April 5, 2010

Chello!


Hi family! So my companion went home on Friday, pretty crazy! He'll be back in 6 months though, I hope and pray. He's a really good missionary. I learned a lot from him and I will miss him, haha. He's the man!  I'm proud of him for doing it, it took guts and he's happier now. The atonement is real!!! I look forward to hearing from him soon.

I've been working in a threesome (again) for the past few days. I'll be getting a new companion tomorrow, Elder Miller. He's really cool too! I met him at zone conference a few weeks ago. He only has like 3 transfers left, I think. So that will be good.

I'm so glad you got to enjoy General Conference. It was amazing! I loved it so much. They truely are men of God. Good stuff! :)

Here's a pretty awesome story: so the other day a recent convert, we've been working with, slipped up and then got all bummed out (there's a lot more to it but this will suffice). She told her husband about it, who is also a recent convert. Her husband spent some time with us this one day and ended up sharing his wife's struggles with us in confidence. We expressed to him our concern and asked if there was anything that we could do to help. He talked to his wife about our conversation and she got very defensive and offended that he had shared that with us. She felt as though we were all ganging up on her. That's all we knew at that point. So a day later I went on exchanges with the husband and while I was out with him we got into a deep
conversation about some of the things we have both struggled with in our past. I just got a random feeling that I should tell him some stuff. So we talked and that was it. Another day or two later was General Conference and the husband picked me up to give me a ride to church. His wife was with him in the car and she told me that she was previously planning on never coming to church again. (I guess some of the women from the ward had called her around the same time this was happening, just by coincidence, to see if she needed any help. They were trying to set her up with visiting teachers and she thought that everyone was sharing information about her and ganging up. Which was not the case at all!) So she shared with me that the only reason she had decided to come back to church was because her husband had told her about the conversation we had had and about how I had shared some of the things I had struggled with in my past.  It made her realize that even a young missionary, who they look at as perfect for some reason, haha, needs the atonement and needs to use it allllll the time. I thought it was pretty awesome that something that I had struggled with could help another person realize that the atonement is needed by everyone. It's little things, like feeling as though you should share something with someone that you can see, using hindsight, that the Lord is very real and uses us each as an instrument in his hand. And most of the time, we don't even know that we are being used as that instrument. You rarely know who's life you can touch. That's why it's so important to be worthy of the comforting guidance of the Holy Spirit. Without it we are helpless!

I love my Heavenly Father, I love the Lord, I love the Holy Spirit and I love you, my family, so so much!! Forgive me for ever being a struggle to raise or deal with. You've been right about everything you've ever told me, haha!! I now realize that kids DON"T know everything! :)

Anyway, things still are going well, slowly but surely. And thank you for the Easter basket Mommy!
You're the best! There's a lot of junk food in there. It will take me a long time to eat it, haha!

I miss you and love you. Hope all is well.


Elder Austin Gable Engemann


Ooops!

Wow, I totally forgot to tell you! Sorry my brain is always working too fast so it's hard to remember things!
I went to the Temple on Thursday!! It was soooo good. Really refreshing! I love the temple so much.
It's just like a spiritual brain blower, relaxing but energizing! The best!!

Anyway, yeah! haha Love you!


Elder Austin Gable Engemann