Step in the Right Direction‏

email dated 9/19/09
Another week has come and gone. If I am writing too early for you to write me email today than you will need to email me at urugoest@gmail.com today or tomorrow so that I get it. I have to write now because today we are traveling to Paysandu for a Stake Conference and I lose another Pday. But I live in the offices and so any emails I get pretty much the same day anyway, but I wont be able to check my emails again today. So that everyone knows, anytime that you write to urugoest@gmail.com I get those any day of the week while I am living here.

This week we had the Zone Conferences in Tacuarembo and Salto and Mercedes. I was on the road all week and I am really tired but we still have one road trip left to go. We talked about the importance of setting your goals and committing yourselves to the goals. Making that the goals drive your plans and not your plans drive your goals. It is probably the hardest thing that we do on the mission and I didn't feel really capable or worthy to teach it. For me, setting and getting goals is harder than anything else we do. On the mission all of our goals have to do with the actions of other people and we have to avoid the doubts or fears that "oh their agency makes us incapable of achieving our goals". It is easy to make that excuse. What I have come to realize is that if we don't get a goal we don't need to criticize ourselves or beat ourselves up. We just analyze what happened. If we did our best we go out and do it again, maybe adjusting the goal or our plans. Nephi was commanded to get the plates and 2 times failed. It was a commandment from the Lord to achieve the plates!! He could have wondered why it didn't happen right the first time, as did Laman and Lemuel. We just gotta keep going at it with a positive attitude.

I don't have much more time. I love you all very much! I bear witness that Heavenly Father loves His children and that we have the necessity and responsibility to seek Him every day of our lives! It is a journey towards perfection in which we daily need to be advancing. The good news is that God is no respecter of persons. Wherever we are on the path the only responsibility that we have today is to make a step in the right direction. I love you all!!

Andy