spiritually AND physically HUGE

11 March 2013

Dear Home,

Well I'm not dead....and neither is my companion. The first couple days were not the greatest for me as you could tell from the last email but life is now looking up. We are starting to get along better and have held one or two conversations since he got here. He is a really nice guy and likes to work hard which comes from working on a farm. So thank you Ron Bula for letting me work on your farm, I now have something to talk about with my companion. One of the topics that we got talking about last night actually was about lifting and where we want to be with it after the mission. He started lifting in 7th grade and in high school got his bench up to 310 which was a little better then my best...135. We joked with each other about it and set goals for each other and now we are going crazy with the arm lifts. I'm going to be Spiritually and Physically HUGE when I get back. I can't wait.

It rained again down here while we were working and got soaked. My shoes are still drying out and I now have athletes foot, as well as stinky feet.

We got the opportunity to teach a family of four, father and mother Travis and Jennifer and the kids Travis and Tyson. The parents aren't married and when we brought up baptism with them it was a conflicting matter because they would have to be married before they could get baptized and they weren't ready to move on with that part. The questions that Jennifer brought up were very good questions and made me think a lot about families after we had left. There are so many people in the world where the central values of a family have been distorted and crumbled at the foundation. Many people don't know what a good family looks like as well as how one would function. I can tell that this is a large targeting point of the adversary. We often times get distracted from the fundamentals that matter most in life and for a lot of us, including me, don't even know it. Such as when is the last time we sat down and talked with our Grandparents either in person or on the phone. What about contacting all our our brothers and sisters each week. I have noticed with people down here that most talk with their family members about 3 times a year and they are ok with it.

I also thought about the comment I made last week about being a father and have decided that I am training my companion so well that I am ready for fatherhood and the day I get home I am adopting myself a child. Or a dog. Which ever one can learn to get the newspaper first. Ah just kidding parenting is hard and I have to give anyone credit that can do it with a smile. The mothers and fathers of this world have a large responsibility upon them and that is to prepare the world for the third generation, through their next generation. All the problems of the world can be fixed through parenting. A lot of pressure but lots of blessing as well. Thank you parents for putting up with me :)

Love Elder Leonhardt