This week I think we celebrated July 4th early by doing/eating a bunch of American stuff. We went to Walmart where I bought a Perry the Platypus shirt (in the little kids section, haha), peanut butter, and Snickers. I also just ate at McDonalds. It was sooo packed and there were two stories and everyone there was dressed nice because it´s actually really expensize and man, it brought back a lot of memories haha. All of those things made me week wonderful. I think I had a peanut butter and honey sandwich every night this week, oh, and all 6 of the Snickers I bought were gone in like 4 days haha. But, my favorite buy was for sure the Perry the Platypus t-shirt. I think he is the epitome of something I´ve been studying and thinking about this week, which is determination. I think in Preach My Gospel it would fall under the "diligence" category but to me it´s practically the same thing. I´ve realized a lot of times in life I gage my progress by who´s around me, but what I really need to do is gage myself on what I think I can be. For example, with Spanish, I can communicate and understand pretty much everything, and am at about the same level as the people around me (who all have more time) so for a while I layed off studying so hard. But Preach My Gospel mentions in the language section about how you shouldn´t stop learning when you get to the point where people can understand you. I think sometimes we do the same thing in life because once we fit in or are average or feel comfortable we´re okay just putting ourselves in neutral and coasting because it´s easier. It happens to us spiritually all the time, we go through the motions and go to church or do whatever but we don´t work hard to apply ourselves and always have our eyes on higher ground. Or maybe it´s just me that does that haha. There´s a way cool quote in Preach My Gospel that says something along the lines of, "if we don´t learn how to set goals and master the steps to achieve them, I´m sure we´ll reach a ripe old age and look back on life to realize we´ve only become a portion of our potential." Haha, holy cow right? I love that quote. But I´ve also learned that just putting goals isn´t enough (I´m really good at that part) but we need to constantly measure our progress and adjust our techniques with the kind of determination Perry the Platypus demonstrates to actually accomplish what we want in life. Anyways, those are my somewhat spiritual thoughts for the week.
This week has been a little hard because Elder Hunter and I are struggling to find people to progress. We thought we had two solid commitments for church on Sunday (which was Stake Conference) and arranged for members to pick them up and drive them and everything and in the end both of our commitments fell through. It´s really easy finding people to listen to a first discussion, but when we return they´re busy or sick or have to work etc. But we´re working hard and I guess that´s the most important part. Stake Conference was pretty cool by the way, there was at least one member of the 70 there (Elder Arnold) and then I think another from the Area 70 in charge of all the missionaries along with our mission President so we made sure our shoes were shined etc haha. They changed the Stake Presidency which is why everyone was the there, and then we listened to a broadcast from salt lake. It was cool because I understood like everything, and last time I listen to a broadcast (for General Conference) when I tried listening to it in Spanish I understood about nothing haha.
Also, I think I´ve failed to mention the fact that we have a Mandarin tree in our backyard. How cool is that? I mean how much time am I gonna have a Mandarin tree to live under during my life? So this week I´ve taken advantage of that and have tried to start out every day by going outside and picking one off the tree and eating it in my mouth. It has been fantastic. Sometimes we gotta enjoy the simple things in life, you know? Just like them snails.
Welp, I hope everyone has a fantastic week!
Love, Elder Lounsbury
P.S. mom, I really hope you got my video but if not, ¡Feliz cumpleaños! ¡Que le cumpla feliz!
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