'I didn't come on a mission to stay the same person.'

How y'all doin?!  Sounds like life is good!  Glad to hear you had a fun 4th.  We had an ok week here.  M. got sick so she was in the hospital for a few days and we weren't able to meet with her.  Things are better now so we have that church tour set up for Thurs.  We've been hittin the road and doing a lot of finding, trying to increase our pool of investigators, and we've got a few solid potentials that we've been trying but can never catch home.  Some live down in Waurika and we're making a trip down there later on this week so that's kind of a one shot one kill dealio.  It's 30 miles out and we don't have the miles to go there often.  

We met with President Walkenhorst at our MLC and also had a mission tour with him this past weekend, and I love the man!  Haha he's such an awesome guy.  You can totally tell that he's from California.  He was talking to us in MLC and said at least 20 times "we had this dynomite elder" or "this investigator was dynomite!" or simply "dynomite!"  It was pretty funny.  He uses a lot of lingo from the 80's also, that's been different trying to get used to. He's more laid back that President Taylor, but still has the same, if not higher expectations. It's an interesting combination.  Our mission average is 25 baptisms a month (which is much much better than what it used to be before President Taylor got here).  At our mission tour President Walkenhorst basically said, in over an hour of training, that that's not good enough! With the amount of missionaries we have in our mission and the cooperation we're going to have with members, it needs to be much higher. He said in the future we're going to set a goal, so we'll see where that goes. 

Elder Lott and I are staying together another transfer.  Ha this will be my first comp that I'll be with for 2 transfers, and it'll be a learning experience for me that's for sure.  I'm excited for it though.  I didn't come on a mission to stay the same person. I expect myself to change for the better.  If i'm not changing I'm not applying the doctrine of Christ!  I would like to say thank you too for your prayers on my behalf.  I have felt them this past week.  I have been able to talk to people and put myself in situations that I wouldn't have been able to before.  I OYM'ed a man while riding our bikes, and he was on his bike riding behind us!  Haha it was pretty funny.  I thought of it as a "Tyler" style of missionary work.  

I studied a few weeks ago about fear, because that was an issue for me that arose again, and a few things all came together that I never was able to share.  In the bible dictionary it has a neat definition of fear, which I'm paraphrasing, but it basically says that fear is not an instinct or feeling that's natural for a son or daughter of God.  I took a lot of comfort in that personally.  As a son of God, I need not fear because that's not an emotion that's fit for who I am.  I'm above that, so to speak.  With that said it's a battle that I fight with faith, but I took comfort in that knowledge.  Also in church a few weeks back we were talking about the pre- existance,  annnnnd how we had the choice to follow Heavenly Father and Christ or Satan. Someone in the class spoke up and said "I think that those who chose to follow Satan didn't choose to follow him because they didn't understand the Plan of Salvation, they chose to follow him because they were afraid of failure."  I had never thought of it that way!  And it really stuck out to me.  And it made sense too.  When we chose to follow Christ, we had no guarantee we'd return back to live with them again.  However we had the faith to make that step. Those that didn't were filled with fear.  So whenever we're afraid to make a decision because we're afraid of failure, think on that!  We already made one of the greatest leaps of faith any man or woman ever could've made.  I'm slowly getting a tincy wincy bit of an understanding of how faith can be applied, and it's through how we live our lives.  Again, thank you for your prayers, I love you for it, and please let me know if I can ever do anything for you!  Continue to read your scriptures and say your prayers!  Love you!

Elder Traasdahl