Virtue

 Greeting friends and family.  Hope you are all doing great in
the middle of this summer weather.  I love what President Uchtdorf
wrote in the Ensign this month about being in the midde.  While I am
literally in the middle of my mission, and I am loving it, I hope that
I can continue to feel the joy and have the attitude towards my
mission that I do now throughout the rest of my mission.  I know if I
have the righteous desire and focus my thoughts on the Savior that He
will help me to do so.  So this last week was pretty great.  We had 12
lessons with a member, which is really amazing.  We usually have
between 4 and 8, so we were really blessed.  It is so cool to see the
branch get involved and fired up about missionary work.  Speaking of
that, our branch mission leader just got released, which was a big
disappointment, because he is amazing.  We just had a couple move into
the branch though named the Maesers who are awesome and he got called
as the branch mission leader.  So many changes happening, it's crazy.
I wonder what the Lord is trying to teach me/ prepare me for, haha.
Well we're teaching so many people, I wish I could tell you about all
of them, but I'll tell you about one investigator we have.  His name
is Bobby Lucas, and he's a lay minister who is not practicing right
now.  We've been teaching him for about six months, and he's finally
starting to get the Restoration.  Over the past couple of weeks we've
had some amazing experiences in the Book of Mormon, and talking about
Joseph Smith.  Last week he told us that he believes that this really
is Christ's Church, and that Joseph Smith truely was a prophet.  The
only thing that is keeping him back, is his wife.  She is also a
pastor and has her own chruch right now, and she doesn't really like
us.  So that is a big hurdle, especially because a big part of our
message is about families.  But Christ said himself that he is here to
bring division, among those who are truely willing to follow Him, and
those who are not, even in families.  So we just continue to pray for
him, and hope that he can have the stength to overcome adversity and
truely find the joy that comes through the gospel of Christ.
            So Spiritual thought this week is on virtue.  Virtue is
awesome, and has a lot to do with holiness.  When we think of virtue,
we think about being clean and pure before the Lord.  Virute means
doing the right thing, even when no one else is around to see us.
Often we think about virtue with the thoughts that we are having,
since no one else can hear our thoughts, it's something that is very
personal to us.  One thing that we promise when we are baptized is
that we will always remeber Christ.  If we are always remembering
Christ, we won't have to worry about having impure thoughts.  But
there is also a difference between never forgetting and always
remembering.  If we never forget Christ, that implies that He is
somewhere in our brain, but not always at the forefront.  Always
remembering Christ means that we are consistently striving to make a
concious effort to remember Christ and act in the way that He would,
and to do the things that He would do.  By striving to always remember
Christ, we can truely have virtue, and know that we can be clean and
pure before the Lord.  So let us  this week strive to have virtue and
always remember Christ.  I promise as we do so we will better be able
to have the Holy Ghost, who will tell us what to say, where to go, and
what to do.  I love you all so much and hope you have an amazing week.