Week 34

Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:01 AM to me Hey everybody! We had an awesome week to start off the transfer out here in Delano. We also went to some crazy places. Have you ever heard of Alpaugh, California? Neither has anybody else haha. Smallest town I have ever been too. Our area was combined with the Earlimart area last week as missionaries are heading to original assignments and home, so we have about double the area to cover. Earlimart is a super small town in the middle of the fields, and has a few small suburbs that we had to head out to this week, so we got to see a bunch of new things. We went to one lady who had at least 10 dogs, goats, cows, an emu, and a bunch of other animals in her front yard, and that seemed to be on the pretty normal side for Alpaugh. We got a new companion, so elder Shoemake and I are now a trio, with elder Martinez! He is a native spanish speaker which has already been awesome for our learning and for teaching, and has been helping us to have a lot fun out here. This week we headed down to Bakersfield for a few things, zone Conference and an Expectations meeting, where we got to hear from the Bakersfield stake president. Then he came up to our sacrament meeting as well! He always lifts up the missionaries so much. This week I have been thinking a lot about how the gospel challenges us to become more than we are. Of course, God loves us how we are, but because of that he has high expectations, and wants us to improve daily by repenting, and striving to be more Christlike. Ephesians 4:12-13 summarizes this really well... 12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ The past year or so has helped in a lot of cases to remove unnecessary distractions, so moving forward we need to be asking ourselves with every action that we take - What does this help me become? Thanks so much for reading, have a great week! Elder Easton