Greetings from the new and improved 22-year-old Elder Low! Wow, it's really weird being 22 and on a mission. Now I know how Elder Brutinel felt when he was older than the "normal misisonary age" and people would look at him like "well, what sin did YOU commit that made you leave so late on a mission?" And it won't help to have that influx of new young 18-year-old missionaries coming in soon. Concerning what Darin told Aunt Allyson, we are also expecting to get a huge amount of missionaries as well. President Topham told us that in addition to replacing all the missionaries that go home in 2013, the mission will receive an extra 100 missionaries. So most of the units in our mission will have 2 sets of companionships covering that boundary. It will be very different. But unfortunately I'm going to miss a lot of it.
My birthday was exactly what I needed after these past couple weeks. I went on exchange with my district leader and his companion for the first four days of this week and I remembered how wonderful it was to have a car. (Elder King and I are getting along swimmingly by the way, I'm not really sure why I haven't talked about him much in my emails. He's a wonderful missionary. President Topham told us in our interviews last week that he wants Elder King to remain in Erie Walk for the next couple exchanges we conduct this transfer, so it turned out Elder King had to take control of the area for 4 full days. He actually didn't do too bad and I have no doubt that he'll do fine when I get transferred in 2 weeks.) Because we've been losing a lot of our investigators, things have been pretty difficult as of late. I was constantly on the look for tender mercies of the Lord that could raise my spirits and they came every so often so I'm grateful for that.
I felt special because I had "Happy Birthday" sang to me like 4 times throughout the day. Elder King sang to me while I was brushing my teeth and then he presented me razors! YES! We then did like 4 hours of service. The first project we did was for one of the investigators that I had when I was serving in Millcreek - Guy. He recently had a heart attack and the ward has really pitched in to rake his GIGANTIC lawn (it's pretty much in the forest) of all it's leaves. I got to use the leaf blower and it was amazing to see with one movement I could command the ebb and flow of the waves of leaves; sometimes the waves would get so high that the leaves would just reflect back in my face. Being from the prairies of Alberta, I only now have discovered what it feels like to be enveloped in leaves; it was a lot of fun. We then went to clean a members' garage, and then to my surprise they welcomed us in to cupcakes and home-made fudge. Somebody (the Millcreek elders) told them it was my birthday. Nevertheless, it was very sweet.
That evening, Bro Harper (a LECOM member who teamed up all the time with Elder Swensen and I in the summer time) and his wife took me and Elder King out to a legit Mexican restaurant. Being from Canada, I don't experience legit Mexican food very often but I hear from Utahn missionaries all the time how Pennsylvania doesn't have any. It was delicious. The Millcreek elders then told me to close my eyes and they drove me to somewhere after dinner. Elder King then clumsily led me up stairs into a door which turned out to be the Clarks' (Like my favourite family in our ward)! They also had a cake for me! All in all, I definitely felt the love that day. Best birthday I've had on my mission.
Yesterday in sacrament meeting I had a wonderful confirmation that I was where I was supposed to be. The Brammers, a ward missionary couple that moved in 4ish months ago, were giving talks about missionary work. Before they were ward missionaries, we invited them to an appointment which really started them on a re-excitement about missionary work. Bro Brammer's talk was basically a shout out to Elder King, Elder Swensen and I about how we helped rekindle that fire within him and how everyone else should "ask the missionaries [about anything!], they can help you." Bro Brammer testified of the greatness of all the missionaries in our ward individually and how we were here in Erie for a reason. What greater confirmation could I have than that?
Elder Low
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