6:24 AM
This email is going to be particularly short, I only have about ten minutes left.
This week went be really fast. Last week we had our personal interviews with President Sperry which went really well. President Sperry is awesome, he's just like a little kid. In his opening remarks, he went to give one of the missionaries a high-five and "dolphin-ed" him! It was the funniest thing ever. Ask Jason to show you what that is. My interview went really well; it was good to just know that President is proud of and acknowledges the work we've been doing here. It doesn't get much better here in Mapayapa.
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| Playing Jeopardy waiting for interviews. |
I've been really tired this week because we've been working so hard - giving all we've got. There's nothing like being exhausted after a long day. Every night after planning, the four of us in the house usually take turns taking a shower in the one shower that we have. I usually just write in our records for the day and iron my shirt and go last - because you know me, I'm just that nice. This past week though, after planning, instead of waiting, I've fallen asleep every night on my desk in complete exhaustion - it's been awesome. One night, the elders decided they wanted to do something funny and covered me in baby powder. My dreams of becoming whiter came true that night.
I really tried to apply Jason's advice to me in his email last week to the work and my life this week. My little brother is clearly inspired.
Everything must be done in order; like the scriptures say, we must have "milk before meat." Step by step, line upon line, precept upon precept. When we take these steps, we get as much in as we put in, and our success is determined by the effort we put in - not merely statistical outcomes such as numbers and grades. The trick is knowing how to put in effort the right way.
Jason taught me last week about something he learned in the music world, about how studying music professionally now and working with famous musicians from around the world can be a bit overwhelming. The point given though, is that you can have the best of the best teach you how they prefer to do things. Celine Dion could teach you how she sings. Michael Jordan could teach you how he plays basketball. Mat Squires could teach you how he works out. But the fact of the matter is that you need to find out what works for you, because that will determine how effective your effort will be that you put in.
In short, be yourself. Be your best self. Find your talents and do what works for you. We are all different and all bring different things to the plate, but when we do what works for us, we magnify ourselves to better help others.
This week, I've started out that trek - finding out what works best for me as a missionary. It's definitely not an overnight thing. In my mission, I've lost myself sometimes in comparing myself to other missionaries and the success they have - unhealthy competition. We just simply can't let ourselves compete with others and compare ourselves exactly against them. If you're going to beat anyone, beat yourself.
Week ahead looks good. A nice, long normal week. Today we spent a really long time at Wawa Dam (again) for our zone activity so emails got cut kind of short. This week we have temple tour on Saturday and it will be goodbyes to a lot of my really good friends on the mission. I hope all is well back home. Thanks for the updates on the Superbowl mom. Those bowling scores are particularly low dad.
Love,
Elder Corpuz
P.S. I ran into Elder Posadas (of all people) on the way to Wawa today. Mark this day down in history that Elder Posadas had a better hair day than me today haha. He commented on how horrible my hair looked, and I commented on how horrible his neon-blue shoelaces looked. Gotta love it.
