Grandma Toes

 April 21, 2025

Well if there's anything about living in Idaho that has prepared me for the mission, it's definitely the mountains that I've hiked. We went and hiked up the tallest peak in the area and it was some serious light work, but it was really fun and was the first time I've been somewhere with more dirt than concrete in a while. The only thing that was difficult was the heat, so you can imagine how distraught I became when a grandma was coming down the mountain in two ski coats without even a glimmer of sweat on her face. Asians are built different I tell you. She also didn't have shoes on because they like to make life as difficult as possible. "It's good for your health" yeah, you know what else is good for your health? Not smoking three packs a day starting at 9 years old, I think I'll keep my shoes on and enjoy my healthy lunges, amen.  

I had my birthday this week, and it was the first first time in my life that I forgot it was my birthday until it was actually my birthday. I've gotten within one or two days in the past but I literally forgot until I started getting messages day of haha. Maybe I'm just to lost in the work of the Lord, or more likely I'm just lost.

The birthday was good though, it was a good day of missionary work and then my comp made me a dinner of 삼겹살 which was very good. He's pretty good at serving me and the other guys in the apartment, and I don't really enjoy cooking so it was pretty nice. 

Teaching this week was pretty awesome, we were able to get 5 people to chuch, which in my city basically doubles the amount of people there so that was fun. Our friend Artemis was able to get her smoking down to 1 cig last week, I'm super proud of her because I know that had to be super hard, especially since all of her friends are still smoking. We gave her a Japaneese Book of Mormon yesterday because that's her most comfortable language, hopefully she reads it! I've never seen someone put in the work to know if the Book of Mormon was true and not been told yes by the spirit. 

There a guy who owns a Burger truck called "Tony's Burgers," and you're not gonna believe it, but his name is Tony. He makes some absolutely banger burgers and he speaks fluent english because he's from California. I love talking to this guy because he's pretty funny, but he tries to get me to talk about politics every time. I'm very political, and my companion is majoring in political science so it's very difficult not to take the bait. Talking with this guy is a rabbit hole haha. Speaking of bait though, he's taking us fishing this week, which is absolutely fire. I'm trying to become a close friend with him because every time I see him he's eating a mighty fine breakfast of two monsters and a pack of ciggarettes. Death speed run lol. I'm no stranger to a white monster every once and a while but bro is orchestrating a competition between his lunges and heart to see who will last the longest. That is, if outside forces don't win first lol (he's on probation) He's got a parking spot that he pays for and they have poles in the ground with a lock on them to keep other people from using them but when he got home there was a chineese guy peeing on his lock. Basically he told the guy to get out and the chineese guy asked him if he wanted to fight (tony likes fighting). So anyways, probation. I'm not gonna say my opinion on the matter, because I'm a missionary, but I will say it rhymes with *crustified*. I told him it's dumb they put him on probation for that but then he laughed and said that wasn't his first offence for fighting lol. Guess it's hard to convince a judge it's not your fault when you have your own file cabinet at the police station.

Spiritual thought: 

Probably my favorite talk from conference was, "Your Repentance Doesn’t Burden Jesus Christ; It Brightens His Joy" by Sister Tamara W. Runia. 

 

Two of the lines that stood out to me: 

"If you wait until you’re clean enough or perfect enough to go to the Savior, you’ve missed the whole point"

"I testify that while God cares about our mistakes, He cares more about what happens after we make a mistake. Are we going to turn to Him again and again?"

Repentence seems like a bad or scary thing sometimes, but that's our own pride getting in the way. Jesus isn't dissapointed when we repent, he's dissapointed when we don't. In my life when I make a dumb decision I've always thought about it like this - The only thing you can do about a bad decision, is follow it up with good ones. That sounds kinda dumb but seriously, don't cry about spilled milk. As good as it sounds, time machines don't exist, what's happened has happened. So you can keep focusing on the past, or you can keep repenting and keep changing. You'll get there eventually. Repentence is unimaginable powerful, and amazingly mericful. And once you've fully repented, don't doubt that you are clean. Don't dwell on past mistakes that are repented of, it is insulting to the Savior's atonement to think that it hasn't "worked." It's worked, and He's proud. 

Studying the Atonement is in the top 3 best uses of your time; so if you haven't heard this talk, you should go listen to it.  

Love you all! Thanks for the birthday wishes! 

I don't have a scale so I can't keep you guys updated on my weight, but idk prolly like 304 lbs or something 

                                     Elder's Conference-April. I stole the Elder's crutch.