Which mission am I in?

Dear Family,

This morning, we received a huge announcement from Pres. Robbins. I will include it below:

"Last Wednesday, 27th of January, I received a brief phone call from Elder Jay E. Jensen, of the Presidency of the Seventy informing me that…

On 1July 2010, the Ohio, Cincinnati Mission will be dissolved. The three Cincinnati Zones will be incorporated into the Ohio, Columbus Mission and the Huntington Zone will be incorporated into the West Virginia, Charleston Mission.

Please remember that you are under call to be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You were assigned to labor in the Ohio, Cincinnati Mission.

Your calling remains the same, it is only your assignment that will change.

It is okay to tell your families. However please do not call other missionaries to discuss or to speculate. We will do our best to answer your questions at our upcoming Zone Conference. Only, we don't know very much about it at this point either.

These changes will be published in the Church News."

If you can believe it, I anticipated that the mission would soon be dissolved, but I had no idea it would happen THIS soon. Elder Kirk Reimschussel, one of my friends from Quiznos who is serving in Tampa, FL told me several months ago that the Church was cutting back on all missionaries in the Eastern U.S. by quite a bit. I, of course, noticed this within the mission as the months went along. As I said, I couldn't have anticipated it would come this quickly. Well, I'll only be here for about a month after the change happens anyway, and hopefully in Wilmington, which is about an hour from Columbus. Maybe they'll be nice and let my departing group go through the temple up there. :) Oh well, SO many things are out my control, but thankfully not the work as it now stands in Hazard.

This was another week where Church was called off because of yet another snowstorm. We were safe throughout, by the way. No power outages! We did our best to make Sunday productive, and so like the last time Church was called off, we took the sacrament to other members with the permission of the local leaders, of course. We shoveled the sidewalk at the Church and then did the same for the Flinchum's, who had us for a real good dinner last night! A less important side note to the shoveling though....:)

Another big plus was setting a baptismal date of March 6th with Wilma Bowman and her 10 year old daughter Jessica! They are diligent learners and a lot of fun to teach, which has made for some very good lessons. The next step will be getting them a ride to Church. We have enough solid potentials to basically double our teaching pool, if you can believe it with all the lessons we've been teaching lately! We have some great opportunities before us, and I just hope we are prepared and worthy of them! Only time will tell!

Sounds like all is going well back home for everybody! I did get an e-mail from Joey informing me about his blog, and I'm sure he appreciated all the posts from various family members. I wanted to thank you as well for the things you said, they brought a smile to my face. Wow, another temple in Utah to be built! And this one in Payson, which is where Elder Lundquist is from. He was my first companion in Wilmington and probably my favorite thus far on my mission. I'm sure he's more excited than I am!

Let's see, what else could I talk about? Oh yes, developing and exercising Christlike attributes. I've given a lot of thought to it over the past week concerning what I might share. In none of them am I even close to approaching where I ought to be, but the Lord has certainly made me recognize the need for them and has made me a more capable servant in His hands. I view the Christlike attributes chapter of Preach My Gospel as the one that holds the entire book together. The other things are very important, of course; but without a Christlike disposition when doing those things, it is basically meaningless. I suppose the best way I can sum up my feelings at this point is that I understand how important it is to accept the Lord's will and His timing and then do whatever He directs. In other words, see Mosiah 3:19. :) As I've worked to become a more complete disciple of the Savior, my recognicition of Him and His goodness to me and to the people I'm privileged to serve has also increased. I could probably say that this experience as a missionary has taught me the importance of maintaining a focus on the welfare and happiness of other people. I think Pres. Monson summed it up best when he said:

"To find real happiness, we must seek for it in a focus outside ourselves. No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellow man. Service to others is akin to duty---the fulfillment of which brings true joy."

I know that it is in becoming someone, not simply doing somethings, that Christ will change our natures to reflect His own. I will share further insights in the weeks to come, although it seems I do that anyway. I pray that you may do all things cheerfully and with the assurance that everything will work out like it's supposed to. Have a great week, and God Bless!