This week has been good

Hello everybody,

Sounds pretty cool that Silas got a rifle for his birthday- believe it or not I actually really want to try bow-hunting when I get back from my mission. There's been quite a few bow-hunting folk I've met and it sounds kind of fun. There's a long list of things I'd like to do though.

This week has been good, we were able to have some good lessons with a few of the people we're teaching. There's a couple we've been teaching that's making some good progress (which is great to see), and we were given a referral by a family in the ward to stop by and meet with some of their friends- which is sweet! We stopped by the next day and they seem like a really solid family that we're going to start teaching! The husband was baptized when he was eight (lived in Utah), but was
never active. Either way, it's going to be good!

We had a bit of miraculous day last week, which was much needed. To be honest, I was struggling last week- just was feeling kind of down and I didn't want to do much.

On Friday though we had an incredibly great day full of little tender mercies. We'd spent like three hours in the morning just knocking on doors, and I was just tired and unhappy. So we decided to get see this family (the newly-found one we're going to start teaching) and that was such a blessing in and of itself! Afterwards, our dinner appointment fell through so we went to a local Five Guys and the sister that gave us this referral was there! So the wife in this family apparently texted her and told her about how she really liked us and about how a prayer I'd given before we left almost made her cry
and about how much she enjoyed talking with us! She's already feeling the spirit and we haven't even really taught anything yet- and so that was great!~

Immediately following that, this potential we'd met at another fast-food burger joint shows up and we talked with him for a minute- turns out he works there too! Then we headed back to the apartment to
get some stuff and we arrived back to find that both of us had gotten packages in the mail. Grandma and Grandpa Burge had sent me a little care package and it good for moral to get something so good from the postal service.

Either way, it was day filled with some really great opportunities and blessings. God cares about us, even though we might not feel like he's always there. A lot like Joseph Smith when he was in Liberty Jail- how he felt like God had almost abandoned him. Even with all my faults and shortcomings, I was still taken care of and that shows to me the goodness of God.

So that was just a really cool little experience that I had this week. Hopefully we can have some more miracles this week. Sometimes we just have to roll up our sleeves and work for them though.

Well, I love you all and hope that your week goes well.

---Elder Samuel A. Burge