it has really hit me this week knowing how little time i have left, i was reading in the doctrine and covenants the other day and i realized how long i had left and i spaced out thinking about how i'm not ready to go home and how i wish i could continue. then a couple days after that i got a letter from the mission office telling me "now that you only have a couple months left you need to make sure you give it your best and endure to the end, to be an example to younger missionaries" and i had another blue day when i was kind of out of it! it's really weird though because i never thought i'd be to this point, i always heard of missionaries getting there but i always told myself i wouldn't be like that, and here i am feeling those same feelings.

i'm going to miss being a full time missionary being able to forget about myself and solely focus on other people and how i can help them. i love seeing the joy people can recieve in their lives and the awesome friendships i've built out here.


but enough sad stuff, this past week besides all of that was a pretty good week. we are offically our own "unit" down in Parachute, yesterday made it final that the Parachute branch was created. although we will not start meeting 'til the 26th of this month it is a branch and we found out who our branch Presidency is. it was a pretty easy guess though and i had 2 out of the 3 right. i'm really looking forward to it though, and so are most of the members down there. some of them are really sad that they wont be together with the same big group of people as they have been for the past however long they've been a ward together. but it is sweet knowing that the work of the Lord is moving forward! :)

the stake President came up to Elder Castro and i and told us that he is excited about all of the work we have going on down there, i thought that was awesome hearing that from him.

In Rifle every year about this time they have a community Christmas choir event when the choirs from the the Catholic church, Methodist church and the Mormon church all go to one of their buildings and they sing. that was last night and i really enjoyed it, it was held in our church this year and the whole chapel was full and all the way back into the gym. the different choirs got up and sang and then at the end of it all of the congregation got up and sang together, it was really neat to see all of these different faiths together singing and worshipping our Savior Jesus Christ! We had 2 of our investigators show up which was great, our Branch Presidents wife brought them for us because they weren't able to drive themselves so it was a good opportunity for them to fellowship them as well!

Other than that we had an average week, we were able to go tracting, and we taught 17 lessons and we even got to do some service! :) so it was a good week.

i love you all and cant wait to talk to you in 12 days! crazy huh?
love Randy