 |
| 4th of July Dinner!! |
I guess I'll start off this email by telling everyone about the 4th of July! It was actually a way cool day! The P-day was pretty normal (which means it was kindof boring. There's not much that happens in this stake on p-days, because it's made up mostly of sisters who don't like to play sports. This means there's not much to do, but I've taken to bringing music and playing the piano!) but after the P-day, we went to one of our ward mission leaders houses for dinner. We had some of the most mindblowing BBQ I've ever had! I figured it was worthy of some Limpy pics, ;). Then after dinner, we went around and visited a few people, and before the end of the night, we found this big hill, and from the top of it you could see almost the whole valley! We weren't out late enough to see the big fireworks over the strip, but in a big spread out city like Vegas, you could see fireworks going off everywhere for miles!
On Tuesday, we had kindof a unique service project opportunity. There's a lady in our ward who is involved with a big project every year for children with cancer. Every year, there's a camp for cancer patients and their siblings to go to, just to get away from all of the chaos of having your world turned upside down. As a part of this camp, every camper is given a homemade quilt, and the member in our ward is in charge of making all 250 of those quilts each year! So we got to help her cut, sew, pin, and quilt for a few hours! It was a ton of fun!
We also had expanded MLC this last week. Normally MLC is only for zone leaders and sister training leaders, but once every couple of months, the district leaders all get to attend as well! That meant that I, along with about 40 or 50 other missionaries, got the chance to be trained by President Snow and other mission leadership! I don't know if I've mentioned this before in my letter, but President Snow is a genius. Before the mission, he owned SEVERAL businesses, and is one of the smartest people I know. That goes for planning, management, spirituality, and just about everything else! I'm really lucky to get the chance to learn from him on such a frequent basis! We talked about a lot of different things, including strategic planning, how to influence change, and how to make the mission sustainable. And we have zone conference this week, so I'll get the chance to learn even more!
I had a really cool moment in church on Sunday. Lately I've been letting myself get stressed out by a lot of things: the work not going as well as it should, whether or not I'm doing everything that I can, things that I need to improve on, etc. But in priesthood meeting on Sunday, the lesson was about the temple. Elder Leakehe and I will be going to the temple this week, so it was an especially cool lesson. Anyways, the teacher mentioned how in the temple we learn more about the plan that our Heavenly Father has for us, and about our place in it. He talked about how having this knowledge can lead to a lot of clarity. This clarity comes from having an eternal perspective and remembering which things are really important. His comment really struck me, and made me remember which things are really important in life, and it really helped me to not get wrapped up in the little details of day to day life. I'm so grateful for the eternal perspective that the gospel gives us!
I love you all very much, and am so grateful for everything that you have done for me!
Elder Excell
 |
| Our Apartment! |
Q&A - 7/11/2016
1.) I am getting a package ready to send to you this week. Any requests? --Nothing that I can think of.
2.) How was your Mission Leadership Conference meeting? We'd love to hear all about it either here or in your letter to us. --It was really great! I'll try to tell you a little bit about it in my email.
3.) Do you still get letters in the mail from friends and family occasionally? Any lately that you've been surprised to receive? --I still get some stuff occasionally. I get a package every once in a while from you, and some from Grandma Hyde. But the real shout-out goes to Grandma Excell! She's been amazing, and has written me every week without fail since I've been on my mission! Thanks Grandma! I haven't really gotten much other than from you guys and the odd letter from a few other people, but to be fair, I've been really awful about writing letters!
4.) What is your favorite part about your responsibilities as a district leader? --My favorite part actually hasn't really been as prevalent this transfer. My favorite part is the opportunity to go on exchanges with other missionaries. It's a great chance to work one on one with them and really get to know them and help them! But this transfer, the only other elders in my district are the zone leaders, so I don't go on as many exchanges as usual. They still exchange with us, but they have a lot of other people to exchange with as well, so we don't see them as often.
5.) Our weather has been quite a bit cooler, even some rain showers, this last week. Just wondering if you also had some relief from the heat? --It's been quite a bit cooler! The high's have all been below 105! In the evenings, it even gets as far down as the 90's!
6.) Dad gives me grief everytime I ask this question, but oh-well. Are you healthy and happy? --Definitely happy! Doing my best on the healthy part, haha. Trying to lose some weight right now, but who knows how that's going since we don't have a scale. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment