I'm back

Hey Everyone, it has been a while since I have sent out an email, but I thought that today might be the day to do so here we go. I was put back in the Mandarin ward about 2 months ago and it has been going very well. I love the people here and the friends are progressing super well. We live in the mandarin south area of Calgary, and the church building for the Mandarin building we go to is in the North West, and so often when we are teaching friends, they don't want to make the bus/train ride up to the NW and don't end up coming to the mandarin ward. We offer to go to the English Wards with them sometimes, and one Sunday we were with our friend Lily at an English church service and we saw some Chinese people there. They were not members, and actually were being taught for a while by the missionaries before, but needed to go back to China. They are back now, and one day they called us out of the blue and said "how soon can my son be baptized?" We told him ASAP and he'll be baptized on the 25th. This friend from YSA named Anna was being taught for about 8 months, and she never really became fully dedicated to getting baptized, but the elders after I left ending up stopping teaching her, and a week later she called them and said it was time. It was a super cool experience and she asked me to baptize her so that was really awesome. Our friend Brydee was baptized too. I just started teaching her at the beginning, but she is the sweetest old lady. We love Brydee. Same thing with our friend Artur, but I wasn't able to go to his baptism. He is a champ though. The lord has been blessing this area like crazy. This last week at church we had 15 non-baptized people come from our area, and 10 people that we were currently teaching. It was wild. I also met this white guy who taught Chinese at BYU Idaho and his Chinese was one of the greatest I have ever seen. Honestly the most impressive thing I have seen in a while. I was considering going up to him and starting to talk in Chinese because you would have thought he was adopted into Beijing and just recently came to Calgary by how he spoke. Honestly I wouldn't have been surprised if he didn't know English. I hurt my back last week and couldn't move for a couple days. Turns out it was actually nothing, but in the process of getting X-rays we now know I have mild scoliosis. I've been golfing recently on P-days. It's a blast but I might be the worst golfer you have ever met before. Other Things: - Mega Bed - We got new mission presidents - We got to take out all the new guys. Anyways I really do love my mission. One of my favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon is Alma 29 because Alma talks about how he wishes he "could speak with the trump of God" to "cry repentance unto every people... that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth." He later goes on to say that he "[sins] in [his] wish." In a BYU devotional given by J.B. Haws called "Wrestling with Comparisons," he puts forward a reason why this might be a sin by saying, Alma,"understood deeply that comparisons—which then can fuel envying and coveting or self-loathing and the paralysis of inaction—can really be just that debilitating. They can keep us from playing the vital role that has been “allotted unto [us],” and so Alma needed to call it like he saw it: he was sinning in his wish." I believe that far too often when we talk about comparing ourselves to others, it comes in the form of "I am not as good as they are" or "I'm not as smart as they are." What is equally as debilitating is what we don't focus on enough, "I'm doing good because at least it's better than them" or "I guess I'm doing OK because at least it's above what they are doing." Alma was a tool in the Lord's hand to bring thousands to baptisms, something he could easily boast about, but he was still less than an Angel would have been. Alma, after recognizing the sinfulness of his wish also expresses, "why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called?" I like this because it sheds light on a point that I wanted to bring up: God has given us what he has given us, and he expects us to do what we can with it. Maybe we genuinely are smarter or less smart than someone, but that has no importance in the grand scheme of things. If God has blessed us with something, we should amplify the work he has called us to do with that thing and try to amplify the blessings he has given us as well. One of my past companions always talks about becoming the Man that God needs him to become. God doesn't compare horizontally to other people, he compares vertically with ourselves. We should not and cannot think we have gotten to the point we need to be at, and we should not think we are terrible just because someone else is ahead of us. The only thing to focus on is as my companion put, "becoming the man that God wants me to become." Anyways I hope that makes sense and I love you all. I'll likely send another one of these before I go home so keep your eyes peeled. - Elder Horsley