Expiration Dates

Hey everybody!

This last week has been really good! We have a couple of great baptisms coming up! The first one is Katrina. She is the girlfriend of a member of our ward, and is so prepared! She's been reading the Book of Mormon and is starting Mosiah! She even set her own baptismal date!  There's also a couple of kids in a part member family named Katie and Kyle, and they've been learning about the gospel. They're both a little crazy, but it's cool to see how they get more peaceful when they're at church and learning about the gospel.

Something happened that made me realize that my time as a missionary is coming close to an end.  At the beginning of my mission, I would look at the expiration dates on food, and I had a longer expiration date than just about everything. But over the course of my mission, there are starting to be more and more things that I expire before they do. It started with the canned food, then stuff like peanut butter, but now it's starting to be juice and tortillas that last longer than I do! Pretty soon it's going to be eggs and milk and bread that have a longer expiration than I do!

Elder Holmes and I have been cheffing it up!

I've also had a revelation of sorts this last week. I was listening to a talk that was given by a former mission president, and he talked about one time that Elder Bednar visited their mission, and for an entire hour, he did nothing but a question and answer portion about the atonement. He said that that was the most important thing that he wanted everyone to understand, and the more I've pondered on it, the more I've realized that I need to know more about the atonement. I definitely have a testimony of it, but if there was ever one doctrine that I would want to understand backwards and forwards, it would be the atonement! I'm anxious to spend my study time to learn as much about it as I can. I'm so grateful for the sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and want to understand it even more.

I love you all!
Elder Excell

Elder Holmes writing down our weekly plans

We gave the refugee kids some knock-off light sabers
we found.  They love them!

Some exclusive Thai  restaurant a member took us to. Apparently it's
one of the most famous ones west of the Mississippi!