"The LAZY eye!"

Hi Family!!

Happy Halloween next week! You'll have to send me pictures of all of your fun costumes and tell me what you did! Be safe! It's Satan's day! :D I had to add that in...it's my job as a missionary to be Churchy. :)

This week was good! It's been a good week for learning. I've been learning alot from my companion. She's been so good. We both pray every day that we'll spend the holidays together. This week has just been a week of very good learning!

1) Remember a while ago when I said that everyone we were teaching had Word of Wisdom problems and I realized Heavenly Father also wanted ME to obey it (therefore, try my best to eat gluten free)? Well, I'm feeling a similar teaching moment from Heavenly Father via our investigator. We have this investigator that is nice as can be, but that lives in filth. She is wonderful, but her house smells like there is a sewer on the floor. She hasn't mopped in ages and there are mounds of junk ALL over the place. When she opens the door, we are HIT with a powerful odor that makes us gag for hours after we leave. We can't even eat. We can't feel the Spirit at her teaching appointments and it's absolutely no wonder she's making no progress. One can't feel the Spirit in a mire. She has all sorts of family problems and it's totally because of the laziness and dirtiness. As missionaries, we have this obligation to call people to repentance, so we are going to try to bring up this sensitive topic to her. But I realized, that if I am going to call her to repent in this area, I should too. Okay, yes, I am a slob. But in my defense, it's been getting better. Haha, BUT I vow to turn over a new leaf and be TOTALLY clean. I cleaned my desk and organized my shelf and washed everything. I will NEVER be a slob again. Every time I look at my area, I think to myself, is this REALLY clean? Then I ask myself, do you want to become like Sister So and so? Then I frantically scour my area again. I will never have a stinky house! I refuse.

2) My companion and I had some really good companionship studies where we discussed gifts of the Spirit and gifts our Patriarchal Blessings talk about and stuff (obviously done with tact and not READING or telling eachother everything). But what's neat, is that we both have very similar gifts. We are VERY similar to eachother. Then I've just been noticing all around EVERYONE'S spiritual gifts. People in the scriptures, missionaries, investigators and members. I've even thought about some of you and your spiritual gifts. It's really amazing and beautiful that everyone has their own that help them bless and touch others. I never thought of it as I do now, but I really think our "quest" in life needs to be FINDING what that spiritual gift is, then completely honing in on it for the benefit of yourself and others. We can find out our spiritual gifts through prayers and our patriarchal blessings. I remember an Elder in our mission saying that his blessing told him he had a gift to "teach the word of wisdom". So he would stop people on the street and tell them, "you shouldn't smoke, it'll hurt yourself." And people would be impressed by what he said and stop smoking. These gifts give us great POWER in the Lord's work and kingdom. It's soooo neat. So I challenge you all to pull out your Patriarchal Blessings and find any passage that says something about the "gift of ...." or the "ability" or "power" of something. Then when the Holy Ghost had told you your spiritual gift, pray and study about that gift. It's so neat. I feel like Heavenly Father has suddenly unlocked a huge mystery of my PB, and it's suddenly all coming together.

3) Make goals! I ALWAYS forgot to make goals, and then everything falls through and we come home with nothing. But the days we remember to make goals, even when things fall through, serious miracles fall in our laps to help us accomplish our goals.

Anyway, on a lighter note. I have found my joy in life. It's "Milk ice". And seriously, I WILL open a little shack in Provo and make bank selling it. It's ice cream times 20. It's just shaved milk with sweetened condensed milk and flavored syrup over the top. It's HEAVEN!! It's so light and creamy. It's creamy but not heavy like ice cream. But it's more flavorful than a snow cone. SOOO good. Robert, you know business! Help me open a Milk Ice shop in Provo. :D hush hush, mustn't leak the secret!

Speaking of eating things. I think Sister Bready and I got some sort of food poisoning. We've had gas, stomach pain, and crazy "runs" that kept us inside yesterday. Fun!

Anyway, I love you! Keep the commandments. Pray. Have fun.

Love you!!

Coley