6 Months Today and Still Loving Every Minute

Dear Family,
.... Well, here it is already the last week of the transfer. As usual, we plan to take everything good from previous weeks and mold it together into our best week thus far. To me, it's really amazing how quickly time flies by on a mission, especially when you're putting your whole heart and soul into the Lord's work. These past 6 months have been filled with many great and uplifting experiences, and very few bad ones thankfully. This past Saturday, we had a really good day planned out, and one by one all of our appointments fell through. Rather than sit and bemoan our bad luck, we prayed to the Lord to ask us what we should do, and He responded. We were blessed with 3 previously non-scheduled appointments that night, which really took us into the Sabbath on a high note. We also were asked to teach priesthood, and the lesson was "Beware the Bitter Fruits of Apostasy", chapter 27 in the Joseph Smith manual. That can be a somewhat touchy, even depressing subject to teach, especially as a missionary. It went really well, though, the priesthood brethren made a lot of insightful comments that fit perfectly with what we had planned to teach. Also, President Robbins announced this past week that missionaries are now allowed to baptize! Can't remember if I mentioned that before, but anyway, I was pretty excited to hear about that because I've always wanted to baptize someone into the Church! I hope the opportunity presents itself sometime, but the only catch is that we can't tell investigators we can baptize them, they have to just straight up ask us....hope that makes sense. Well, the weather has gradually gotten better, spring definitely can't come anytime sooner. It's been a rough winter, but the work of the Lord moves onward regardless. We'll be putting in our best efforts this week, as I mentioned earlier, and I have no doubt that the Lord will answer your prayers in my behalf, He always has. I hope everyone is doing great and that you had a great (not mushy! blech!) Valentine's Day. Sheesh, some holidays as missionaries are just weird! Somebody dropped off a couple valentines and a box of chocolates outside our door, so we were pretty excited at first. Then we turned the envelope over and read "Happy Valentine's Day Jennifer!" Well, neither of us have that first name, although Elder Lundquist's first name starts with a "J" but he declined the offer. Turned out it belonged to the person next door, it was kind of awkward to see missionaries handing out valentines. Anyway, we've got to get headed back to Wilmington, but I hope to hear from some of you throughout the week. May the Lord forever comfort and sustain you, and lead you to those who need the gospel most! Talk to you next Tuesday(and this time it really will be Tuesday)!
Love,
Elder Isaac Livingston