Elder Austin's Journal Letters from November 18 - November 24, 2013

Hi Mom!

Monday, November 18, 2013

Ahh, P-Day at last.  It's a day where I can rest from all the stress of missionary work.  We emailed, got lunch, and just walked around Dublin City Centre.  We don't  have to do anything special, to me it's fun  hanging out with other missionaries.  They're starting to put up Christmas decorations in the city and it's beautiful!  I can't wait for Christmas.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Today wasn't too eventful.  It sucks when you don't have any investigators to teach.  I don't know why, but people were so mean today when we were tracking.  I did a good job not getting discouraged, but now I gotta work on using it as motivation.  I'm sorry I don't have much to write about.  I'm really trying my best to find people to teach.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Today wasn't too bad.  Again, it's just a lot of knocking on doors and talking to people on the street.  We did get a new investigator though!  His name is Sergei and he's from Maldova.  Maldova is right next to Russia and was part of the old Soviet Union.  He speaks Russian and his English isn't that good so that might be a problem.  We'll just have to teach simple and clear.  He has a beautiful chocolate lab and she loves me.  She reminded me of Maggie.  I miss my puppy!  So overall, today was  a good day!

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Today was a really good day!  We had something called Zone conference where we all gathered together as a zone and get instructed by our leaders and President Brown.  They spoke on a lot of good stuff like how we can help investigators in the conversion process.  I love conferences like this because I get to see a lot of missionaries that I don't get to see often, including Elder Benesch!  After it was over, we went on another exchange.  I was with Elder Frost from Copenhagen, Denmark.  It's kind of nice not having an American companion because it shows that the church is all over the world.  We tried visiting some potentials and did some simple tracking, but nothing too big came out of it.

Friday, November 22, 2013

We had Elder Frost for the first part of the day.  Our appointments fell through, but we met some good people on the street who seemed very interested in our Church.  We exchanged back and then headed out to the furthest part of our area.  Out there we had dinner with a member family who is from the Ukraine.  The mother and father moved to Ireland about 15 years ago and that is when they met the missionaries.  They now have two teenage daughters and one little boy, and they are all active in the Church.  Their family is a lot of fun and they made us some good food!  It was a good day.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

I guess when you have a couple of good days, a not so good one comes up.  All of our appointments fell through today.  It was kind of disappointing, but since that happened, I decided we should go visit some of our less active members.  One of them was James Lennon who I told you about before.  He needed us because he got drunk last night and had a bad night.  We helped him out and had a little lesson on repentance.  The next one was Grace Slater and she REALLY needed us.  Her daughter has a giant tumor on her back and she's going to get surgery soon.  We offered and she accepted a blessing.  Even though all our appointments fell through, we were needed elsewhere.  Experiences like that help you understand a little bit about how God works.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

In the mornings for my personal study, I've started to read "Jesus The Christ" by James E. Talmage.  It is an amazing book and I highly recommend it.  It's a long book and it might take my entire mission to read it, but it's great and I love it.  You should read it!  It covers ALL doctrine about Jesus Christ and why he's important to us.  I learn new things everyday from it.

Well Sundays are always great.  A lady in our ward spoke about how miracles and ministering of angels still happen today.  I love small wards like this because I really get to know everyone.  Later tonight, we headed to a young married couple's house in our ward.  They have a 3 year old girl and she is the cutest thing ever!  We had a good lesson and then headed for home.

Love You!   Elder Austin