A Cold Shower

Greetings everyone and Happy Valentines Day!  I hope you all have the Valentine sweetheart of the Spirit, haha.  Anyways... this was a great week.  So this area is actually picking up, a lot.  I heard a rumor from Elder Bell that President was going to shut down Beatrice, so we are working harder than ever to show that Beatrice really needs missionaries and that there is work to do here.  And there is!  We found five new investigators this past week, one of them being a family.  I love families.  I really haven't been able to teach to many families, just individuals, so it was great to be able to teach a whole family.  They are actually super involved in the church they go to, but they are really nice and have a strong faith in Christ.  They are pretty much Mormons already and are willing to sit down and have the lessons.  So it won't be easy to convert them, but we will try our hardest to help them have the Spiritual experiences they need to know that their family can be together forever.  So Saturday our branch mission leader Bro. King took us and Jackie and Brenda, our recent converts, up to the Trail Center and Temple at Winter Quarters.  It was so amazing.  The Spirit was so strong, and the sister missionaries took great care of our recent converts.  Elder Bell, my last companion, was there as well and it was really awesome to have that little reunion.  I love learning about our pioneer heritage.  I thought it was so boring as a kid, but now it is one of my favorite things to learn about.  It gives me so much faith and strength to hear their stories and see what they did.  It helps me know that if they could do it, then I centaintly can because the Lord loves me just as much and our work is just as important as theirs.  Yesterday we met this 12 year old girl named Saphire.  Her parents didn't want to hear our message, but they said that she could.  So we taught her the Restoration there and asked her to be baptized on March 10.  She said she'd ask her parents but that she would love to, so that was another great experience we had.  Training with Elder Gonzales continues to go well.  He is starting to mature more and more, and he's really a great kid.  All in all life is great!           So Spiritual thought of the week.  So there was this one day I got in the shower and all of the hot water was gone.  It was freezing!  I quickly cleaned myself and got out, and bam! revelation. I realized that repentence is like a cold shower.  Repentence is hard and painful, and that's why many people are scarred of it.  They want to be comfortable and not have to deal with the pain that comes as we repent.  But, just like the cold shower, after we are done, we are clean, and we feel great.  We all have things we need to repent of, wheather they are big or small.  It may be a bit painful, but we will be clean, and that's what we want.  So let us all strive to find those things that are not in line with the will of the Lord, and take our cold showers!  Love you all and hope you have a great week!  Godspeed, Elder Chandler Kendall