-- This has been a hectic week, a lot of good has happened also a lot of bad, but lets only focus on the good and ill tell you about the bad when i get home bc it is a crazy story. Anyways i have been praying often to better help guide my district and help them recognize that obedience is a necessary part of the mission field. I had an interview with the mission president where i brought this up and he went through some reports to better help me and he said in my interview that in all the teachers reports and comparing my missionary reports to others in other districts that our district was one of the best he had ever experience. So that gave me some hope that i can better help my district learn how to be more efficient, productive, on time missionaries. Which are some areas of improvement myself. This week has been full of learning experiences with role plays, we were teaching this 17 year old girl named Davina. Davina loves to talk and loves facts so i thought i would really like teaching her, so in the lesson she started bringing up facts but they were all wrong a misinterpreted. At the time my teacher who was playing the role of Davina did not know i also loved my "useless facts" so it kind of annoyed me, but what really pushed me over the cliff was that she was so loud and she always interrupted me (luckily I'm used to being interrupted back home so thanks for the training) so my companion started leading the conversation for a little bit. While he was doing that i said a silent prayer that i would get over myself and be able to be more in tune with the spirit and that the spirit might be able to touch her heart in some way. After my prayer i hopped right back into the discussion and definitely felt the power of the spirit come over me due to me humbling myself before the Lord. Me realizing that Davina's eternal salvation was worth much more than my pet peeves ( Let me tell you these role plays feel very real just because the spirit is so strong in them). Along the lines of my district responsibilities, we have two sisters in my district, Sister Shulz and Sister Loefke(the blonde one). Sister shulz asked me for a blessing a few days ago, a blessing of comfort which i have had a lot more experience giving and the spirit worked wonders through me and comforted her in one of the lowest points I've seen sister shulz in. but a few days after that sister loefke asked me for a blessing of healing and that blew me out of the water, first of all i didn't know if i had the strength within me to do that for her, bc that is such a sacred thing to do. I realized she had enough faith in me as a priesthood holder and enough faith in the Lord that she would be healed. so i got out my oil ( i was the only one in several districts to have concentrated oil, so it pays to be prepared) and i gave her a blessing. i was impressed by the spirit to bless a lot of things to her so i pray every night that i will have the faith along with sister loefke that what was said will come to pass. As far as i know she is doing a thousand times better than before. Now i know that it has been a concern of everyones how i am going to first remember peoples names and second not take my power naps in the middle of the day, i have been getting along fine. Just because you can call every sister and elder and i haven't sat down in about 4 days, as long as i stay on my feet i cant go to sleep. Everyone here is awesome and i have met a lot of people going to great places. But there have been a lot of missionaries going home which breaks my heart, one of them i sat and talked with on my way to England. Attitude is everything out here, you need to be humble yet bold which seem like opposites. To be a successful missionary you need to realize that people are pretty set in there ways and that you are offering them to change there lives for the better, but they almost literally have to change how they perceive life to make it better. If you come out here thinking it will be easy or even if you come out here thinking it will be too hard you have to realize that this is the Lords work and no one else's and only through the Lord can it be done. The guys that went home in my short contact with them did not humble themselves before the Lord and like grandma always told me "either you humble yourself or the lord will do it for you" so I've been trying to humble myself in a lot of aspects. i love you guys and please keep emailing me with little updates with pictures about your day or what your doing, kind of like snap chat. i don't care if its 5 words and a picture i love it
Benji J. Massey
