Patience, Hope and Perseverance

Hello family,

Did you not get my letters last week? (Not sure what she's referring to.) Well I´m confused, but I hope you are all OK—it was good to hear from you all. And mom, they send me the Dear Elder letters, so there's no need to send them again in an email, but thank you.

I can't believe my first full week has passed in the mission field! I am not going to lie—at some points, it seemed like the longest week of my life!!

But along with some of the sourest moments come some of the sweetest. Patience, hope and perseverance would be the themes of the week.

P.S. My mission is Pocitos, Montevideo; Comp: Hermana Allphin.

Some of the bitter sweet moments of missionary work are meeting with less active members. Many times there are people who had every intention of staying active and faithful in church attendance, but as they say 'life just gets in their way.' The focus point drifts some celestial aims to cleaning the house, to getting to work on time, to relaxing, to the daily tasks which little by little fill your daily agenda.
It's important to ask ourselves daily ¿where have my thoughts been today? ¿what has been the intentions of my actions? ¿how has my heart expressed it self? This daily "refocus" check can be found in Mosiah 5:13.
To those followers of Christ out there, the thing they ask most of us is just 'remember' and everything else will fall into place. So as I've said, I've also learned alot about hope this week. With so many hours of being rejected or knocking on doors with no answers or replies, it can be hard to keep hope. But really I don't think you have much, if you dont have hope. In "Preach My Gospel" it teaches us that one manifests their hope by being calm, patient, optimisitic, and enthusiastic.
There's so many ways to lose hope easily, but do keep the hope: stay calm, patient, optimistic, and enthusiastic.

OK Well I've gtg , I will try to send more pics; this comp is so slow!!

BTW Mom, I sent you a letter through pouch with more letters to people in Spain. You prob won't get it for another week, but just a heads up.

Oh as a continuation for my package requests:

picture of my black eye (just in case)
knee highs—skin color