Hey Family

Sorry not so much time this week!  I will give you some brief stories and such!

Tuesday we had the amazing opportunity as always to go to the temple.  What a great place to be.  But on top of just attending and doing the work of the lord, we had the opportunity to hear our returning missionaries final testimonies.  A last chance for them to bear testimony, and for us to hear and learn something from old experienced missionaries.  I was surprised to see my own companion get up, and bear heartfelt testimony about the face that God can feel pain.  It was a crude start, that turned into a deeply moving testimony.  My companion is very...straightforward individual, and usually the butt of many jokes, and a lot of people look at him weirdly.  But he had almost every missionary in that room with tears.  It was a very moving experience.  He said, "For 734 days I have been a missionary, and except for 1 or 2 of those days, I would have rather had been dead.  But at least I have felt a small bit of what our savior has felt for us."  It was truly touching.  

Unfortunately, a couple of days later, tensions ran high between us and we were separated for the remainder of the transfer (6 days).  It was heartbreaking for me.  It really sucks to have that happened.  I really love this guy.  And I wish it would not have happened, I wish a lot of things were different, but ultimately, I feel that it  was the best thing that could have happened for us.  

Now Elder Gildea, and I are together.  And it's been fun.  Do I hurt still?  Yeah.  Have I just decided to be humble and learn from this.  Yeah.  That's all I can do at this point.  I hope in the future I can fix some wounds and such, but as we all know, there are wounds only time itself can heal.  

So me and Elder Gildea are making the best of it.  We already have a baptismal date, and some investigators to church so things are looking up.  We got our transfer calls and had predicted that they were going to close the other elders area and just have us together, we were right.  So next transfer me and elder Gildea  will be together alone.  So I'm excited, I know my last companion.  

Nearing the end of my mission, its getting harder.  Everyone keeps emailing me "Sprint to the finish" etc.  I'm going to be honest, Its hard  just to keep walking sometimes.  But elder Gildea is hard working and is going to push me to the end.  

So everyone pray for me.  We are going into the last weeks left and I don't want to leave any regrets to be had.  I'm going to leave everything on the table and just work my butt off.  As my old band director used to say "Hearts out and butts off"  and that's the only way I run.

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Elder Yamagata