I am like a star shining brightly

Me and Elder Jeppsen about to FEAST on Thanksgiving

Elder Larsen, Elder Bake, Elder Jeppsen and I.
These are the Elders I live with. Love them to death.

The district saying goodbye to Elder McDougal when he left for the Colombia MTC.
My companion is Elder Bake in the green shirt.

So this morning I found out I actually won't be leaving the MTC on the 9th anymore, but instead on the 16th which bummed me out for a while. But I haven't got my Visa yet anyways so they probably would have just temporarily reassigned me anyways so it's okay. Also today was unbelievably gorgeous in Provo so us and another district had a 2 hour game of kickball with Elder Jeppsen's huge exercise ball which made it pretty hard but it was still the funnest thing ever. Despite my 3 HR's my team lost 16-17 but we demanded a rematch for next week. So that basically got me over the tiny slump I got in after finding out I was being delayed. (again)

So much happened this week again with Thanksgiving and also Mission Conference so i'll try to fit as much as I can.

Tuesday-  Brother Michael John Teh came in and gave us a devotional about consecrating our minds (sort of a theme for me this week) which I loved. He talked about how the more we understand the Atonement the more we will want to spread the Gospel, which I've found to be very true for myself, and also related Ammon's mission to ours. After Ammon became healed through the atonement and converted to the Gospel he had a strong desire to take his testimony to the Lamanites. He gave up his the throne to his father's kingdom to serve a mission because he wanted so badly to share the happiness he found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He left it all behind, just like we have to leave a lot behind to serve missions. However almost right away on his mission, the things Ammon left behind had followed him. King Lamoni offers him to marry one of his daughters and be an heir to his kingdom. Now it probably would have been pretty easy to rationalize that he deserved it, or that it would help him preach the Gospel. But because Ammon's mind was consecrated to his mission and to  the Lord, he instead told the King that he wanted to be servant and went on to be everybody's favorite missionary in the Book of Mormon.  I liked this so much because it's true, many of the things we leave behind follow us on our missions and can be a distraction or an obstacle in keeping the promise we made to devote all our time talents and thoughts to our missions while we're here. The change to becoming a missionary doesn't come all at once. Some of it needs to take place before you leave but a lot of it takes tons of effort and relying on the Atonement everyday on the mission to get to the point where your mind is soley consecrated to your calling. So this week as I've thought about that, I've felt the weight of what seems impossible expectations to get to that point where I'm always only thinking about my investigators and my mission. But I've slowly come to realize that I  just have to improve a little bit each day and have enough faith in Christ that He can help me change! That's another thing we've focused on this week is the Atonement. It's more than just the chance to be cleansed of our sins, but the Atonement is what allows us to change and become more like Christ. It also has made me realize how much more I can use and rely on the Atonement to become a better missionary and a more Christlike person.

Thursday- Russel M Nelson spoke to us on Thanksgiving morning which was great but I don't have much time to get into it. It was a lot about who should be working with in the wards we'll serve in. Also we did a HUGE service project which was AWESOME. It was through a non LDS group called Feed Children Everywhere, basically we made over 350,000 bags of instant soup mix for starving kids which is easily and literally over 1,000,000 meals. I'm sure you can google it and read more about it if you want but it was so awesome to see what a force us missionaries are. There were only just over 1,000 or so missionaries here on that day and we turned the cafeteria from a Thanksgiving feast into a soup factory and back into a cafeteria in a few hours. I've never seen a work get done so fast or seen a group of people so eager to help. And then if you take that workforce and multiply it by 80  you can start to understand the force that is hastening the work (80,000 current missionaries). I also ate tonnnnns of turkey but truly and deeply missed showing up my Dad at the Turkeybowl. :(

Sunday- At mission conference the MTC Presidency talked a lot about Christ and Christmas and it really made me wish I could go back and be in the Woodridge Nativity again. That was such an amazing experience that I'm super thankful for but I'm realizing I took it for granted and probably most enjoyed feeding the goats carrots and cheese. It also made me more excited for Christmas than I've ever been! One thing that really stuck with me was Sister Trost talked about the Christmas Star that the Wise men and shepherds and everybody else saw. She talked about how God had to have very carefully placed that star into orbit in the beginning of time so that on the exact day Christ was born it could testify of the Messiah's birth to the whole world. What an important job that little (idk why I like to think of it as a little star but oh well) star had to do! But as I thought about it I thought about how I (and each of us) are like that little star. God has carefully placed us here on Earth at a specific time to do a specific job. And I'm just super excited to think that everything I've ever done has prepared me to go to Mexico and share my testimony and carry out the job my Heavenly Father has for me. And now that I'm writing this all out I just realized it's a primary song "I am like a star shining brightly." Whatever! I'm excited to be that star and shine and testify of Christ to Hermosillo!

Big S/O to my new baby cousin Kai! Congrats Natalie and Shane!

S/o to Chloe and Quinn (and everyone else who did) for writing me

Anti-Shout out to Carter!!!

Sadly I don't really have anymore time! There was actually tons of funny stuff that happened this week but I decided to finally figure out how to upload pictures and that took some time so if you want to hear about them then just write me...i'll be here for a whole two more weeks -____-

Love and miss you all

Elder Mitchell