Tamales, Goats and Clothing Irons

Hello.

If you are reading this, it means that I have successfully sent this email. And if you are not reading this, then I suppose I can say whatever I want about you and you would never know.

So as I write this, I am actually currently in a restaurant called "The Tamale Store" eating, as you might have guessed, a tamale. Fun fact though, there's no such thing as a tamale. The correct singular form of the word tamales, is actually tamal. Shout out to my Dad for teaching me that. 

Well, although this week went by faster than a hummingbird on a treadmill, it was a really good week. 

So in recent news, our apartment got a new clothing iron finally! The one we have from before works, except we couldn't use it because apparently there was an Elder who lived here a long time ago who used it to make a grilled cheese sandwich. 

Also, I learned that Arizona can be pretty weird sometimes. For example, there's this super nice rich person neighborhood that we cover, except there's randomly a bunch of goats behind a fence on one street. It's crazy. They're just these goats. And there's this sign on the fence that's like, "Feed them at your own risk, the goats bite" or something to that effect. And all the people who live there don't know who they belong to and they don't even question it. They just use it as a landmark. They're like, "oh yeah I just live two blocks from the goats." Or "I live on the other side of the goats." It's crazy.

Speaking of the goats, last week I told you about the lady we started teaching who has the family. Well her name is Zina, and they live pretty close to the goats. That's not really what I wanted to tell you about though. What I wanted to tell you about is that she will be getting baptized later this month! And her husband is going to be able to baptize her as a well! They are very excited. So am I. It's just been amazing to see her recognize all these blessings come into her life. The Spirit is very present in their home, and Zina talks about how it hasn't always like that and how this really is what she's been missing from her family and her home and she's just been recognizing so many blessings just in the past few weeks. She is just so happy that she is going to be baptized. It just makes me so happy to see this family make these choices to bring them closer to Jesus Christ which brings them more happiness into their lives. Like I said last week, I and my siblings have been so blessed to have the teachings of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in my home my whole life. And to help bring Christ's Gospel to another family who hasn't had that, and to see those blessings come into their lives, it's just amazing. It makes me so happy.

So before I make like a Christmas gift and wrap up, I wanted to share this quote I came across this week. It's from C.S Lewis. He says: "Don't shine so others can see you; shine so that through you, others can see Him." That quote just hit me so hard when I heard it. I just really love that quote. As you probably assumed, Him refers to the Savior. And I love the quote because it is all because of Him. He's the reason we can be happy and we can be a light to others. One of the names in the scriptures that He is referred to as is the Light. He truly does bring light and joy to the World. And we can spread that joy to others as we serve and love and minister to them. And when we do so sincerely out of our love for God's children and our love for Christ and not out of pride, people will see His light. 

Well, I hope that you all have a wonderful week. 

Til we meet again,

~Elder Oswald

P.S.- Attached is a picture of why I love buying my own cereal. 

Also here are a few other pictures from p-day and here's what Kendall said about it in my email: As a district, with the exception of the Wainrights, we got permission to get up at 4:00 and hike up Camelback Mountain. And that was a hike and a half. It was super steep and lots of rocks and stuff. There was one point where there was a metal railing we had to hold onto because of how steep. And you already know we made a reference to the iron rod. We got to watch the sunrise though when we were on the top which was really cool. The sunrise came later than expected though and so it was freezing up on the top of the mountain where there was no protection from the wind. We were there waiting for a good while and it was really funny because we were like joking that the sun was never gonna come. It was cold. The sunrise was really cool though. 

Also, Elder Bower and I have been collecting the money that members will randomly give us, and so after we went hiking we went to the Pasteleria with $58. I'll send a picture of that. It was awesome.