Dear home,
It's a good week. I'm in Turlock, as you know. The melon capital of the world, so I've been told by the Hemming family over dinner yesterday. Last Tuesday was epic, the Selma bois had one last hoorah as we drove down to Fresno that morning, we went thrift shopping and found some dope ties, traded them around, went to Chick-fil-A, and then to transfer hub. It was a sad goodbye but the work ain't over yet. My companion is Elder Shuldberg, reassigned from Paraguay, originally from Colorado. We're fourth cousins, cool! This week was a lot of fun, we had service for 3 mornings, including orchard work, prepping food, and painting! We had a couple lessons with progressing friends and recent converts, the work is moving much faster here in the north! On Thursday we met the zone leaders at Ike's Love and Sandwiches for my sake, and it felt good to be back. I got the 111 with banana peppers, as usual. It reminded me of the days w Elder Greene, some good times. We had dinner Saturday and Sunday with members of the ward, they're all very cool! They miss church a lot, but they're happy to have us over and we're happy to talk with them. Saturday morning we piled wood with the zone leaders and their branch president, then picked up metal rods from the orchard and moved them out, and they fed us chile verde pork tacos with chipotle salsa and jalapeños, it was a good lunch. Elder Shuldberg is really cool, he likes to be normal and do normal things. I might be a little louder than he's used to but we get along in spite of it. It's just us in our apartment, it stays nice and clean. We have a couple couches, it's awesome. We run most mornings, and during the day we try to get the other Elders in our complex to come out and play frisbee, they did a couple times. I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store for the people of Turlock. In my studies I've learned a lot about suffering, I've been reading in Mosiah in a couple places and between King Benjamin's sermon and King Limhi's rejoice at Ammon of the 16 strong men, I've come to the conclusion that life is suffering. This isn't groundbreaking, but it's helped me get my head on straight and tighten a couple screws as I've made choices to be more consecrated this week. Jesus taught us to pick up our cross, and just bear it. Sure, it's sucks, but if you don't pick it up it's going to hang around and you're not going to move. Christ will help us lift it. When we feel like dropping the whole thing and walking away, he'll push us a little farther down the road. Just enough to see the sun on the horizon again. It just started raining, this is maybe the first time I've seen the rain during this time of year out on the mission. God is definitely aware. I've thought about a phrase I found recently, it says, "God hath sent his holy prophets... that thereby whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might... rejoice with exceedingly great joy, even as though he had already come among them". Isn't that a beautiful thought? The prophets teach us how to be happy, as though Christ were already among us. People often talk of the happiness that will attend the second coming, and while it'll be a good time, there's no reason we can't be that happy even now. Life is suffering, but I'm happy.
See you next time,
Elder Gneiting
Post service lunch and castle house around the corner from our apartment.
