The Piano Man

Dear Mom-
I must admit a tinge of pain as you told me about R's mission call and all the people I remember graduating and moving on in life.  It is easy as a missionary to think that while you are here everyone's life just goes on hold.  Of course that is not the case.  All of us move forward in whatever direction we've chosen.

The news as of now is not very exciting, but Elder Aduchatis (spelling) from the first quorum of the seventy is coming tomorrow.  There is a sisters choir that needed a piano accompaniment, so I volunteered to learn it on the fly.  I've practiced about an hour and a half the last two days.  I can play the whole song, just not to tempo quite yet.   I don't know why no one else volunteered, but they really needed someone, so I said I would do it.

Beyond that this week hasn't had very much happen.  We are really enjoying working with the ward.  A member of the ward is really good at drawing comics, so we gave him an assignment.  We asked him to make a little cartoon depicting how members have an emergency plan, but they don't have a family mission plan.

Last night we met a really cool young family from Gilbert.  The dad is working on returning to the Church, and a really cool guy.  He has four children from his first wife, and we got to visit them last night.  I was deeply impressed, by how much they loved the Gospel.  We encouraged them to press forward and keep working on a mission and school.  I really think we were more edified by the visit than they were.  The one I remember the most was the 12 year old.  He is the youngest of four and the rest are sisters (sounds familiar).  As we met you could tell how much the sisters affected his actions.  It made me appreciate even more how much I love my sisters, and how much they have taught me.  It was interesting as the girls complained about guys not asking them to dance, I thought to myself.  "I would always ask girls to dance".  Then I realized that the main reason I did was from what my sisters taught me.  One of those really cool moments.

I don't know if you've realized, but most of the pictures on the youth website of a temple are of the Rexburg temple.  I'm happy to say I spent a lot of time in that House of the Lord.

I've been learning a lot as I've had some counseling.  As I've thought about how lonely I've felt these past few weeks it's been amazing to look back and realize that I've never had more support.  I believe that the number one reason people are led to do bad things, or walk away from the gospel is that they don't feel loved.   My counselor has taught me a lot and one of the things he talked about is emotional reasoning.  It is when your own emotions of perceived failures cause you to think that you aren't loved, by those around you.  It is no surprise that second only to loving God we are to love our neighbor as ourself.  The greatest weapon that keeps us from being good is when we don't feel loved, or don't love ourselves.  That has been a great lesson to me, and has helped me see more clearly my duty to spread the Gospel.

I'm so grateful to be a part of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Well we're late for a Zone activity.  Talk to everyone later

Love,
Elder Davidson