Week 81 - Feb 10, 2019 "FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS CARLITOS !"

Hey! First off happy birthday to my boy Chuck! LOVE YOU SO MUCH! Be careful man. No crashing cars. This week was quite the change going from Laredo to Hidalgo Zone but it's been a great first week! I was pretty used to my last area which is like suuuper compact and narrow streets etc. and here in Mission (my area now) it's a lot of houses that are spread out over a long distance. The cool thing though is that there are a lot of huge families here in this area. My companion is a beast  - his name is Elder Theel and he is from Washington. We get along good. At first this week we really weren't finding anyone who was interested at all.. By the end though we started to see some changes and I'm really hoping that we can have the chance to teach some of the people that we've met recently. We will see what happens and pray for the best! The mission is going good. It has been and still is a big learning experience... Something I have been thinking about is how high of a standard people hold Joseph Smith to. I was thinking about it and if I was in his position, I think I would've made a TON of mistakes.. I think a lot of people put him on a pedestal having expected him to be a perfectly celestial being, when really he was also just as us, an imperfect human. I read a quote from him that I thought was funny but that I really liked.

“I am like a huge, rough stone rolling down from a high mountain; and the only polishing I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else, striking with accelerated force, … all hell knocking off a corner here and a corner there. Thus I will become a smooth and polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty”

Life most definitely wrecks us sometimes but the only way to have it, is to have it. When we accept it and change we are refined.

Have a great week!

Elder Freedman