Jan. 31, 2011

Dear family!

What a week! I really enjoyed the letter. Sounds like things back home are great! I'm praying that Joseph will be able to find that job. I didn't know he gave his up to Drew. It made me think of Christ when I read that. I love you Joseph! Wow is Emily tall! Thanks for the pics! She looks really grown up. I don't feel like I've changed at all looks wise, but all of my siblings just decided to age like 10 years! I can't wait to go home and play some b-ball with my little sis! The picture with Jeff and all the dates was crazy too! All of those kids are 16? Some I thought there's no way they were that old and then there's a couple young men who look like they're in their 20's. I guess they have to grow up too. Send me a copy of Olivia's picture when it is published in the friend. I'm excited for her. Send me a picture of Noah with his head shaved. I bet he looks like a little stud! Love you buddy!

So the weeks always go by fast but this one seemed pretty long. From Wed to Sat we were on exchanges with missionaries in our zone; everyday traveling to the next place to work with the missionaries for the day. It felt so good to sleep in my own bed Saturday night! Yesterday was great. Had a lot of success at the Ft. Committed quite a few people to be baptized. It's just amazing to be able to teach these soldiers that they have a purpose in life. A lot of them come to the army because they feel like they have nothing else. It's their way out. They come to church and then realize they have a father in heaven who knows them by name and truly loves them. It's just a great feeling to see them come in with a stressed out face and leave with a smile of hope. This is a great blessing to me!

What's next? Brother Bailey is HILARIOUS! Everything the man says makes us laugh. Like I said he's a drill sergeant and so he has a lot of good experiences to share at the end of everyday. He is progressing well. We found out his family won't be arriving to E-town until the end of February so for now it will just be him. I know he's not "our" family because we as a zone had a fast that all of us could find our family to bring into the gospel this transfer and we found him before our fast. I know there's someone else. A family who needs the gospel! We're still searching. We have a lot of time to work in our own area this week so we're pretty excited to find them. There are some other people we're working with right now but they're progressing at a normal rate. Nothing to major or exciting to share. The Lord is definately keeping us busy. This week we have zone conference on thursday and then our mission conference is on Saturday. Elder Bednar is going to be there. I'm pretty excited. Elder Fielding and I have really been working on making sure our missionaries have faith and are always in an attitude of gratitude. Pres Glende sent us an email today and asked us to study a couple talks before Elder Bednar comes. Both the talks are on faith. I'm not trying to brag so I don't know how to say this, but my whole mission it seems like every time I start to focus on a certain thing that I feel will really help the work around me, the mission starts to focus on the same thing right after. I don't know what that means, but I felt like it sort of went along with what you were saying to me in your last little email mom? Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm pretty dang excited for this week. I'm a little nervous about ZC. Elder Fielding and I have to role play in front of the whole zone how to teach the first lesson, from knocking on the door all the way to getting in and teaching the first lesson. I've taught this hundreds of times on the mish, but now I'm just scared that I haven't been teaching it right or that I need to do it better or idk. I guess I'm letting satan creep into my dome. Just pray for me thursday. It should be ok.

Yesterday I had an awesome experience. We traveled down to the mission home fireside yesterday. Bro Bailey came with us, and Kari Scully came and also another young woman we're teaching. Well we pulled up and as we were walking in, there sat in the front row Brother and Sister Shapiro! I was so excited to see them!!! I haven't seen them since I left Carrollton! Sister Shapiro came up to me and was so excited she was telling me all about her new calling and how she meets with church leaders at the stake center once a month and then Brother Shapiro was excited to tell me he had been made an Elder and received the Melchizedek priesthood! It just made me so happy to see them! They're doing great! I can't believe it has almost been a year since they were baptized! In April they can go through the temple! Can't wait!

Now onto the vision board. Mom, I wanted to ask you for some pointers on how I should do it. There's not a whole lot of room for pictures or anything. Do you just put words and phrases, or how do you do it. To be honest, I haven't really done anything with it yet. I felt like the baptismal records would be a great thing to do so I did that for starters. We look at them for two minutes every morning and every night. I did want to wait until E Fielding had his so we could do it together, but now that he has it I'm still a little unsure how to do it. I understand the concept, but need a little more help on the application I guess? Elder Fielding was able to talk to his dad this week on the phone. He always has to wait a couple months after Christmas because they have to approve phones and forward numbers and all of this stuff so he can talk to him. We have been waiting the past few days expecting it so when he finally called it was a good experience for him. I was grateful he was able to do that. We've been having a great time together. Things are going great. Trying to always do better. It's so easy to get discouraged. You have to keep the faith. It's hard, but in the end it's worth it.

Well we're here on base with 4 other missionaries that we cart around on preparation day because they're bike missionaries. We have the van so we just take them to get all that they need done. So, most of them have finished emailing and are waiting on me so I had better get going. Thanks for the uplifting emails. I really appreciate them. I feel your love and prayers in our work daily. Hope you all have a blessed week. I will talk to you all soon!

Love,
Elder Norton#2