Happy Birthday Dad! Woot Woot! Hope it is a wonderful one for you! You are the greatest Dad a missionary could have.
So we had interviews this week with the Mission President (it was our Zone's turn for interviews) and it was just wonderful. President is an awesome man. He teaches with the spirit, he counsels with the spirit, and he offers correction with the spirit. He is a boss and I am grateful to have him as my Mission President. He is a wise man. If I'm lucky, maybe before the end of my mission, I will obtain a fraction of skills.
Anyway, things have been a lot better this past week. Not because my situation has changed, but because I have changed my attitude about my situation. So you know how we always hear that the best thing you can do is SERVE others? Well, I can testify that is true. Not because serving automatically changes things, but because I have felt more peace through serving my companion.
I have a funnyish story.
One morning this week, while Elder Martinez was in the shower, I polished his shoes for him. I'm pretty sure he noticed though that his shoes had been polished because as he came out of the shower and back into the room to get ready, after seeing his shoes, there was an instant where he pretended to catch a horrible whiff of something in the air. And then he began to question if I knew what the smell was. Well, I chose to play the dumb card. I whiffed the air for a bit with him and then said, "Nope, I can't figure it out. Sorry." Elder Martinez continued to sniff the air until he decided to finally "realize" what the smell was. "Did you use shoe polish?" he asked. I replied, "Oh yea! I did use shoe polish in here! You can smell that?"
He then told me, something to the effect of, "Yep, I thought I recognized that smell. Next time you polish your shoes, you should do it outside."
So it might not be a terribly funny story to you guys, but it was to me. I enjoy knowing that I'm serving my companion even if he tries to make it seem like an inconvenience.
Well,
Love you my Family!
Elder Ostler
