Well, it was awesome to hear from all of you today. Your words always inspire me and remind me of the love that you have for me, that I have for all of you, and that our Heavenly Father and our Savior have for each and every one of us. This week has been pretty awesome and we can't believe that another transfer is about to come to a close. Elder Swainston has been here for 6 months so we are predicting that he will probably be heading out. It has been great to be able to learn from him and he has truly taught me a lot. His testimony and experiences with the gospel are incredible and the Spirit can be felt every time he bears his testimony. We have witnessed a lot of awesome miracles together and we are excited to continue serving the Lord. We had several opportunities to serve this week. We went over to the Johnson's (They are investigators whose daughter married a member of the branch and joined the church and whom we referred earlier to as Santa Claus) and helped them with some yard work. They are great people and we are excited for them and are praying that they may continue to come to know that this is our Savior's restored gospel. They fed us lunch and sent us home with dinner (even though we had a dinner appointment that night at a buffet) so needless to say we were stuffed that night. We were able to go on exchanges again and I went down to Lanett with Elder Young. He is from Idaho as well and we had some great experiences being able to share some lessons with some investigators (one of which whom they hadn't been able to see in a long time) and visited a member in the hospital. We had a great time and learned a lot from each other and how we could become more effective teachers. Zone Conference was also awesome and it was a real tender mercy to see Elder Smith there. It sounds like he is doing awesome and is having some great experiences. He is really enjoying his mission and I am grateful to be here enjoying it myself as well. We learned a lot at Zone Conference including the Church's Christmas Initiative this year and how we can use it in our missionary work. We watched the video and it was really touching and awesome. It focuses a lot on service and gives ways we can serve everyday before Christmas. This is a great way to share the gospel and I would encourage you all to look for those opportunities to give service and share the gospel this Christmas season. I know that it will help us remember the true meaning of Christmas and help others remember as well: our Savior Jesus Christ. We also learned from a new senior couple a great way to share the Book of Mormon with others that we are going to be implementing in our mission. I will share the details of it next week so that hopefully ya'll might be able to try it. We also had interviews with President Grayson and it is always great to hear from him and receive counsel from him. There is a lot I need to work on, but I am grateful for President Grayson's counsel and love for each and every one of us missionaries. I was taught a lot this week on repentance and recognizing the hand of the Lord daily. I was looking through the scriptures and found a scripture in D&C 58 verses 42-43 I believe where it talks about how if we repent then the Lord will remember our sins no more and we can know and recognize repentance. It reminded me of what President Packer said about having looked back on his life and not really being able to remember those mistakes he had made. The Atonement is truly powerful and repentance is truly a blessing. It brings so much joy and happiness and brings us more in line with the will of our Heavenly Father and our Savior. They are always willing to forgive. I was also taught after a day that I felt kind of down about that we must be grateful for and learn and pray for the ability to recognize the Lord's answers to our prayers and hand in our lives. Elder Swainston started talking on the phone to someone about all the cool experiences we had had and it reminded me that we should always stay positive, live worthy of the Spirit, recognize and act upon the promptings of the Spirit, and live in thanksgiving always. This week the Lord also blessed us with 6 new investigators who some of which were referrals whom we were blessed to finally be able to contact. We were blessed during planning to begin to recognize a need again to focus on finding more investigators and the Lord truly blessed us. We were even meeting with one referral last night from an awesome investigator we already had and were teaching the Restoration and after we had extended the invitation to be baptized the lady said "So how do I schedule a time to be baptized?" It was pretty incredible! Also Mom your letter reminded me of a quote from Bro. Brown "We were all Mormons in the pre-existence. Some of us have just forgotten." Thank you for your insight on helping others remember. Thank you so much for all y'all do and for your letters of love and encouragement. "Keep fanning the flame of your faith!" ~ Elder Holland
Love,
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Elder Daric Meyers
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