WHAT...I'M TURNING 21?

Hey! yes I turn 21 tomorrow... who's asking?

This week has been good. There has been a theme. I like it when my week has a theme. On Wednesday I was feeling really un-inspired and nervous and we had our first MISSION LEADERSHIP COUNSEL which took the place of zone leader counsel permanently. (Side-note: If you get on mormonnewsroom.org and look for the post about new missionary leadership changes you can understand what I'm talking about. It is so cool. I am so excited about the new Sister Training Leaders. Already we have seen blessings of unity in the zone with the new Sister Training Leaders to counsel with. There are a total of 6 in our mission. 2 of them, Sister Moon and Sister Skousen, cover the Richmond side of the mission. 2 more, Sister Banner and Sister Wylie, cover the Tidewater side of the mission. 2 Hermanas cover the whole mission of Spanish sisters (second side-note:I just saw Hermana Camrie George about 10 min ago in the library. She is in our zone, did I tell you that? She has been in two of my zones now) So since the day the assistants called us and told us about it we have been calling it an opportunity for unity. We went to the library and printed off the post and gave it to all of our sisters. We have ten Sisters serving in the zone. That is like UN-heard-of but there are more coming. CRAZY.

So back to my theme this week. On Wednesday we had the first Mission Leadership Counsel and it was awesome. It was just the zone leader counsel with 6 sisters there and everyone counseled and put in their two cents. The sisters were way nervous so we did our best to help them feel included and feel like it was a counsel process. MAN ALIVE they had some good ideas and we are implementing them. It was a wise choice to call Sister Training Leaders. We have already been able to address some concerns that would have been difficult to handle without their help. ANYWAY (can you tell that I'm on board with this whole counsel thing?) So I was super stressed because so much was talked about in MLC and on Thursday I was not getting anything. We had zone meeting on Friday and I was trying to prepare a training about using time wisely (Ironic) and I was like spacing big time. That has never happened. I have been able pray and pray to see what the zone needs and counsel with my companion and DO IT but this time was different. I couldn't put 2 and 2 together. It was so frustrating.

As I studied and prayed, I felt like I should just leave it alone for a minute and study something else. I flipped open the book "we believe" and started looking at the topics and went to light. There was the coolest statement in there from Joseph Fielding Smith (I think) I'm not going to quote it but it said that the Lord cannot give us more light until we are living up to the light we have received. HOLY cow that opened up my soul for questioning. I have been asking myself all week "what light have you received that you haven't been living up to?" I'll have you know that the moment I made a list of things that I hadn't done that I felt like I should, then set goals to implement those things, my mind saw clearly what my training could be on. I prepared for the training and even received further ideas the morning of. I have been doing my best to live up to the light I have received. Those little things are where satan gets us.

Sometimes my intuition tells me to do something really small that seems insignificant. Sometimes when I do it I realize it was a prompting

-- Gotta go times up

Elder Skyler Mark Andreasen

p.s. I choose Christ