"Hang on, exercise faith, and keep up good courage"

Hey Family!

To be honest, I don't really remember too many details of this past week... I remember it was good though!

Hopefully everyone had a good Valentine's Day! Our ward mission leader took us out to ice cream. It was really fun. They like to take us out to eat because we have this magical way of clearing out a restaurant. Must be the spirit :) you may think I'm exaggerating, but sadly I'm not. A week ago they took us to get frozen yogurt, and within five minutes the packed place was empty! Dairy Queen on Valentines Day, same story. Its pretty funny. So lesson learned: if you want to go out to eat and have the place to yourself, bring the missionaries.

We also got to go to a baseball game with one of our members. She works for the sporting section of the newspaper so she gets to go to all the sporting events in town (not like there are THAT many, but there is a college here so.) She was out on the field taking pictures and what-not and we were in the bleachers. It was so much fun! There was a man sitting behind us that sounded like Ramone from Happy Feet. His commentary on the game was HILARIOUS. He was very unimpressed and he didn't bother to hide it. Good times.

What else did we do?... We preached the gospel! Oddly enough. :) Oh we have this awesome investigator! He is crazy!! In a good way. We taught him the restoration and gave him a book of Mormon and a church tour. He is really studying and working to understand our religion. He says that I sparkle and that Sister Schaumkel is a pistol. :) Sadly, he only lives in our area for three days out of the week. The other four he lives like seventy miles away in Seffner. So we will probably have to give him up to Seffner Ward because that's where he lives on Sundays and that's where his family lives all the time.

That's pretty much the most exciting things that happened this week, but it was a good week!

Yesterday in relief society the lesson was on living joyfully in troubled times. There was a quote in there that really stood out to me! Joseph Smith said this to George A. Smith when George was really sick:

"He (the prophet) told me I should never get discouraged, whatever difficulties might surround me. If I were sunk into the lowest pit of Nova Scotia and all the Rocky Mountains piled on top of me, I ought not to be discouraged, but hand on, exercise faith, and keep up good courage, and I should come out on the top of the heap."

And I was thinking about the quote and I was like, "if I were in the lowest pit of Nova Scotia with the Rocky Mountains piled on top of me, that would be kind of a problem, and quite possibly a little bit painful."

Just a little! And if you think about it, there probably aren't too many problems that we face that are any worse than that. And the prophet basically told him, to just not worry and keep going and get over it. Cowboy up!

And its true, it doesn't matter what stresses, worries, discouragements, pain, heartaches that you have, its temporary and temporal. Life is eternal, and eternal things are the only things that we really need to worry about. And if we are trusting God and following Christ, then the eternal things are taken care of. If we keep that in mind then we will always be happy. Its not easy to always remember that, but we need to make the effort to.

So don't worry, be happy!

Love you all, have a great week!

Love always, Sister Rowland