Every wave of adversity whacks me closer to divinity

Well after I got off skype with you we had to leave the Bishop's house which is fine since they needed time to be with their whole family. We had nothing else to do since it's pretty hard to schedule things on Christmas day and it didn't feel right to just barge in on people so we wrote thank you notes/Christmas cards to people in the ward. When dinner time came around we had nowhere to go either and we really didn't feel like making dinner but we knew that there had to be a chinese restaurant or two open so we headed off to find one. Lo and behold tucked in the corner of a shopping center we found a seafood Chinese buffet! Boy was that an experience. To say that it was good would be a very generous praise. it certainly will be a memory that I will not soon forget. It was great however to see and talk to you all. 

During our cooldown time at night I've found something that is a wonderful stress reliever and I encourage anyone who finds a need to relieve stress to try what I have recently started doing. That is Crocheting! Yes indeed one of the sisters taught me how to do it and it has become very relaxing. I have already made a tie and I am working on a second one. 

We have been working to bring our two recent converts to the temple to do baptisms for their own names but things were just not working out. Everyone else in our district were going and we were pretty bummed that we weren't going to be there. At church that Sunday there was this new girl and she looked to be early 20's but I didn't really get a chance to talk to her. Anyway Bishop walks up to me and tells me that she's a former investigator and she's ready to be baptized so we got pretty pumped when we heard that but she looked way too comfortable at church to be a former investigator. With a little more investigating on our part we figured out that she was taught in Pittsfield, baptized in Boston and now she's back in Pittsfield. So we brought her with us to the temple which was a wonderful experience as always!

Yesterday I was thinking about member missionary work and how we can apply principles to full time missionary work and I figured the best way to do that would be to read the book the Power of Everyday Missionaries so I did and it is such a wonderful book. My favorite part is that the author is actually in the mission presidency here and many of the places mentioned in the book I have been to! It's really an amazing book that is very well written and if you haven't read it you should.

Well have a wonderful week and remember who you are as a child of God and that as Joseph Smith put it "every wave of adversity whacks me closer to divinity" I'm sorry to hear that Jaron had to come home & needs to have more surgery but he is strong & he will rely on the Lord to help him through this. I'll be praying for him, you can count on that!

Love you all,

Elder Trevon Turley