Elder Yates: Oceans

Gooooood morning/afternoon/evening!!! I don't know when y'all read these, so I'm just going to cover the whole day. Hopefully you don't read this too late at night either, sleep is important. :)

Anyways! This week was awesome sauce! We didn't really get to work in our area again as much as we would've liked, but that's okay! We still saw some good miracles! On Monday night, we drove about an hour and met up with the Victoria Elders and had an exchange with them leading into Tuesday. I was blessed to go work their area with them. There is a trio-companionship there right now, and I got to work with Elder Carlson and Elder Claycomb. They are both great Elders with great desires.

On Thursday, we did the same thing, but drove for 2.5 hours to Port Lavaca. This is a "new" area this transfer. Meaning that there used to be Hermanas there, and they both left, and now there are Elders there. So we went to blitz the area and work it really hard to help them get a boost/kick start to their new area. What is awesome, is this was my trainer's second area where he spent a good chunk of his mission at. It was awesome to see the people, the apartment, and the atmosphere where my good friend Elder Smedley once served.

This week I felt the miracles of the Lord in almost everything that we did. Which is a good indicator that we are doing something right. But the biggest was understanding that what we were doing was being done the way that the Lord asked us to do it. So many of us go through the motions being "driven with the wind and tossed", to quote James from the New Testament.

I hope that all of you that read that talk that I sent last week took away some good action items! I love that talk so much! It helps me to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ.

This week, I was studying out of the New Testament and found myself reading in James. Of course, we recognize verse 5, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God...". But as we keep going, it tells us what happens if we ask with out faith. It also goes on to say that we need to resist temptation, be doers of the word and our faith, and not just bench warmers. Of course I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point. I love that statement it makes about being driven with the wind and tossed. Meaning, if we don't ask in faith and don't have the desire to actually do something about our answer, then we will be pulled around by the world and it's views.

So many times have I heard about people I love both inside and outside of the mission that forsook what they know to be true, and to combat their feeling of guilt, they start to fight the truth with more lies. I have developed a strong testimony in the gifts of God. All good gifts come from God. Any feeling of confusion, anger, resentment, or distrust comes from the devil. I can promise all of you that as you truly seek to find and feel the gifts of God, you will feel nothing but peace, love, joy, and trust.

I invite all of you this week to read James chapter 1 this week. This is one of my new favorite chapters of the New Testament. I hope that all of you reading this feels the Spirit and comes closer to our Savior. I love all of you!

-Elder J.T.Yates