"The hard is what makes it great."

Hello my darling family! Oh how I love you! Oh how I love your emails!

Wow. Well, this week has been great. Tough but great. But, just before… a little , as mom likes to call it, “housekeeping”. First item of business – I don’t think that President is coming down before next transfers. Possibly but I don’t think so. Sometimes they send the mail down through someone else, but I don’t know if any more would get here. I haven’t gotten your other letters yet but I think that someone has them – I’m going to pick them up today. And, other good news, our bikes haven’t arrived yet! Maybe this week we’ll start using them. It will be a perfect getting in shape thing.

Also, sad news – Elder Bednar isn’t coming down to the islands – he’s just going to Puerto Rico. We were super super bummed. But, its ok. He is doing a conference with both of the Puerto Rico missions and there are a lot of other islands in the east mission, so it wouldn’t be totally fair for him to come to some islands and not to others. Who knows if that’s why or not but its what we tell ourselves to help ourselves feel better. I think that’s all of the little news that I can think of.

Wow – it sounds like a great week that you guys have had! That is so neat about the ward doing so much humanitarian work! So neat. The reaction to the whole Haiti thing is a little bit different down here – I think it has really scared a lot of people. It usually gets brought up in lessons and then there are always the people that tell us they know why it happened. We don’t really know a lot of the details but that is awesome that they are getting a lot of help from the Edgemont 19th ward.

Well, like I said – its been a great week but also a hard week. Aren’t they always like that! There is a quote that I love from "A League of their own," and I totally applied it to the mission. Jimmy Dougan (Tom Hanks) is talking to Dottie who is going to leave the baseball league and she says, “It just got too hard.” He says, “It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” I love that because its so true. It wouldn’t be this great if it wasn’t so hard.

I just feel so grateful for this experience. I am loving it right now. I had interviews with President Martineau last week. They were awesome. I told him that I haven’t really realized that its my last transfer and then when I do I get nervous because I don’t really have any plans or goals for the future – like after the mission. What he told me was really neat. He explained the principal of “proximity” and that revelation usually doesn’t come to us until we need it. For example – the last night in the mission president’s home we have a chance to make those goals and I don’t need that revelation right now. So he told me not to worry about it and to just work hard. I was so glad. In Gabe’s words, “I feel so free!” I felt so liberated after the interview in knowing that I don’t need to worry about any of that right now, I just need to work hard! Of course its hard sometimes to stay focused – especially when you look at the date! I was contemplating whiting out the date on my planner so I wouldn’t be reminded of it but then I decided that that wouldn’t be very practical with setting appointments.

But, we have seen some really neat things this week. We have a couple of really neat young investigators that we see a lot of potential in. “Future missionary” was coming to my head all of the last lesson. I love this work and I love the scriptures. I’m so grateful for the Book of Mormon challenge that President Martineau gave us. We were talking about it in Zone conference and president asked one of the elders, “ Elder, when will the time come that you don’t read every day from the Book of Mormon?” he looked down and then said, “President, I don’t think that day will come anymore.” I was really touched by that and want to adapt his response. Every morning I wake up with a thirst to learn from the scriptures. The Book of Mormon is becoming the keystone to my religion. I know that it is the word of God and an evidence that this is the true church of Christ. He lives.

I love the calling that I have as a missionary and what makes me so happy is to know that my calling of preaching the Gospel doesn’t end with my mission because our call to gather Israel is for our whole lives! How neat is that!

Well, I love you all so much and I hope that you have a great week!

Love,
Zuster Neff( I got my Dutch nametag!)

P.S. My companion and I love to make Dutch crapes – it’s a good mix that we get at the store. Also, Ritter sports have become a necessity whenever we pass by a pharmacy.