March 14th, 2016

Dear Family,

It feels really good to have another PDay so soon. With how long we
had until the last PDay, a lot of missionaries are feeling burnt out.
I am even hoping to get a nap in today. The mission is kind of like
swimming, every once in a while you need to come up for air. If you
stay underwater for too long without coming up for air, then you start
to lose your strength, maybe even drown. Being in the office we see
right when other missionaries go home, and the reason a lot go home is
due to not being able to handle the pressure of a mission. The mission
may be difficult, but it is worth it. The principle of sacrifice that
you learn helps you better prioritize the important things later in
life.

Often we make life more complicated for ourselves, and a lot of the
stress can be eliminated by removing more from our busy day rather
than trying to squeeze more in. There is a great talk in the May 1992
Ensign entitled, Unclutter your Life. I invite you to read it and
ponder what in your day is "cluttering" your life. I know that I have
seen for myself the value in placing emphasis on family history when I
have had to rest. I could be selfish and take the time to have a break
from the busy day, but serving others has been more rewarding than if
I had just wasted the time. The spirit will speak to our hearts the
things we must change, if we are willing to ask the Father sincerely
for help in decluttering our lives.

In district meeting I learned that, when sharing a video, I don't have
to use the same approach of "what did you get out of that video?" I
can go right into teaching and testifying, then asking an inspired
question. Elder Winkler, Elder Marvin, and I gave a training on how to
improve companion study. We mentioned three main points that chapter 2
of Preach my Gospel covers: 1. Companion study invites the spirit; 2.
Companion study strengthens the companionship; and 3. Companion study
teaches us how to strengthen our investigators.

We were able to get an investigator, Oscar, to church. He came with a
less active family that we had been trying to get to church for a
while. He really seemed to enjoy the meeting and had lots of questions
he was asking. During Sunday school he ended up in the mission prep
class with the other people his age and got a crash course in the
first three missionary lessons. We are hoping to get in for a lesson
with him this week.

Elder Marvin has been holding up really well for going home in a
little over a week. He still has a good drive to work and hasn't
really been showing any signs of being "trunky". It will be sad seeing
him leave after such a short time, since we have become good friends.

One thing I have learned this week is the power of personal
experiences. I would love to hear some experiences from all of you of
how you know that a certain principle is true. It could be tithing,
service, keeping the sabbath day holy, or any principle that you have
a personal testimony of. I know that as we share our experiences with
others they can relate to us better and they feel the genuine warmth
that the gospel brings.

--
Elder Aaron King
Ohio Columbus Mission

This is our quest board we made. We were looking for a way to make
weekly planning more fun so we turned all our tasks into an RPG where
we get experience points for accomplishing missionary work tasks and
are then rewarded when we level up (reaching our goals). This has been
really fun so far, it has been motivating us to try harder every day.

Our district at the temple.

Our companionship at the temple. You can see by my "smile" that I was
done taking pictures in the rain and I wanted to leave.