Oct 25, 2021: That's a lot of canceled appointments...

 Hi all! Hope you are all doing well wherever in the world you are right now! I'm missing yall like crazy every day but Im still glad to be out here serving the Lord in Rutland VT!! It has been an interesting week out here and we've been keeping busy (or at least trying our hardest too) and each week seems to go by faster and faster, so before I know it transfers will just be flying by. But I'll jump right into it! 


FOLLOW UP TRAINING!!
So once you hit 2 ish weeks in the mission field theh have a big meeting with all of the trainers and greenies, and in our mission they hold follow up training at the Joseph Smith Birthplace, so it was nice and close for us. (Thankfully we weren't one of the people who had to drive like 6-8 hours from the corners of Maine Haha) but the follow up training was really good! I feel like I learned a lot and it was my first time hearing from my mission president in person! So it was awesome! I also just love being around new missionaries and I met lots of cool people. I got to meet one of Elder Paxtons friends from MTC, as well as one of Sister Rex's, so I guess it's a small world when it comes to reassignments. 😂 But anyways follow up training was great, I love the Joseph Smith birthplace, and also we had 2 Elders stay with us the night before cause it was too long of a drive for them to do in 1 night, so that was fun too. (They were also really impressed with our apartment so I guess we have it nice out here. :))

THE PLIGHT OF OUR LESSONS
This week we had an interesting experience with lessons. We had 23 lessons planned this week, and we had 3 lessons this week. That's right, we had 20 different lessons cancel this week. The 3 that we did have were all with the same person, Sherry. So it was an interesting week. We had a lot of time set apart for lessons that just didn't happen, so what did we do? A whole lot of finding. We just knocked, and street contacted and did a whooooole lot of Facebook finding, and called all the formerly interested people in our Area Book. So we had lots of finding time this week, even when we weren't expecting to! So that was an interesting experience. Were hoping and praying that some of our lessons in the next few days will go through for us so that we can start adding to our teaching pool. Also we did technically have 4 lessons this week but I'm not counting one cause we visited someone in a hospital and it was more of just talking to them than having a lesson with them, but maybe this week we can do a lesson with her for real, Haha. The lessons we did have with Sherry were great tho! She is so close to being completely off of nicotine and is working hard every day! She has completely stopped smoking and drinking coffee, but has a couple more things she needs to wean off of before she can have her baptismal interview but she is soooooo close! 

Those were 2 long sections and I don't really think I have a third. I guess I've had some interesting conversations the streets but nothing like absolutely crazy. But I guess I'll just add a little bit more next week when I have some more to write about. ;)
Overall this week was great! I think I was able to grow a little closer to my companion throughout all the cancellations and craziness, and I can tell that I am getting better at just talking to people each and every day! So on to the...
SPIRITUAL THOUGHT!!
This week my spiritual thought comes from Abraham 3:22, where it talks about "The Great And Noble Ones." This phrase really stuck out to me as I read it. It made me realize that is my goal in life! To be counted among "The Great and Noble Ones" that Abraham saw that day. But how do we do it? Sometimes it seems so difficult and we feel like we are not making progress or not doing well enough to be a great and noble one. So I turned to General Conference, the talk by Brad Wilcox, and even just the title of the talk answers that question. "Worthiness is not flawlessness." In order to be counted among the great and noble ones we don't have to be perfect. We don't have to go through life without sinning, but instead we have to be willing to turn to Christ and use his atonement over and over and over again. I know that it is true! We can use the atonement no matter how many times we mess up or how far away we feel we are. And when we do, we can be one of those people that Abraham saw that day.

Well I love you all and hope you all have a great week this week! I love hearing from you guys and I'll try to respond to anyone who sends me an email, but no promises or anything. ;)  Hope you guys all have a good week!
Elder Bradshaw
(Ps Relating to the spiritual thought, one thing that I also did this week was write a list of people in my life, modern-day prophets, and scripture heroes who I thought are "great and noble ones" and tried to find one thing from each that I can emulate in my own life in order to become a little better every day! So I guess that's my challenge to yall is to try and find something that you can emulate in someone else to come closer to Christ!) 

PICTURES
1) Me and my comp street contacting
2) A really freaking beautiful sunset this week!
3) pic from follow up training





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