"Heavenly Father, If I take care of Your work, will You take care of mine?"

My Dear Family and Friends,

In the subject line of this email I quoted a little prayer that I offered this fast Sunday. I was considering the mountainous task that awaits me upon my return home, of going to college, establishing a career, and getting married. As I pondered on these things and prayed for peace, I asked the question, "Heavenly Father, If I take care of Your work, will You take care of mine?" The answer came immediately and as clear as could be, "Yes!" So my testimony this week is that we need to lose ourselves in the service of God, and the other things will fall into place! I will serve with all I am for the remainder of my mission because I know my Heavenly Father will be there to help me with the rest!

For preparation day this Monday we got to go to Glacier national park! Only the lower parts of the park are open at this time, but it was still a blast. And we're actually going up again today too... haha.

That night we got to go to the Boyce's for cookie night! I absolutely love cookie night, it is truly the best thing. We had a great dinner, as always, and then we did family night with them. This lesson was particularly exciting because we showed the new first vision video that the church has put out and we talked about why it was so important. Lori is just a spiritual giant, and though she might not be totally ready right now, we are quite sure she will be some day:)

We got to have a lesson with our investigator named Noelle this week! Noelle is a wonderful woman and she has not had it easy in life, but she just keeps trying. She had a recent tragedy in her family so we gave her a little time and this last week we started meeting with her again! We just taught about the Book of Moromon and it's impact on each of us. Our goal is always to help investigators understand that reading the Book of Mormon literally CHANGES you. Now that is exciting. Noelle took the commitment to start reading every day!

Tuesday was institute with the YSA branch. We met a little early because Allie (Autumns fellowshipper) had bought us sandwiches at Great Harvest and Autumn had a few questions about priesthood blessings. We ended up bringing the most awkward human in the branch with us to that lesson and he just sat on his phone the whole time haha, but the lesson was awesome! They have also stopped teaching institute lessons at institute and are now teaching out of Gospel Principles for Autumn! I love this little branch, they are literally dropping everything to help our investigator out! I trust them quite a bit.

Wednesday was kinda crazy. We had a great district meeting because our District Leader Elder Emms is killing it and the spirit was so strong. After district meeting we all went to Hu Hot, hopping that someone would pay for us and ate way to much. No one payed for us, but the food was super good! Right after lunch we went and helped a referral of ours move into his new house. He's a really cool guy but he didn't have much of a desire to meet with us yet. Some day haha.

That night we had splits and we were able to contact a recent convert that we've been concerned about because her boss hasn't been letting her take Sunday's off! Just rude. But it turns out we don't have to be that concerned after all! She's been studying out of the scriptures and the gospel principles the whole time she hasn't been able to come, AND she's gonna quit:) God will take care of her for her faith.

The next day was weekly planning, which was a little rough, BUT, around 4:00 we went and got Sushi with Mike Roberts! I have never had sushi before, and it was GOOD. Which is not good because it's also very expensive. The best by far was the unagi (barbecue eel) but the salmon was pretty awesome too. And then we went to dinner with some members haha. Yay for two dinners!

We taught Amanda that same day, and it was AWESOME. Just so you all know how cool she is, we assigned her to read a chapter, and she has already read ALL OF FIRST NEPHI IN A WEEK!!! What??? We were shocked. Anyways, we taught the Plan of Salvation and she listened so well and participated a ton. How are we so lucky to get to teach this awesome woman??

We had a cool Cinco de Mayo dinner over at the Barney's house. The food was SO good. Elder Christensen and I were put in charge of filling the piñata and we kinda ended up breaking the poor donkeys neck... so we made it a neck brace out of tape. Needless to say, the piñata was kinda decapitated when it finally broke haha. There was also a husky/timber-wolf puppy and I was in love.

We provided some service on Saturday... which happened to be shoveling horse poop out of the back of a truck... and I was wearing shorts... and running shoes. It was a little gross. I definitely showered after that:)

On Saturday we had dinner with a YSA member, Grant. Grant is like our best friend and he took us to APPLEBEES!!! Like, what?? It was awesome. I got the bourbon street chicken and shrimp. It was amazing, go get it.

We had an awesome lesson with Autumn after dinner. It was the full restoration lesson and it just felt good to give her a solid testimony to start building her testimony on. The most essential part of all of his is definitely Autumns fellowshipper. Allie is so good for her. After every lesson they stay after and talk for a while. Allie is also a convert so it's easy for her to see where autumn is coming from.

After the lesson we had a game night which was the highest attended we have had for a while, and Autumn came and had a great time! I love seeing a ward or branch just adopt an investigator into the ward or branch family! This is the stuff of eternity. I'm getting little glimpses of Christlike love every day, and I love it.

I love you all!

Love,
Elder Thomas