Better Week, 1 1/2 Year Mark, Faith Over Fear

Things here are getting better and picking up. I got so many emails this week, it is not even funny, everyone giving me advice and stuff. So many I had to print almost all of them and I'll have to read them later. Whatever you did, people listened haha. 
This week was crazy. 

Monday I bought a new suit. We got to ball out and that was good to just go crazy and ball and get some of my energy out. We had a good dinner at the Evan's, one of my former Bishops before the ward boundaries changed and that was good. They are a funny family. 

THIS is what I got for pics this week!

Tuesday was pretty good. I was on an exchange with Elder Hubbard and no lie, he kept me sane. He had me laughing hard and having a good time and made me want to take a step back and relax and enjoy this work. He can also play the piano like no one I have ever heard, so we played during the end of the day and it was cool. 

Wednesday we had a cool miracle. We got a referral from the Sisters and we went by and he was this guy with Down's Syndrome. He is just so cool, he took a pamphlet and we are going to start teaching him. He is totally accountable, so he can get baptized! He is a really nice young boy, like 22 or so, so that got me excited. 

Then we had a DLC and we all talked about what keeps us from baptizing and we had a great counsel on faith, it was pretty powerful. Then I came home to a letter on my desk from one of our Zone leaders and he just ripped into me. He was trying to be kind in the letter, but he just plain said I don't do anything and I need to change and that drove my anger through the roof...but he is right and if he had not told me that, I would never have realized that I have been lazy and all this in the sense, my fault from my lack of effort. 
I realized I had to bite my pride and work and I did and I feel better. I was making goals, then dropping them, because I have been lazy. 

Thursday, my 1 1/2 year mark, I refined my goal. I recommitted to do the Lord's will and pulled up my socks and I am gonna hit and accomplish my darn goal, no ifs, ands or butts. I also set a goal to cut back on my food intake and to get in better shape these last 6 months (I'd REALLY better get to the gym!!)
Today was great though. I got Chinese food for dinner, I had a BBQ with Smores, I downed a full can of Monster in 10 seconds...never touching one of those again!! It was a great day. 

Now, I am going to do something I have never done before. I am going to quote my actual Friday journal entry. Share on the blog, it's pretty cool. Here it is: 

So today was an intense day, so we had a zone meeting today. This is a meeting that covers what the Zone Leaders went over in Mission Leadership Counsel. It was on working with members and faith. The first part was okay but the faith section was so powerful. There were a few talks on it and they were stuff like fear and faith and how they don't go together. Elders Gregory and Holm carried around an entire box of Book of Mormon copies and handed them all out and they talked on that. One of the other DL talked about "but if not faith" like, if you want to baptize you will "but if not" you will put your all into it. Elder King closed and he had everyone, or lots of us, share our memories on faith and I shared mine on my conversion. There were a lot of people in tears (I was as well). It was a real powerful meeting and now I know I need to work on my faith. That was Friday. 

Saturday we walked almost all day to try to talk to people and two people stopped us on the street and one of them was a former member and he wants to take the lessons again so that was really cool. We talked to a lot of people today and that was us getting out of the care and choosing faith over fear. Things are picking up here, I know we will start to get back to the Golden days. We also had dinner with two converts and that was cool to talk to them. 

Sunday was a good, but slow, Sabbath day!

Well, thank you for all of your support. I love you all so much. Muah. You're the best

Love Elder Routledge