Growing Pains

This week was a good week. A lot of funny stories, but also a few growing pains (not literal growing pains, I wish because then that would mean that I am getting taller, but sadly I'm still short) Growing pains as in I learned a couple hard lessons this week. 

I'll start with some funny stories... So this week we had our MLC, mission leader counsel. Well after Elder Parker and I instructed we went to help Sister Wall prepare lunch for the rest of the missionaries. For lunch we were having gourmet hot dogs! Sister Wall was going to just boil the hot dogs, but being the master griller that I am, I couldn't let her. So she let me grill them on the grill there in the mission home. So as we were prepping the area, I was just boasting and bragging to Elder Parker about how much of a boss I was at grilling stuff back home. There was my first mistake.  So I turned on the propane and let the gas run for a second, then I started to look for the easy start button on the grill so I could get it warmed up. But I couldn't find it. So I just figured that there wasn't one, stupid me I took the lighter and stuck it down in the grill and lit it. All of a sudden this giant ball of fire the size of the grill came rushing towards my face! It  was intense!  Luckily, the good Lord is watching out for me, I only burned off the hairs on my right hand. haha Moral of the story is if you brag, you will get hit by a ball of fire. So just be humble :) 

OK so now for the growing pains... This week I was pretty grumpy, I just didn't feel happy and I didn't know what was up. I was frustrated with a lot of stuff, mainly with just not being the type of person I want to be at this point of my mission. I have this vision of who I want to be before I go home and I just didn' feel like I was there yet. I was doing everything I could to be the best person and missionary I could, but it just felt like the whole world was against me. But I had such a sweet experience with prayer. One night after a rough night of basketball with a bunch of black dudes, I just knelt in prayer for a good 20 minutes. Just pouring everything I had out. I had the faith that Heavenly father would help me out, but I didn't know how long it would last and how long I could take it without snapping. Well, I woke up the next morning feeling so much better. It seemed like all the stuff that had been bothering me just didn't seem that bad in the whole big scheme of things. I don't think Heavenly Father just took everything away from me that night, I think he just gave me comfort and peace knowing that things will be ok. I went through this before, but hopefully I learned what I needed to this time so It won't happen again for awhile. These growing pains are never fun. But they are things that need to happen so we can grow stronger.