Letter on 9-13!! AKA Allie's birthday. :)

Hey my family! I love you all a bunch. HEY, happy birthday Allie! You are the bomb diggity. Crazy sauce Aaaaaah! Hey.... what a punk. The guy next to me (not Elder Creer) in this library just swore. Anyway... about this week :)

Ok, actually, does anybody have some good advice on telling a nice old lady she is wrong? Lol, this Sister in our ward, Sister A, is probably in her 80's. On fast Sunday the ward members bring us canned goods and little food items. Last week we had three bags, it was awesome! Sister A gave us one of them, and it was in a sam's club bag (not a throw-away one). She told us to bring the bag back and so we were like, "Ok, we will for sure. Thanks so much for the food!" Well, yesterday at church we brought her bag back and were about to hand it to her when she started telling us that it wasn't her bag. OH, but it was! Hey lady. Look, this is the bag you gave us. This is your bag.... Ha ha we didn't say that to her, but she just couldn't accept that that was her bag. We don't ever get bags like that from anyone, and we saved it right in our kitchen all week long, but she just didn't believe us that it was her bag. She told us it was ok if we lost it, although she'd won it playing bingo or something so it was sort of special. Maybe the moral of the story is to be careful about which bags you accept from the elderly. I don't know :)

We had bums on our property this week. They were chilling behind the wall in the corner of our yard. We drove up as we were leaving and were like, "Hey! You know this is private property right? You need to leave. Please take your garbage too." One of them pulled a gun on us so we drove off way fast! We went to a member's house who told us to come get him if we have any trouble with anyone. We called him on the way and when we arrived he was ready. He gave us camo jackets and little hand guns and said, "Let's go brethren." We drove back to our place and parked a couple hundred yards away. As we were sneaking up to our property they started shooting at us! We were like Samuel the Lamanite and just kept running towards them, but the bullets kept missing us. Ok, if you haven't figured it out yet I'm joking. But the bums really were on our property, we told them to leave and take their garbage, and they did. End of story :)

This week we get to go to the temple! I am so excited. Take advantage of being able to go to the temple often! We only get to go 4 times a year. I'm so glad you got to go recently. There is so much to be learned in the temple; especially when we go in the right mindset and are prepared.

We were able to go on exchanges with our stake patriarch this week, Brother R. He is a spiritual giant, and an amazing person. He reminds me of our patriarch back home, Brother Phelps! One of those people that is always reverent, respectful, wise, and very close to the Spirit. I learned a lot from him about following the Spirit and how the Lord speaks to us.

I am coming to love the ward here more and more; there are so many neat people! Brother B sounds exactly like Albus Dumbledore. The R brothers are hilarious; B R has been back from his mission for 7 months. They always are joking with us and just crazy lol. They are the ones who are going to put a gator in our house. They keep things fun :)

Quick last awesome quotes before I go, some things I have been thinking on this past week... and these were from Joseph Smith - Prophet of the Restoration.

"The Lord calls us in our weakness but He qualifies us for His work." and "Sometimes the Lord brings us low before He can lift us higher."

I thought they were both really profound. Never feel like you can't do something, with the Lord's help we can! I have seen that through my whole mission so far. There is no way I could be where I am without the Lord, I need His help everyday and without Him I am nothing. This is His work, and how great it is! I love doing this, it makes me happy and fills me with joy. There is nothing quite as satisfying as missionary work :) The second quote helps me always remember to trust the Lord - especially through the hard times. Never turn your back on Him! He is our Father and wants to bless us, we just need to qualify for the blessings through obedience. Every commandment is to protect us and help us be happy! Remember that. Even the small things are extremely important :)

Well I love you all and thank you for your support and prayers! I need them. The Lord's work is going forward here in Leesburg; our ward is becoming more active and a lot of less-actives are returning! We are helping some others progress right now as well. Please pray for C to have the desire to "just do it" (Nike, yeah :) and quit smoking, for the B's to get married soon and continue to progress, and for me to be bold but not overbearing (Alma 38:12). The book is blue, the Church is true, and I love you!