Elder Cloward: India Bengaluru Mission: E-mail Nov. 16, 2015: "Back to good ol' mother nature.‏"

Aaaaahhh, I can breathe again. This morning some of the missionaries from our zone decided to wake up early to go for a hike. I was less than enthusiastic at first knowing how early we'd have to get up and how much time would be sacrificed on one of our precious P-days, but once the journey started I was glad I decided to go. After spending the last 15 months in 4 different extremely crowded cities and never seeing more of mother nature than a bunch of weeds and an occasional palm tree growing out of the sidewalk it was pure bliss to be able to walk through the mountains and enjoy the beauty of god's creations. The funny part is that the mountains here in San Jose look almost identical to some of the mountains in Utah, and after hiking through them and ending up at a waterfall with an uncanny resemblance to the one up Adam's Canyon in Davis county let's just say I was got a little trunky today. ;)

The work people here in San Jose are awesome, and I'm growing to love them more and more. It's funny how love has a strange ability to change your attitude about something, or maybe it's that your attitude can change how much you love something, or maybe it's both; but I noticed this week that I'm learning to laugh at many of the things that used to bother or irritate me. For example, I used to hate it when we'd be teaching a lesson and the investigator's young child would be running around the house half or completely nude (which happens surprisingly often here), but I found myself laughing last night as our investigator's wild and pants-less toddler ended up putting on a show while his parents tried to get him to sit still. It's crazy what a little bit of love for your fellow man can do to help you to enjoy life instead of getting stressed out about the little things, and I challenge each of you take an opportunity this week to love, laugh, and live a little more. :)

Mahal ko kayo! :)