We have seen some cool tender mercies...

Dear Fam,

This has been a good week and we have seen some cool tender mercies throughout our days. Yeah we are starting to implement some of our new ideas and that is yielding some new results. It wasn't game changing, but at least for us it is nice to have somewhat of a change of pace. I do feel a new sort of urgency that I want to fit as much as I can in such a short amount of time. I am just grateful that we have progress no matter how small or slow it is. 

I wanted to share a couple cool things from this last week. First we had an awesome Zone Meeting this week and we had a whole instruction on Positive Psychology. We got to watch a Ted talk about the correlation between success and happiness. Many people believe that success comes before happiness, but with that mentality you will always want to be more successful in what you are doing and you trap your self into never attaining the happiness that you deserve. But if you decide that happiness can come at all times in life then you will have a higher chance of being successful because your attitude will directly influence your productivity and efficiency. So in the end to be truly successful is actually to be happy. They found that when they encouraged people to develop certain habits that it would increase your mental positivity. Here they are:

Write down three things you are grateful for each day.

Keep a journal

Exercise

Meditate

Random Acts of Kindness

He said that if you make a conscious effort to do this for at least 21 days that it will help change your positivity and your happiness. I think that he is definitely right and the cool thing is those are things that the church has encouraged us to do for decades. The reason that we are encouraged to do that is because all of those things increase our spirituality and then as a result increases our relationship with Heavenly Father. So going even further when people are following these habits they are really building their relationship with God and their very own Spirit. Happiness is a fruit of the Gospel! Pretty cool. I am going to try to do that 21 day challenge as I am finishing up my mission. 

Another cool thing about that meeting is I was able to play a little musical number. It was fun to be able to use that talent again, I still get super nervous haha but it is rewarding. 

Now another cool story. On tuesday our evening was really open so Elder Smiley and I decided to call as many people as we could from our Area Book. A lot of them we got no responses, but they were a few that answered and then out of those few we were able to set up two visits. We set up a lesson with a guy named K. He is 17 years old, from the Bahamas and is a really intelligent person. He was the valedictorian of his High School and he just has a really open and willing heart. We asked him how he has seen God's love in his life and he told us that it was his family. He said that he has been blessed with a great family that loves him and supports him and because of that he knows that God loves him too. That is a pretty mature outlook for a 17 year old college student. We were able to teach him the Restoration and he agreed to read the Book of Mormon and be baptized if he finds that it is true. We are really looking forward to working with him more. Update on Sam...we haven't been able to get in contact with him for the past couple weeks. That is kinda disappointing, but we will keep trying!

I better get going. I love you guys so much and I just want to thank you for all the support everyone gives through prayers, letters and helping the missionaries in their area too. I love yall!

Elder Devin Soper