"Exert all of my Efforts"

I'm glad Joshua was able to fix the bike... I apologize that it is in a "sorry" state. My bike over here has been very good to me. I haven't crashed once... my bike has been crashed a couple of times, but not by myself. I haven't met a missionary yet that hasn't crashed except for the new missionaries and the Spanish missionaries, because the Spanish don't use them much.

I'm making lots of friends I intend to keep for life. (Mostly missionaries, because they live closer to home and I can actually see them if I go to Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, or some in California). I am very grateful that I have this opportunity to meet so many amazing individuals.

Any word on how Sean is doing? I assume that the hurricane passed through his mission. Any temporary evacuations made? The weather here has been pretty normal. It rains a couple times a week, gets cold at night, and the wind blows harder a couple times a week. I don't think it's out of the ordinary, but I have heard about the possibility of the storm passing into South Carolina from random people that tell us random things.

Tell Robert that with whatever time I have with him after my mission next year, I'm going to train with him to do a lot of amazing exercises that will push him to the limits and help him be more awesome.

There is a "Ryan Branham" missionary who's home is in this ward, and every time I see the plack, I think of Ryan Burnham, because it's so very close in spelling.

I have had a tiresome week. I was thinking about it a little bit last night and this morning and I decided that being tired at the end of the week is a good thing. For why would I want anything than to be pushed to my limits during my time of probation? If I were to look back on this life and see that I didn't reach anything near my potential because I didn't exert all of my efforts I would be sorely disappointed. To compare it with Roberts situation: if I ran a race and while doing so knew that I could run so much faster but didn't make the effort to do so and come up 5 second slow from 4 points of a 2 mile race, wouldn't I be devastated? Except in this analogy, there are no do-overs. I'm glad to be able to say at the end of my mission that I will have no regrets for I will have exerted my all.

It is very peculiar how the Lord teaches us. He expects us to figure things out on our own, and when we don't know what to do in a particular situation, he expects us to ask for help and he waits for us to use our agency to humble ourselves enough to realize that we can't accomplish anything without his divine help. And no one knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him. The slothful servant does not wait to be told what to do and doesn't take the initiative to figure it out on his own.

We have two outstanding new investigators on date to be baptized. One of which is a single mother of a family 2 of 3 of which are old enough to be baptized too and would probably follow in their mother's footsteps. I'll let you know when they follow through on that commitment. The Achilles heel for the others is just coming to church, that's all that is keeping them back, we'll see how it goes for them.

I love you all! Thank you for your prayers.

Sincerely,

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker