I Am Grateful For Where I Am

Hello my friends!!! 

Oh my gosh we are going to see each other in less than a week. So we got changes!!! Elder Miles has not left yet. He will be leaving on Friday, but I will be going to my new area tomorrow! Yeah my new area!!! Okay I'll explain... I am going to a different ward here in Durazno with Elder Martinez the Elder from Colombia that was living with me. We are going to be the zone leaders here. I'm super excited!!! We get along really great and because we were living together we already know each other really well. It was super fun telling him the transfers while being with him. I took a video, but I don't think that I can send it. You'll just have to wait 6 weeks. But yes, Elder Miles and I talked to the assistants about putting sisters in one of the areas here in Durazno, because all of the sisters in our zone live outside the city in smaller cities. Well when we have conferences or transfers they have to stay with members over night because we are all Elders here. So we explained the situation and they said that they would think about it. So in the ward I am in now they are going to put sister leader trainers, and they will be living in the house that I am in now. I am going to move houses, but I will still be here in Durazno. Seriously all of the changes in the zone are great! I'm very excited for my last change. Elder Martinez was already in this area so we won't have to do a white wash. 

About skype, I think that we are going to do it at 6:30 here... which would be 3:30 there. I hope that we can figure it out, but if anything happens I'll try to contact you. 

Wow Spencer and John got their mission calls!!! That is so crazy for me. They seem so small to me. But I'm super excited for both of them. You guys are going to be amazing missionaries.

Thank you mom for setting everything up, I love you!!! and I can't wait to wish you a happy Mother's Day and wish Mags a happy B day. It's crazy that I'm skyping on Mags B day and I'll get home on Kenna's B day. You´re very welcome, for me making your birthdays so special. But they will be very special days for me too.

This week has been great! KAREN GOT BAPTISED!!! She is really amazing. It's going to be great for her to have sisters here in this area. In her baptism she gave such a great testimony. I didn't think she would get up and share her testimony because she is kind of shy, but she got up and shared a lot about how she has felt over the past month or so. President said that he felt good about her being baptiz ed. He said that he asked her multiple times if she was really willing to endure to the end, and she obviously responded yes. Her mom and aunt and some cousins went to the baptism, and it seemed that they enjoyed the service very much. Hopefully the sisters can get to work on helping her family.

YESSSS!!! I just looked on the mission newsletter which shows all the baptisms from the last week, and in Rio Branco it says Marcela and her son Nicolas. I wish I could have been there. But I'm so happy for her. 

We also had concilio last week. It was really great. Oh and we did divisions with the assistants. It was a pretty busy week. But in concilio we talked a lot about the work with members. We trying to change the mission so that we work more with members. The culture of the mission has definitely not been that of working with the members. But we are making plans to be able to do just that. 

We gave a zone conference yesterday to explain all the plans and goals that we made in concilio with the rest of the zone. It went really great. Elder Miles and I were talking a lot the other day about how much the mission has helped us have more confidence in public speaking or teaching in general. The mission has definitely blessed me in so many different ways. I was reading just this morning a talk from a year ago by Pres Uchtdorf. He was speaking about being grateful in every circumstance. As I read I felt the truthfulness of what he was saying. When I am grateful for where I am and the trials that I have, I am a lot happier and I simply enjoy everything more. 

It's hard to explain how happy I am. I'm not very good at expressing myself, but I hope you guys can see how much the mission has helped me. 

See you on the flip flop later!!!

Have a great week!

Elder England