Krupa leaves, Bednar shows up

Holaaaaaaaaaaaaa,

Well it's sad to say but the Trio has been broken up and gone down to two. Elder Krupa's ailments got the best of him last Wednesday and he got sent home to rest up (hopefully for only a few weeks) then if all goes well he'll get sent straight to his mission in Alabama. Miss that kid so much, such a positive, easy going guy, he literally could not get mad, we spend over a month together and he never even raised his voice. It's been super weird adjusting to having just two of us together, but Krupa's departure just has me more excited to finally hit the field.

In other pretty cool news, for the devotional on Sunday night we watched a past devotional given by Elder Bednar and then without any announcement the walked in, got to the pulpit and just say, "hey." It was so funny, just a casual hello from an apostle of the Lord no big deal at all. He then held a 60 minute open Q&A with all 2,400 missionaries here in the MTC. He's a pretty intense guy, but you can tell that he has the light of Christ glowing within him. He's also such a good teacher. He answered questions so sincerely, so earnestly and so humbly. Something funny he said was that, "it's a miracle that missionaries have any success. Think about it, our Church sends out 18,19,20 and 21 year olds out to teach about another teenager who restored our church, ohh and on top of all of that, most of the lessons taught are preached in a language that is not the missionaries language." He called it, "The greatest miracle in the history of mankind that missionaries have any success at all." However he then said, "But yet, more people are converting, joining and becoming members of our religion then every other Church in the world combined, we have the fullness of the truth and our investigators know it. You all know it."

He went on to say that our job is not to be perfect teachers, or master our language or be gospel doctrine juggernauts, our job is essentially to get out of the way and let the Spirit do the job because in the end the spirit is the way they come to know of the truth, not a bunch of confused teenagers. It was a super cool experience, so glad that I was here to here him speak, the spirit hit you like a brick wall as soon as he walked in the room, and didn't go away until I went to bed that night.

In other news this past week was the hardest yet. So many things happened that made it harder than normal, at times it felt like everything was just crumbling down all at once. I fasted on Sunday to ask for help from God to bless me with peace, ease and the ability to refocus on the work. While the past two days haven't been perfect I've definitely noticed a difference, and have come to gain a stronger testimony of fasting then I ever have before.

Even when the times get hard, it's easy, so, so, so, easy to see God's hand in my life here. There's a quote that a girl in my district told me that I love and have been thinking about the past 7 days, "Good timber does not grow with ease: The stronger wind, the stronger trees." I know that my mission is only just beginning, and the hard times have only just started to hit, but I've pledged two years of my life to serving this Church, the Gospel and my God. Now if that means that I'm going to experience the hardest 24 months of my life, with sorrow never known, or agony never felt, or exhaustion never before experienced, then I'm glad I get to experience it. To end I wanna share a scripture that I've turned to a lot in the past week and a scripture that my guess is I'll be turning to a lot more over the next 2 years. In Doctrine and Covenants Section 121:7-8 it says,

7 My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

8 And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.

Think about that over the next week, how you might be able to apply it to your life and let me know what ya think.

Hope everyone hasssss a good week,

Elder Merrill