iPad's! New companion

Hey family! 

So, I am writing this email on my new.......IPAD! And it's awesome. Feels so weird to have technology Now but it is already helping the work out a lot. 

So let's go through the week. It was definitely good but at the same time it was pretty rough:

Tuesday we drove to Louisville for transfers. Some of the missionaries leaving the mission were pretty hard for me to say goodbye to. Some of them were pretty close friends and it's like having to say goodbye to your family again! My new companion is elder Russell, he's a good guy and we are getting along and he's a dang hard worker. He's only been out for just under a year haha so it's nice to have a young missionary! On Tuesday evening we had a long Stake coordination meeting that we had to go to, but it was a good meeting and I always receive a lot of insights.

On Wednesday we had to take a missionary to the doctor at 10:30 to get a check up on his knee and then at noon we drove to Louisville again to go to the additional iPad training. We walk into the church building next to the mission office and at the front of the chapel there are tons of boxes and inside those boxes are iPads. It was awesome. The meeting was just for the zone leaders in the mission and there we were trained on how to set up the iPads so that we could then take the rest of the iPads back to our zone and distribute them to the missionaries and train them how to set them up properly. So for our zone we had to take back 37 iPads and cases. Just picture that in your mind. 2 Mormon missionaries driving in a car and in the trunk there are basically 40 iPads. Thats a lot of money haha the church and the Lord have a LOT of trust in us. 

So now the goal was to distribute the iPads to the missionaries. So we broke it up into 3 different trainings. We had 2 different trainings on Thursday and then on Friday we had the last one. The districts within our zone would just meet where they usually have district meetings and we would drive there. The trainings took anywhere between 2 and 4 hours, depending on how fast the wifi was haha. We had to take the missionaries step by step through all the set up and getting everything working right. But gosh I felt like Santa Clause walking into the church with boxes of iPads and then giving them out to the missionaries! I did actually find a Santa hat and I wore it when I walked into the room where all the missionaries were. It was super funny! 

Maggie's baptism unfortunately didn't happen. She texted us this week and said that she wanted to postpone and that she needed some space for right now. So that's all we've heard from her. That was enough to break someone's heart. It was hard to hear that after working with someone for so long. But we have Hope and we are trying our hardest to keep the discouragement down. Elder Zwick told us, in one of the trainings he gave to the mission, that's it's ok to be discouraged for a little bit but you have to get over it quickly. And so that exactly what we've done. 

On Friday we FINALLY had time to sit down and plan out our transfer and set our goals that we want to accomplish in the next 3 months in this area. We set goals for how many baptisms we would have and we made plans as to how we could make this transfer different than others before. As we pondered for quite some time the words of a great missionary that just went home this transfer came to mind. Before missionaries go home they give their "words of wisdom" in the transfer meeting. This is what this Elder said: 

"To sum up a mission in 3 words:

Faith, Hope and Charity.......

Faith, because you can`t let your attachment to the past outweigh your confidence in the future.

Hope, because staying strong while sailing uncharted seas in not possible without the anchor of the Lords promises. 

And above all, Charity, because this work is never about me and it is never about you, love God and love those you serve.

Have faith and Hope that as you exercise Charity and lose yourself in the service of others you will find yourself.

Remember that if you never let go of who you were, you will never discover who you are and who you can become."

These words penetrated my heart and I felt the spirit as I read over them again and again. We knew that this is what we were going to work on so we could help more people come unto Christ. Since we have set that goal we have had experiences where we really had to work hard at  exercising Faith, hope and Charity. But gosh, those really are the 3 most important attributes we can have! To get through all of the opposition we are going through you HAVE to have Hope. And to really be a true missionary you HAVE to have Charity. 

On Saturday we finally had a day where we didn't have to take care of Zone Leader business and we could work all day! So, we decided to hit the bikes! In a matter of 2 hours we talked to 45 people and gave out 7 copies of the Book of Mormon. Man that day felt SO good! It was hot and sweaty but we felt great! 

Sunday we had Stake Conference and Elder Zwick was there again. He has been to our mission so much. Last we he was here for the iPad training, he was here this weekend for conference and he'll be here next week for our MLC and another mission conference. I guess he just loves Kentucky! He had a very close and personal connection with Elder Perry, so when he passed, it was very hard on him. He talked a lot about him in conference. It was so cool! 

That was pretty much our week! Let me tell you, a mission is not easy. Sometimes it causes a broken body, other times a broken mind, and sometimes it even causes a broken heart. But what I learned this week is that God uses broken things. 

   "It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread,  and broken bread to give strength. It is Peter, weeping bitterly and broken Hearted, who returns to greater power and Strength than ever."  And it has been my broken Heart, body and mind that has driven me to seek Heavens divine help. And I have found it. 

I love you all!!!

Elder Eastin

Sent from my iPad

A view from my desk