This week was quite exciting with lots of big events.
Last Sunday was great. I accompanied all the Hermanas in my district to "Peace in Christ" during sacrament and it went really well. I was super nervous because I've played it twice in sacrament meeting back home, and both times I pretty much butchered it. I didn't want that to happen again, so I was praying a ton that I would be able to play the song well so I could help invite the Spirit into the meeting. The Lord definitely answered my prayer because it was the best I had ever played it for a performance. Elder Tall told me after he had been praying for me too cause he could tell I was nervous, so I was super grateful for that. I have an awesome companion. For our Sunday devotional we had the BYU men's Choir come and it was awesome. They sounded super good and brought the spirit super strong.
For those of you who don't know, it has been really difficult for missionaries who were called to Ecuador to get their visas because the Ecuadorian Consulate was burned down a while ago. So yeah the probability of me getting reassigned to another mission for a few months is very likely. On Tuesday, after lunch, Elder Tall and I walked back to our class and I checked my email and saw that I had an email from the travel office. It was so we could do some paperwork for our Visas and when I showed Elder Tall, he got so excited. If you are familiar with the show The Office, imagine the scene when Dwight gets made Regional Manager. It was literally the exact same. He started jumping up and down while yelling stuff like "YES ELDER WE'RE GONNA GET OUR VISAS WE'RE GOING TO ECUADOR LET'S GO RIGHT NOW." He was jumping and like punching the air and was just totally going crazy and I was just watching him and crying cause I was laughing so hard. We went to the Travel Office the next morning and filled out some paperwork and police forms and when we left we were pretty hopeful that we were going to go to Ecuador straight out of the MTC. Turns out, we were wrong.
In class the other day we were doing an activity called Book of Mormon share where we read the Book of Mormon as a class and just discuss it, It's a super awesome activity and it always invites the spirit really strong. We were reading in Mosiah 2 and I found a scripture that really hit me. It was Mosiah 2:21. It says:
"I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants."
Now this is kinda a random scripture but you have to dig deeper. What it's saying is if we spend all of our time serving the Lord, the one who preserves us and blesses us, the one who gives us the ability to choose for ourselves, it won't matter. We will always be unprofitable servants to him. There is nothing we can do to repay the Lord for all he has given us. At first this was kind of disheartening, but then I thought about it more. Although we will never be able to fully make it up to the Lord, we should still serve him with our whole souls. We should be the best unprofitable servants that we can possibly be. If we don't try to give him everything we have, he is not going to want bless or sustain us. I know I can never make it up to the Lord, but I am going to work as hard as I possibly can, because I want to give back as much as I can.
Now I'm sorry for leaving you on a cliff hanger about the visa situation and stuff. You probably have guessed that from the subject of my email, I have been reassigned. This morning as Elder Tall and I were doing our laundry, Elder Tall logged into his Missionary Portal so he could write his email. He then saw that his mission president was not the same person and he realized that he had been reassigned. He started getting excited and checked where he was going and saw that it was the Idaho, Boise Mission. To say the least, he would much rather be in Ecuador. After he saw his I was like, "shoot I gotta check mine." I checked my portal and saw my reassignment. I will be serving in the Oregon Portland Mission for probably 3-6 months. I am super super excited. Portland should be an awesome city and I can't wait to be out in the field. If you skipped my last paragraph to found out where I was reassigned, go back and read it cause it was a good message hahaha.
Alright now for the Volleyball Chronicles of Elder Spangler. Only one more addition after this one. This week was interesting for volleyball, I really didn't have any amazing plays. I did have one play where I kind of just blanked out and pretty much caught the ball and just dunked it over the net, which unfortunately is illegal in volleyball. I mostly play setter now so I don't spike or block as much, but I love setting. As a person who has never really played volleyball, it is really difficult to not touch the net. In a real volleyball game, if you touch the net it's a point for the other team or something like that. Everyone is all over the net here and the people that actually played volleyball get so mad about it. Yesterday I was playing and went up to block a sister and I hit the net and she was like "whoa brother watch the net." then I went up and got a really solid spike that made one missionary yell "whoa Elder Spangler is back" but I hit the net on that spike as well. If you come to the Provo MTC and play volleyball, don't hit the net. That was kinda a boring Chronicle addition, but I will make sure my last one next week is amazing.
Well, that's all for this week. I am super excited to go preach the gospel and be the best missionary I can be.
Please send me emails, even if they're really short. I love hearing from people back home.
Love and miss all of you.
Elder Spangler
I don't have a ton of time to take pictures so this is all I got.
I translated my family motto into Spanish and I say it sometimes to myself if I'm missing home.
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