It's just the most fun ( but fun isn't even the word) I've ever had.

You know, after three weeks I still can't complain about a thing. The Mission is always a great experience!

 There was a lot of time taken off of normal teaching and proselyting this week because of conference and other meetings. We had a multi zone conference with president Bangerter and then the two days of conference. We've had to stay here in São Carlos centro for the last two days. It's too far and too expensive and not enough time to return everyday.

 

  So we had a lot of appointments fall through this week and some people that we weren't even able to make contact with, but we also had some people progress really well.

 

  The two families we are teaching are progressing really well. The next step is to get them to church, but its been difficult for all our investigators because this week and next church is in the centro. It's quite a long ways away. 

 

 

We have a lot of investigators and appointments that we are kind of just frozen with because the entire zone has ZERO Book of Mormons. Just in case you didn't know, being a missionary with no Book of Mormons is extremely difficult. We should get some this week. The secretaries and assistants have been useless, but we talked to President and he's getting things done.

 

  We had a multi Zone conference with President on Thursday which was AMAZING!!! President Bangeter is one of the most incredible speakers and teachers. The dude is a Mary Poppins bag of smart. He gave some amazing council and training. I got to bear my testimony because I'm a greeny. It's kinda nerve racking to speak in front of a whole bunch of people in Portugues. It went well and like I said last week, it's my testimony so I can just speak how I feel.  

 

 I've got to tell you a happy from the multi zone conference. Afterwards,  President Bangerter pulled me outside and said he was really impressed with my letters and I seem to be adjusting super well. I had mentioned something about the pest control and he said its awesome that I did that and asked if I could share with him sometime some of the things I learned and use. I just sent him a letter with my three part formula to being happy, successful and learning. But it just made me really happy that President Bangerter wanted me to share my knowledge!! This is what I shared with him on what I learned.  I hope he's able to use it to help some elders one day. It has helped me more than I can even say. With this stuff and relying on the Lord for the rest, there's no reason you can't be happy during anything that happens. The talk about finding joy in everything reminded me a lot of this because we've definitely had some disappointing times these last three weeks, but because I use this and just the knowledge that everything that happens is part of a bigger plan, and rely on the Spirit to help me in my steps. Man I love the mission! I honestly don't know how to type out how I feel about it here.
It's just the most fun ( but fun isn't even the word) I've ever had.

 

 This is what I wrote him. "On the sales team we had something we called STD´s.(We can probably come up with a better acronym that that) STD stands for Self Thoughts that Destroy. During your day selling you have a lot of time to just think to yourself which can be dangerous if its negative. STD´s are anything negative that you think about during the day and we talked about changing them to something positive that helps instead of hurts. For example, if you thought "Man , it's raining and I'm wet,this sucks." You can either change that to "at least it's not hot" but that is still giving in to the negative and adding a positive. We want to be only positive, so you could change it to "It's not hot outside, everyone will be home because they won't be out in the rain, and they´ll all feel bad for me cause I'm wet. I'm about to sell some contracts" Eventually when you change any negative thought to a positive, you start to think like that and everything is a lot easier. 

 

Second was every time I would find myself getting in a slump and just being frustrated, I would change whatever I was doing and do something to just have fun. When I got down on myself or if the neighborhood was just bad, I would start running from house to house. After a few I was jumping over bushes and hopping and skipping around. It was just something that worked to make me happy. I didn't have time to feel sorry for myself and mozy on to the next house. I was just running and having fun with myself. Or if I had a neighborhood where people were really tired of salesmen or just grumpy, I would forget trying to make sales and make a goal to just make the next person laugh. When I focused on just selling and I didn't sell, it was frustrating. If I focused on having fun and making myself funny and cheerful, I was happier and I sold more contracts.

 
Third and probably something that helped me more than anything else was taking the drive home or ten minutes just sitting at my desk to think about the day. What went well that I want to repeat tomorrow? What was bad that I don't want to do again? And what could I have done to improve the day, that I want to try tomorrow? When you analyze the day, you can learn and progress way faster. You can not analyze your days, but then you have a bad day that you don't learn anything from, or a good day that you've got to be lucky to have again. Or you can analyze and have bad days that you won't repeat and good days that you can make the norm because you know why it was good.

 

  General conference was amazing!! During the opening hymn of the first session the stake president found me and told me I could watch in English if I wanted! He had prepared a room for me with a tv playing in English! I had a private room with a desk, a notebook, of course some candy, and conference in English!!! It was awesome! there were some amazing talks and I took a ton of notes. I can't wait for the Ensign to come out. I'll probably get that in Portugues but that's fine. I can understand at my pace and I already know the messages.

 

  I realized that this email kinda sounds like a lot went wrong but it really was a good week! We taught a lot of good lessons and I learned a ton.

 

Love you more than the stake president letting me watch conference in English. (And that's a lot more than just normal conference)

 

Elder Cam Little