May 28, 2009

Being a missionary...is...like nothing else in life. That's the best way to describe it. The Lord really supports His servants and helps them out when they're feeling down. The longer I've been out and the more my desire is to serve the Lord. I suppose more than anything else, the best way to describe those thoughts/feelings is to say that I feel like the Lord is slowly helping me turn toward serving him and "forgetting" the things of home. As I have desires to fully serve the Lord and am working on lining up my actions with those desires then the Lord will help me place those things of home in a place that won't distract me as much while serving Him. I really do want to serve the Lord with all of my heart, might, mind, and strength. I really do want to forget myself in His service...By serving the Lord will full intent of heart and giving myself fully in His service, it will strengthen me and help me to become the man the Lord would have me be. And that after this short time of service, I will be most ready and excited to investigate future possibilities!

I suppose one thing I'm learning is that we many times just don't see that the timing the Lord has planned is actually the best timing. He knows the process of events that need to occur in order for us to be the MOST happy that we can be in this life. And as we stay close to Him and follow the promptings of the Spirit to guide our lives, the best timings will occur and the most happiness will be able to be experienced by us. It's so cool! And the coolest thing is that even when we decide to not follow His counsel, He has a multitude of opportunities and chances in our paths to correct ourselves and still have as much happiness as possible from that time forward! It's SO COOL! And even when His timing brings us pain or sorrow or separation or what ever, all of those things are instruments or tools in helping us to have the most happiness and joy in this life and the next. We have to learn and many times learning is more difficult than we'd like. But once we do learn, we're able to apply that knowledge in our futures in order to have more happiness than we'd be able to have if we didn't have that knowledge. It's Sweet!

Alright, so, this email is starting to feel like quite the journal entry more than anything else. Hopefully everything I've written (or even some of it) has made sense or helped someone in the family in some way. I'll move on a little though.

The work. Well...it's about the same. Not much has changed. We're still working with the same people we have been, and one of our investigators has been forced a little to quit smoking or drinking coffee because she hasn't had the money to buy the stuff. It's been a bit difficult for her, but she's getting through it! Our biggest challenge, I think, is that of getting our investigators to keep their appointments. Now, the hard thing about that is most of the time the reasons they cancel are good reasons. Most of them are having relatively large trials in their lives that many times have interfered with our appointment times. But we've still be able to reschedule or stop by another time and catch them home. So all is good. We're going to be doing more tracting, as well as going after some potential investigators we found in the Area Book that no one had ever followed up on (or at least neglected to record). So, fun times! The ward is starting to get the idea of Elder Ballard's plan for the ward missions and that's exciting. Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll start seeing some results from that! Overall, the work is progressing. Probably not as fast as Elder Hunter and I would like, but it IS progressing. Yay!

Um...What else? Oh! Jill's banquet dress looked really cool! She looked beautiful (even if the picture wasn't good) and I thought she looked better than the other girls (she looked like a princess, the other girls looked like they just threw on a bath towel or something else that wasn't all that elegant). I'm so proud of that girl! She's such a smart and amazing woman. I'm not going to even probably recognize her when I get home.

Y'all should check out all the vidoes on www.mormon.org they're pretty cool. And the ones on LDS.org as well. Go watch the Mother's Day video they put together.

I love y'all. I really hope all is well. I hope dad gets to feeling better and I hope he tries to be more careful. Tell him I love him and that I really look up to him. I'm proud I'm his son and that he taught me how to work on things. I wouldn't let him teach me as much as he knows, but I'm glad he made the effort and really did teach me to be self-sufficent when it comes to working on things on cars or around the house. I love him! I love the example of being a righteous Priesthood-bearing father he set for me. And I'm so happy and grateful for my family. I'm so grateful for the way in which I was brought up and the things that were instilled in me at an early age. I love you guys! I love y'all!

Your Son and Brother,
-Elder Michael Starks