Dear Home,
I have less than an hour to Email today, but that's probably going to work out not-so-badly for me because I don't have that much to write about.
Lately (and by 'lately' I mean 'for the past two months'), Elder Sheffield and I have been having a hard time getting up to exercise in the morning. Despite knowing that it's a mission rule and that it has great benefits for us physically and spiritually, we have, for the most part, lacked the motivation to get out of bed on time and actually STAY out of bed for the rest of the morning. Even the upcoming trip to Yosemite and the (reportedly) horrifically challenging climb up Half-Dome, and Elder Sheffield's sister (who recently came home from a mission in Poland) advising him to exercise with her personal testimony that it'll work miracles for his mission, have been barely any help in giving us the motivation that we need. But luckily, we have recently come up with a devious plan to get us active in the mornings.
You probably remember that I fell in love with the mini chocolate chip cookies that you can buy in the bulk section of the Superstore in Prince Albert. Well, we don't have a Superstore in Flin Flon, so I've been exploring other options. By the way, don't buy No Name brand Chocolatey Chip Cookies. It was a bad investment on my part. No Name Sandwich Cookies are good, though. =) Long story short, Elder Sheffield and I have cookies, which we enjoy. ^^ To help motivate us to follow the missionary morning schedule, we have initiated the Cookie Deprivation Program. You probably have a guess about what that means: If one of us doesn't exercise, they don't get cookies. Good guess, but that's not quite how our system works. According to our system, if I'm too lazy to exercise in the morning, Elder Sheffield doesn't get cookies that day.
Right now you're thinking "But that's not fair! We believe that man [should] be punished for their own [laziness] and not for [their companion's laziness]." And you're right. A completely just and fair rule would be that if one of us do something wrong, they should receive the punishment and not their friend, but that's where the effectiveness comes in. Elder Sheffield and I are friends. I don't want Elder Sheffield to lose his cookie privileges just because I felt like sleeping in. That's not fair to him. So what am I going to do? What can I do? Couldn't we change the rule? No, Elder Sheffield and I are committed to this program. So if I want Elder Sheffield to be able to eat cookies, I have to force myself to exercise. That's how the system works, and so far, it's been going pretty well.
There's something else I could tell you, on a completely different subject, but there's not that much to tell. Our District Leader just got back from some special leadership training where he learned all about this new system for missionary work. It's supposed to be like Preach My Gospel, but more basic (if I understand the concept correctly). Unfortunately, I don't know it well enough to explain it. In fact, I barely know that it exists. Elder Sheffield and I have been majorly out-of-the-loop about this whole thing, and that has been a challenging trial for Elder Sheffield. I mostly just figured that I'll learn what the new system is all about soon enough, and in the meantime, God wants me to serve these people as best as I can with the amount of knowledge and skill and training that I currently have (and can develop myself without hearing much about the new system). I'm just going to do the best with what I've been given, and If God has more in store for me later that'll help me to do even better, I'll receive it with open arms when God sees fit to give it to me. In the meantime, it's business as usual for the Far-Flung Flin Flon missionaries.
And now my time is up.
Love, your comfortably content, regularly exercising missionary, Elder Andrew Robarts
No comments:
Post a Comment