"Hello Everyone-
It's been a great first week here in Las Brisas, my new area. My companion is Elder Tello (TAY-oh) from Lima. He is a happy quiet guy who works hard and does what he's supposed to. I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot from him. This week I've been getting to know the area and the people that Elder Tello was teaching before. Las Brisas is HUGE. We do a lot more walking. The ward is a lot bigger (yesterday 160 people came to church) and they are willing to help us. So I'm really excited about that.
It was really rough to leave the Sanchez family. We talked to them on Monday night before I left, and I was able to bear a testimony that did not come from me…always a moving experience…
I love you so much. What I'm living as well as what we are all living, is best defined by King Benjamin: "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." Throughout our life here on earth we will be in constant struggle with our personal "natural man" --A part of us that wants to be lazy, selfish, prideful, disobedient, and completely average…Don't be average. I'll do my best not to be average either." --Elder Bassett
