Sister oh Sister ( a letter to Camille from South Africa)

Sister oh Sister,
How are you doing? I didn't get my weekly Grant letter! What happened there?

I wanted to write you a letter this week, but then it turned into this way to deep super complicated story about life, so I will work on it and it should get to you sometime. But I had an experience this week that I thought you and I could both learn from so I wanted to share it with you. I KNOW that in almost every letter I send you I talk about being grateful, have a good attitude, etc. But I just want to emphasize it AGAIN! So this week I had a sad experience. I had the privilege of meeting with a man who did not have anything going for him in life. He had no Job, his wife left him, he lives in a shack, I could go on and on but the point is, everything you and I have going for us, he did not have. After talking with him for a bit he broke down to me and told me how he had just sold everything that he did have in order to purchase a gun (which he had in the house) so that he could take his life. I will not go into details for obvious reasons, but I had a very powerful hour with this man where we talked him out of taking his life.

This and experiences like this get me to think of how blessed we are back home. Fast forward a couple days in the story and this man came to church. He was so happy. I had never seen something so simple as attending church make someone so happy before.

The moral of the story is to count your many blessings. We can either go through life complaining about the things that we do not have, or the things that are not going our way, OR we can go through life rejoicing and giving thanks for the things that we have been abundantly blessed with. If we give thanks, it is obvious to see that we will be much happier, instead of complaining about, school, weather, friends, etc.

Things to do:

1. Look for the good this week. Focus your efforts on finding good in the situation instead of the bad.

2. Show that you recognize the good. I learned something very interesting in school before I came on my mission. We had a lesson one day about the power of complimenting people. I tried it out and amazingly it was very affective. As you strive to look for the good in someone, and complement them, that person thinks of you as a much better person than they did before, and you feel happy as well.

This week I would like you to try at LEAST 3 complements per day on 3 different people. One of those need to be in your family each day as well. THEN if you don't mind, write me a letter at the end of the week and let me know how it goes.
Alright I better go write a family letter now!
Love you

Elder Williams