Christ Is The Way

Heyyyyy!!! Sorry for not writing an email last week! We were hiking all day long!! It was actually an insanely beautiful hike! We drove over to Monsterrat, the most impressive cathedral/Monestary that I have ever seen, and then from there, hiked to the peak of the mountain. It was a cool hike, basically 1.5 hours of cement steps on the mountain, I never want to see stairs again. (Sadly we live on the 13th floor of our apartment...)

This week was another great one!! We were really busy, which has become the new normal, and pretty stressed as well ahah! I am in charge of taking care of all of the residency for the missionaries here, and boy it isn't easy with COVID. We have been struggling so hard to get any appointments at all, very soon, we will have a lot of illegal missionaries. I have been working with our area travel lady and our area lawyer in Germany, and we have come up with a new plan to try out this week and hopefully see some good results. We will be having 20 of the "Urgent Missionaries" helping us to get their own appointments, by going to the church and logging onto the computer from 8:50-9:10 every morning (the only time it's possible to get appointments). We could definitely use some prayers!!

I had an interview this week with President Galli, and also one with Hermana Galli. Wow, they are so amazing, They gave me some truly just incredible advice and comfort as well. I really have so much love for them and know they have been called of God to be here!

Of course President wanted to know how things have been going here in the office, and we had a really good discussion. I had honestly heard a ton of negative things about serving in the mission office and all that stuff. I was pretty nervous beforehand, but honestly, I really am enjoying it!! I mean I definitely cannot say that It isn't hard, or I enjoy waking up at 4:30 and going to bed at 1am some days, but the truth is that all missionary work is hard, life is always hard. But I have really been happy here, because I am surrounded by such amazing, powerful, spiritual Elders, and we have really just grown so close and have had so much fun just messing around sometimes! More than anything though, is I have really seen God helping me, giving me the strength to do all that I have needed to do, and really just lifting me up. It has been seriously incredible just seeing how He has just worked through me!! I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!!

Here is something cool that I learned this week! I was praying to get help loving people more and to not get annoyed so easily. Because now that I am working in the office, I have to deal with every missionary's problems, and some of them seem so simple or nonsense sometimes and just make my life harder.

Well we had a devotional last night and the topic was like straight revelation for me! It was about only focusing on Christ. In the mission, and in life, our whole purpose is to just be more like Christ, which involves a whole lot of change in ourselves. The people talking shared something that I really found interesting, if we want to change something about ourselves, we shouldn't just focus on what we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for! If my goal is to stop speaking or thinking poorly of people, my focus shouldn't be to just stop speaking poorly of people, (Even though that is clearly a good thing, but it can take too much of our focus and distract us), my focus should be on lifting people up. If we just put Christ as our focus, it doesn't matter what the situation or difficulty is, even if what we are focusing on is a good thing, the best thing for any situation is just focus on Christ, and the rest falls into place!
So my goal is to really really try that this week. I'll invite you all to do it with me. This week, do everything you can to just put your focus on Christ, and we will see real real real blessings from it!

I know this has been a long email... Sorrryyyyy buttt I'll finish it now, I love you all so much You are so amazing!!!

-Elder Boden

Picturessss:

1-2. Saying goodbye to Elder Toro, My trainer