I am extremely sorry I didn't send an email last week. We had the missionaries up here in San Fernando from Chimbarongo and we were pretty busy doing stuff all day and I never really had a chance to write one. Anyways, I hope that you take the time to read this email because there has been more these last 2 weeks than probably the rest of the mission combined and I'll try to keep it pretty short. I'll share our success right away for y'all. We've been here 3 weeks now and we were whitewashed, so me and my companion were put here in San Fernando not knowing a single person here, but we've gotten straight to work and it has gone very well for us. Yesterday we had 4 people at church! We had Edel there, he is from Haiti and we had a great lesson with him and his friend RiKerri, they both want to come to church next week and have more lessons. We have been teaching Pierre for about 2 weeks now and he is also from Haiti and he came to church and brought his friend Darwin and he was very interested in our message and we're going to have more lessons with us. And our awesome amigo Leonidis and committed to baptism on the 10th of September and he's come to church all 3 weeks and they guy is just amazing! I will never forget that feeling when he accepted to be baptized, it was incredible! As for the rest of the work, we're doing a ton more but that's all I'll really share, if you wanna know more just send me a message lol. The work is great here!
Okay, so I have learned so much lately! I have had some moments out here when I have just hated it, like moments that I'm just like screw this and it just flat out sucks. I also learned that sometimes there's just things that happen that suck so bad and it's frustrating and hard. With that I have also learned a lot of very valuable lessons. One is that we have absolutely no control over other people other than ourselves. I have no control over what any of the missionaries here do or what anyone at home might do that affects me. I have no control over what they do, but I have 100% control over how I respond to it. I have control over myself and my own actions, and just like I can't control anyone else's actions, it's important to not let the actions of others control me. So it is important for us to not get too worked up over what someone else is doing that we may not like because we truly have no control over their decisions, but we have total control over ourselves. The next thing I have been learning is "Patience"!! I was having a really hard time early this week and I had a great personal study that helped me out a lot. Alma Chapter 26 had some verses that helped me a lot. Verse 27 says, "Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said... bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto thee success." There are many other verses in this chapter that explains their trials and their sufferings and their success from the trials and afflictions. The key thing is to bear the afflictions with patience. My ACL and who knows how many more stupid injuries I've had didn't just heal in a week, it always took a lot of time. Time when I have had to be cut down and built back up, and it always takes time, and when something takes time to develop it is going to require patience, and I know that this mission is going to require a ton of patience, especially with myself and others.
Anyways there is honestly so much more that I could share with you but I know if you see this email and it's super long you'll just decide to scroll down to the photos. So I hope you take the one or 2 minutes to read this email and let me know how you are doing. I love you guys at home and hope that all is well. Chao!!
Elder Micheli
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