Going THROUGH Problems

      Hello there family and friends.  Well, it's the end of February, and I hope it was a great month for everyone.  I know it was for me, and I will forever be changed by the events that have happened in my life this month.  So the last email I don't think was that uplifting, but I said we were going forward with more might and zeal than ever before.  Well, the Lord truely did bless us this past week, and we have seen miracles happen.  So on Thursday our Zone Leaders came down and went on exchanges with us.  They both stayed in our area, and they are in a trio, so we had five missionaries in little Beatrice.  Well, we did work, and lots of it.  I went with Elder Wilky who just got released as an Assistant and actually went to Lone Peak and played lacrosse.  He is a super awesome missonary, and is a great example to me.  He really did lift my vision of what can happen when you follow the Spirit.  I've really started to take seriously receiving revelation contantly and being obedient and worthy enough, and especially courageous enough, to follow it.  We have seen tremendous blessings come from striving to be worthy to receive prompting from the Spirit whenever we need it, which in our line of buisness is always.  So, one of  the families we teach are pretty much already Mormons.  It's crazy.  So it's a family with two girls that are 14 and 8 and they pretty much already believe and follow all the guidelines of the church.  We taught them yesterday and these are some of the things the mom Merith said.  "I wish we had more members of the congregation speak in our churhc."  "I wish we had communion (the sacrament) every week."  "I don't beleive in the concept of the trinity."  "I wish we had more members from our church in our house to visit."  "I love to sing hymns."  "I've always believed that God reveals His words to prophets."  So, yeah, they are pretty much "there", only one problem.  They are super dedicated to their church! But they love sitting down with us and learning from us, and we in turn love learning from them.  I just thought it was funny all the things she was saying and I'm thinking, "Just join us!" Haha, but it will all happen in the Lord's time.  We are having them read and pray about the Book of Mormon, so hopefully they can receive that answer. It will take a lot of courage if they do to leave their church, but I know that the Lord will provide if they are willing to do so.  That was just one little experience that we had this week out of the many miracles we have seen.          So spiritual thought of the week.  So Saturday night we were doing a soup kitchen service for a homeless shelter in a 4H club. There was a sign there that compared Winners to Losers.  It compared some of the qualities of Winners to those of Losers.  One that really stuck out to me was that Winners go through problems while Losers try to go around them.  As a missionary I see a lot of people try to go around problems, and they are always the most unhappy.  Wheather it's drugs, or government assistence, making excusses for laziness, or blaming others for all their problems, people who try to go around problems never seem to realize that their problems stretch in a line forever, and the only way to get through them is to forge ahead.  On the other hand, those who face their problems with courage and dignity are usually happy and strong.  That doesn't mean that everything for them is all sunshine and rainbows, in fact usually they've gone through some of the hardest things in life, but they are able to find much more sactisfaction and joy in their life because they have been able to overcome adversity.  Ultimately we can overcome any problem in life with the help of the Savior and His Atonement if we are willing to take reponsibility for our situations and forge on though.  So I hope that we can all strive to do our best to face our problems, and not give up, but go on though.  I promise you will make it out safe on the other side as you rely upon the arm of the Lord to protect you.  I hope you all have a great start to March and enjoy the great month of the Irish!  Godspeed, Elder Chandler Kendall