It's Time To Step It Up

      It's Christmas! And it actually feels a lot more like Christmas this year opposed to the last few, maybe it's because of the snow. Speaking of, there's a LOT of snow. I've made my verdict on snow and I've determined that I am not a fan, especially when it's snowing. Snow on the ground is alright, but when it's falling from the sky I really don't like it. One of the biggest reasons for that is that the sun doesn't come out. The sky is just gray and gloomy all day and I've noticed that by the end of those days I'm just rather annoyed and susceptible to a bad thought process. Luckily, what I've been taught has helped tremendously. For me to be able to recognize and identify the lies is a game changer and in addition to that I've found it's really helpful for me to take a 15-20 minute break at a church building and just play the piano. I'm not the greatest at the piano, but I've been learning the hymn Reverently and Meekly Now and it's been a lot of fun. 

      The area is doing fine, we have 3 people on date. The problem is I don't know if any of them are going to follow through with it. The most likely one to follow through is Pania. She's on date for December 31st, but is suddenly questioning if that's what she really wants to do or not. Which I mean I guess I get it, I did the same thing before my mission, even though I was prepared and committed I suddenly questioned if it was something I was actually going to do or not, but I worry that she doesn't have enough good influences to turn to. Right now there's really only one, her step father. Everyone else in her life would either not care or persuade her the other way. 

      Jeff is on date for December 24th and I'm almost positive we'll have to push it back at this point. At the moment Jeff is worried about putting a label on his faith. Even though he believes the Book of Mormon to be the word of God and President Nelson to be a true prophet of God, he doesn't want to put his faith into a church run by man as opposed to simply having faith in Jesus Christ. In theory its a pretty straightforward problem with a pretty simple answer, Modern Day Revelation along with Personal Revelation, but it seems like Jeff's baptism will look like this. Jeff one day says, "I'm ready," he gets baptized 2 days later. Basically, it's going to be fully on his timeline and unlike normal there isn't any nudging that needs to be done by us.

       Amirah is on date for January 21st. She's ready, she just needs to come to church more often. Her family isn't interested in coming back to church still, which makes things difficult. She wants to be baptized and she's ready, other than church, but she just needs that little nudging to actually do it, but the family isn't helping her out in that aspect. 

       Sarah is still progressing as well, even if it is slowly. Something really cool that happened is at our last lesson, she told us she got clear direction from God to stop drinking alcohol. She didn't even ask if she should or not, she was just directed to do so. She told us she wasn't sure why she was being told to do that and me and my companion didn't tell her, but we knew why. She also is going to be coming to church with us on Christmas and said she'd try reading the Book of Mormon this week. I doubt she'll actually do it, but hey she's now open to doing so which is great. 

       The last thing I'm going to be talking about is my own personal growth. I feel like I've gotten stagnant/ have taken a half step back. I've been kinda annoyed with my companion recently. Nothing big, I'm just letting little things bother me. At the same time, I don't feel like I can talk to him because his self esteem is so low. I remind him to grab his backpack and he just beats himself to a pulp and I don't really know what to do. So our communication as a companionship isn't the greatest and I'm too scared to tell him anything negative or give constructive criticism. Anyways I've been annoyed with him, but I also believe that annoyance doesn't go one way, so because I've been annoyed with him he's probably kinda annoyed with me as well. So I figured the best way to solve the problem was to improve myself. So that's what I've been trying to do, especially since I've felt that nudge recently from the spirit telling me it's time to kick up my obedience and focus to another level. The tipping point for me though was with a thought that I had. During this past week, I just wanted something to change. It hasn't been bad, but it felt like a change with either my area or companion would be nice. While thinking about how I would've liked a change I had the thought, you only want something to change because it's easier than changing yourself. That thought hit me hard, "the guilty take the truth to be hard." 1 Nephi 16:2. That thought was the thing that put me over the edge and finally got me to actually start taking some action to change. So we'll see how it goes, but I'm excited. I can really only see this going one way, up. Even if there's a couple of stumbles which tends to happen when you grow. 

                  Christ is the reason, Elder Blacker