Email: November, 19, 2012

Dear Family,

This week was pretty disappointing.  We didn't have a lot of lessons and we did a lot of finding to no avail.  We only had one person all week say that we could come back after Thanksgiving.  It was pretty hard but I have realized that we have to take the good with the bad in life because there is more often bad.  We aren't going to let it get us down but we are going to work through it and find some more until we find someone who is ready and prepared to hear the gospel.  We had a good 5 people commit to us that they were going to be at church on Sunday and they didn't show up.  That is the most frustrating feeling in the world.  To know that we did everything we could and we are only trying to do this to help them and they won't put in any effort to change themselves.  I want them to have this gospel so bad but I can't force them.  I better understand what heavenly father thinks and feels when we push against his plan and sin and don't allow the atonement to work in our lives.  Anyway enough rambling.

We have some good finding time and activities planned this week that we are going to find a whole bunch of people who are ready!  We are going to play some football on thursday morning with a few people from the ward.  It should be pretty fun, not as many people were interested as I though but there were still enough to get a game together.  We only have one dinner planned, we aren't going to eat so much that we can't move for a few days.  We are going to breakfast over at the Minks house and probably hang out there for a while, they are pretty awesome.  Then we going to have dinner with the Smith family which is just a couple, I am not sure if their kids are going to be there at all so it might just be the 4 of us. 

It has been really rainy here the last few days.  I never really used my umbrella last winter when it was raining but it has come to be my best friend.  It keeps me from being completely soaked at the end of the day.  When that happens things don't even have time to dry out by the next day when we need them.  There is so much moisture in the air here that everything stays a little damp all the time.  There is a sister missionary here in Albany who actually played on the golf team over at UVU and there is a course over in Lebanon that we play for free because we are "ministers" So a few of the companionships are planning to go and play some golf next Monday which should be fun.  

So I got everyone in the fam a little something for Christmas, nothing big or that cost a lot of money but I have been trying to collect sometimes somethings over time that I could give to you all so be watching for that sometime soon!  I love you all very much!  

Love,

Elder Erickson