Week 24: Being happy really is as easy as choosing to be

What a crazy day! tomorrow there are the changes, but I get to stay in my area with Elder Cardenas!!! but... they are splitting my area, so we've had to find a new house and everything to get ready for the new missionaries that will be coming tomorrow. We looked everywhere for a house and just barely found one the other day just in time. So today we had to move all of our stuff... I really don't like moving... I'm so tired now... We didn't have the money to pay for the new apartment, so this morning we had to go into the offices in chalco to pick up the money. It ended up being a four hour trip, that really cuts into the p-day time... especially when you have to move all in the same day. 

Aside from all that craziness, I have quite a few stories this week. We met some very interesting people, sometimes it amazes me how interesting some people are. There was this one guy that we contacted on the sidewalk. He invited us inside and he had lots of roosters for cock fights. We sat down and started talking about where we live and such. We quickly realized that he wasn't completely sober at that moment, and it became perfectly obvious that he wasn't when he started talking about his holy water. He got up and brought out a shot glass and stuck it in my face to smell... Tequila... It was an interesting lesson as we talked about the Book of Mormon while he sipped his tequila.

The next crazy person that we met is actually a memeber. We were walking down the street after church and saw him walking towards his house. We hadn't ever visited him before so we asked him if he had a little time for us to share a message. We went into his house and shared a scripture, and then he went off.. He started talking about the dead that are everywhere. At first we had no clue what he was talking about, but then he started to point them out to us on the cement floor. Any time that there was anything that slightly resembled a face (like two dots for eyes and one for the mouth) he said that it was one of the dead. We asked him if he lived in his house with anyone else and he said "I live with the dead" he then got up and started showing us all the "dead" all over his house and on his back patio. I must admit I admire how hard he was trying to convince us, but as I realized that if we let him he would show us every single "dead" in his entire house we had to do something to get out of there, because I was hungry and our next appointment was to eat. I finally just said "That's very interesting, we would like to end with a closing prayer now" It worked and we were eating within the next 10 minutes.

Well I don't have a whole lot of time left. I'd like to finish up with a quick spiritual thought.

This week I have had a lot of ups and downs. We have been working really hard with people, but they just don't seem to be progressing or there are always things that come up that keep putting off the baptismal date. It's been a little bit of a stuggle for me to always keep the most positive attitude possible in every moment. I've been studying the lesson on the plan of salvation and something stuck out to me. God gave us our agency to act, that is one of our greatest gifts from him. We aren't always free to choose what happens to us, but we have the agency to choose how we are going to respond. It comes back to the principle of acting and not being acted upon. If we allow the things in our lives to make us miserable and bitter, we hinder our ability to progress from these learning apportunities. Focusing on having this attitude of using my agency to choose to be happy has really helped me make it through each day with a smile on my face, and I really am a lot happier. 

Moral of the story --- Being happy really is as easy as choosing to be. 

Love Elder Twede