Lord of the Rings, disease, and toilets!

This is a little long so if you cant read all of it right now just read the Word of Wisdom of the Day at the bottom.

First of all, I have learned a wonderful lesson that I will probably continue to learn the rest of my life. So there's this Elder in my District that from the beginning bugged me to much! He just always had to voice his opinion and be right. I have had many choice words with him several times. Well, the other day I was rather rude to him because of something he was doing....no I was rude, I had a spirit of contention in me and I didn't like it. After what I had said to him I looked at my companion and said, "I need to apologize don't I". She had enough courage and love for me to say, "Yeah you do". She later told me that I wasn't myself when I said that. She said she had never seen me like that before. In that moment I didn't want to be that person, I wanted to change. I had also realized that my Spanish was not good at all, especially on the days where I had hard feelings toward this Elder. After dinner I told him how sorry I was for being rude and asked for his forgiveness. He said, "Of course I'll forgive you....I've been a little rude too as well, will you forgive me"? and my response was yes I would. That night while we were teaching an investigator my Spanish was amazing!! AND!! There was peace in my heart. The peace that I had been praying for but was too proud to do anything about it finally filled my heart!

On Tuesdays is our service day where we clean a part of our building and 2 out of the 3 weeks we've cleaned toilets because I've said, "YEAH! we can do toilets!" So a few minutes before service we're in our room getting ready and Hermana Bushman says,"I love you Hermana Partridge but if I hear you say the word toilet...I will cut you"  It was one of the funnest things I had ever heard BUT! My companion and I were 30 seconds behind Hermana Bushman and Hermana Browning in getting to the service station and I walk around the corner and I hear Hermana Bushman say, "We can do toilets" I seriously lost it and I think broke a rib because of how hard I was laughing! 

So the back of my head has been itching like crazy and my companion could hear my itching from the other side of the room so we finally went to the doctor and I tell him what's wrong and he takes a look at the back of my head, then at my elbows, then of my knees. He then looks at me very seriously and says, "I'm afraid you don't have a fungus like you think you do, you actually have an auto immune disease.....................called psoriasis" I said, "oh okay that's not that bad, it's just really bad dry skin". He then went onto to tell me that there is no cure for it and the doctor was freaking out more than I was at this point. I just shrugged my shoulder said ok and he prescribed ointment to help. So now I guess I have an auto immune disease, go figure!

Last night we taught our last lesson with Marco, he cried, I cried, my companion balled her eye's out. He is seriously one of the sweetest souls I have ever met!

Our first devotional here we had Lloyd Newell from Music and The Spoken Word come talk to us and he even said the phrases that he says for general conference! There's also this video they have here called, "Characters of Christ" by Elder Bednar and in it he says that people (missionaries) say stuff like, "I'm not having success and I'm not having baptism and....." He then asked How many I's are in that? A lot!  And he then continues to say, GET OVER YOURSELF! I loved that part! Seriously it's not about us it's about our investigators. 

One of the best Devotionals that I loved here was by Stephen B Allen the Managing Director of the MTC. He showed all the Homefront commercials from the old days and talked about each one. For family home evening or just for fun look these up on Youtube. 

-The Practice

-Braces and Glasses

-The Wall

-Kidnapped

-Playball

-Cupcake girls

-Kids

-Isn't it about time

-Portraits 

-Aly Shnider

and listen to the tag lines!

Words of Wisdom for the day:

Frodo: I cant do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr.Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And somethings you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. those were the stories that stayed with you. that meant something, even if you were too small to know why. but I think, Mr.Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going, because they were holding onto something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's good in this world, Mr.Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.

I love this quote from Lord of the Rings because that's what we're doing here. We're fighting for the good that's in the world, we're fighting for the gospel, we're fighting for what we believe in, we're fighting for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who fought for us all and now we can all fight for him and what he did for us! 

Hermana Partridge