lame and the same
as the week previous, but I try to keep you informed. I'm sure I've said
this before, but I seem to always forget to tell you a story or
something every week. I walk out of the library with shame... Not
really, but still. I want my letters to be interesting. It's just that
it seems to be the same thing every week sometimes, ya know? The same
amount of rejection, and similar numbers. It's hard to not get caught
into the daily grind of things. Good thing I'm with Elder Jensen! We
have such a fun time :) This week we decided to build a fort in our room
when we got home for the night one day. I'll include a picture. It was
epic! And we totally slept in it. The Mitchells are really starting to
like us haha
But really I need to remember that there are little
miracles every day. I've been trying to focus on little tender mercies
here and there. I get the middle finger from so many passing cars every
day, that I sometimes forget. But I guess it's a tender mercy that Elder
Jensen and I are starting to be able to laugh it off. When people would
yell profanities out there car windows, it used to really affect my
spirit, but I guess I'm getting more and more desensitized to it. "They
must be having a bad day, Elder Jensen," I would say. "Yeah, I think
they really like us, Elder Atkin." Hee hee
Time for some good stuff. We got our 20 lessons again!!
Hooray!! I've tried to explain it well in the past, but I still don't
think you understand how awesome this really is. We flipping worked our
tails off this past week, and it paid off. Last night both Elder Jensen
and I slept soundly :) It shouldn't be that hard to get 20, but it is
when half our appointments are cancelling. People just don't want to see
us!!! Ugh... But we did it. And the ward helped us.
I'm really starting
to just loooooooooooooove the Elm Creek ward. There are so many cool
members! There were two days in a row that we had men go on splits with
us during the evening and the appointments would fall through. In other
words, they used their gas money to take us places and we didn't get to
teach anybody. But yet the first one (Bro. Christensen) took us out for
banana splits afterwards at Braums (best ice cream EVAR. And they dump -
I mean DUMP - chocolate and caramel on it), and the second one (Bro.
Wing) took us to Baja Jacks for some bomb-diggety burritos. Yes sir!
Within the last week we were also able to have some
really good lessons with some less actives again. I'm constantly being
taught that missionary work is much much more than finding new
investigators. I mentioned David last week. We met with him a couple
more times this week and we invited him to play basketball with us on
Saturday (the Elder's quorum has weekly basketball at the church. Great
fellowshipping opportunity). He absolutely stunk at basketball (haha no
offense), but he loved it. We met with him last night and he exclaimed
that he couldn't believe how good it felt to play BBall with a bunch of
priesthood brethren. He said it was like a breath of fresh air. He came
to church again yesterday, but he had to leave early because of his
whiny nephew. He told us that it was the first time he was ever
disappointed to leave church early. He felt a void. And he knew it. We
committed him to make it to the temple in the future. He's on his way.
Another less-active we visited was Eddie. Eddie is a
really tough guy that is amazing at martial arts. He works as a security
guard. We saw him on Saturday and I was supposed to bring a video to
watch. To be honest, it would've been an easy lesson. But to my dismay,
as we showed up I noticed that I had forgot it. We were soon to realize
that I was inspired because we had another one of those
smack-in-the-face spiritual lessons. Eddie opened up to us as we shared 2
Ne. 32:3 (talking about feasting upon the words of Christ) and got
really emotional. He knows that he needs to do better and come back to
church. We'll see him more in the future. I know for a fact that if I
had brought the video, we wouldn't have had that lesson. Tender mercies,
my friends, tender mercies.
Well, I gotta go. I love you so much! Thanks for always making me feel so good with your letters/emails! You're the best :)
Love, Elder Atkin
P.S.
Here's the picture of our fort like I told you. And the other
picture.... Even the ducks at the Elm Creek park's pond don't want to
listen to the gospel! Haha we go to the park every now and then to try
and contact people. It's all because this January has been so warm! It's
supposed to get near 70 today. Sis. Mitchell is taking us to the Tulsa
Zoo. I love preparation days :) The last picture is of a beautiful water
feature we found in Owasso. SOOO pretty!! You like?? :)
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| Fort |
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| Teaching the Ducks |
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| The water feature |
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