Hello there family!
I love you guys so much. Not sure if I say it enough. Thanks for the awesome email this week mom! I loved it!
I think I will be learning a whole lot in my time as an English missionary. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but what I think I have noticed is that the ward runs at a super high level of effectiveness (maybe to be more specific, I see how callings are meant to be fulfilled and magnified). It is amazing to me. I think I will probably think back on my time here in Claremont for the rest of my life as a model for how I can and should fulfill whatever calling the Lord entrusts me with once my time as a full time missionary comes to an end and I have to once again entered the normal non-full-time-missionary life.
I really don't know how to describe this fully. Everything is so so different. But most of what is so so different is different in a wonderful way. I'm not sure if this really makes any sense, but now instead of being one of "los misioneros", I am now "just a missionary". It's wonderful. But it's weird at the same time because it is so different from everything I am used to. I guess the best way to describe it is to say that in many instances, certain callings in Spanish work simply couldn't (or maybe wouldn't) function without the help of the missionaries. But rather in English work, from what I gather in only my week of experience, it doesn't seem like the missionaries are asked or needed to fulfill these roles of help. It's pretty sweet to see all the ward auxiliaries working seemingly perfectly. One of the weirdest parts is that at church yesterday I felt like I was simply attending. I think the only time I was needed to say anything was when I was asked to introduce myself. I guess what I mentioned to elder G yesterday sums it up, "so it seems to me like in this ward we only need to get our investigators to church and then they will take it the rest of the way! This is awesome!"
I think though that this (getting people to church) is going to be a bigger difficulty in English work. Obviously I don't have much time as an English missionary, but from what I have noticed the Latino people were far more naturally humble of heart and as such more easily led towards the Lord and His church. I thought I already learned this in all my experiences with the Latinos, but now I am learning it through missionary experiences with those of my own culture. We white people seem to be far more caught up in our materialistic pursuits than the Latino culture.
Well,
Love you all! You are the best family a missionary could ever have!
Elder Ostler
