All that is not eternal is too short...

Hey all!

Yay! P-Day! The closest next to exchanges we get to vacation. Today we went to Costco and bought hot dogs. The weather is GORGEOUS! Summer is coming and I’m really enjoying this in-between hot and cold. It feels really nice.

I passed off a lesson today! I’m really happy about it. It’s really hard and stressful. We have about 100 vocal words per lesson and we have to teach the whole thing by ourselves. Today was my 2nd time doing lesson 2 with my trainer. I do it 3x total with her and 1x with the district leader. Today she said I did really good! Which I really needed to hear. I’ve been working like crazy on it.

Speaking of my companion, she’s been really sick the last couple of days. I took Max Putnam’s advice and have been serving her as much as possible, doing housework and pretty much anything I can think of. She mentioned today that when I get stressed I react with more stress. I know she’s right and that I need to be better about it—although I’ve been LOADS better recently since I’m 100% all the time stressed but still always happy!

Okay, time for a little self boasting time. It just made me feel so good and changed my day! Yesterday I did MCM (missionary coordination meeting) and said the prayer and both my zone leaders said how good it was and how, by the end of my mission, I’d be fluent because I spoke so much as a green. With LPP I’ve been struggling a lot with feeling inadequate with Korean and yesterday morning was especially hard. I was so nervous about MCM. Hearing that was so helpful.

President Ringwood said a lot of really good stuff during the mission tour. One thing he said that I loved was “Don’t just focus on the end goal—focus on how to get there.”

With Korean especially, progress is so slow and incremental. Tiny bit by tiny, tiny bit. Same with testimony. Every day the hard things make it easier to bear tomorrow and easier to appreciate the todays.

A funny thing happened on exchanges—we were riding the train to switch back. A woman approached us, which was weird because people NEVER approach us. We started talking, then she interrupted and started teaching us about her church. She was a missionary too. She REALLY didn’t like our Book of Mormon. Just a funny encounter.

12-week Mission Conference with Sister Christensen

I didn’t have time to say this before, but something pretty cool happened. The elders referred us to this woman. She’s a tall, scary police officer. We met her at the station. It turns out we’re going to teach the whole police station 30 minutes of English, 30 minutes of gospel. Really cool.

Thanks for your prayers, emails, and support! It’s so important to me and really sustains me. I can’t imagine doing it without you. Let me know the little details in your lives! I love hearing about choir & youth conference & Naval Academy. It makes me so happy. The big & small, I love to hear it all.

I’ll close with a quote: “All that is not eternal is too short, and all that is not infinite is too small.” (Stanford University Memorial) It helps me remember my priorities. I love the church!

Love,

12-week Mission Conference with Elder & Sister Kelly

Lauren