Time is Everything

Hello,

So, I'm sitting here, in a cyber... and, I don't know what I'm going to write today. hmm...

Glad to hear from your emails that everyone is staying super busy.  One of the things I learned out here is that doing nothing usually stinks.  I hate doing nothing.  Today me and Elder Taylor were thinking of what we wanted to do for our P-day, we realized that we were both REALLY tired so we made a plan to do nothing today.  Which sounded good until we got about ten minutes into it... then we figured out that doing nothing is relaxing, but REALLY boring, so we went with the normal fallback of playing fútbol (soccer) in the park with the rest of the zone.  Now we're even more tired, but at least we didn't do nothing.

Staying busy is fantastic, but sometimes stress can be a factor with a full planner.  It is well known among the Church Missionary Department that stress can be a missionary killer, so we've been given guidelines of how to recognize stress and fatigue, and what we ought to do for it.

We are encouraged to take 20 minutes naps sometimes.  We're on the lords time, but if it means that we'll be more effective after the fact we can take naps up to 20 minutes to keep ourselves working more effectively. We are also encouraged to sit on a park bench from time to time for 5 minutes. This amazingly helps a TON with giving yourself a chance to organize your brain, also, if we take one of two bench breaks in a day, we find that we aren't as burned out when we get home at night.

Time is everything.  When it comes down to it, I think the most precious substance is time: we can't buy it, everyone needs it, and everyone wants it.  Sometimes it doesn't make sense to take a break when not everyone in Ecuador has received the amazing truth yet, but it turns out that if we're stressed or fatigued we wont be able to work with all of our might, mind, and strength- therefore making it very difficult to have the spirit with us.  And when we don't have the spirit with us we wont get very many things done.

I always remember the phrase I learned on the Ballroom Dance team:

"Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."

When we take things slowly we can do them more effectively, and when we're effective we get things done faster AND, even better; we get them done well.
These are principles that are very important as missionaries.  I also believe that they apply to everyone else too.  sometimes when we have too many things on our plate we feel like we got to get it all done NOW and that it's IMPOSSIBLE and that we're GOING TO DIE and I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHEN TO GET STARTED and that THAT WORLD IS OVER.

Sit down, take five minutes to meditate.  Then keep calm and carry on.

Things get done when we aren't stressed and we make ourselves a smooth-getting-things-done-kind-of-machine.

En Pocas Palabras: Take that five minute break that you don't have time for, Meditate, then kick some butt.

Also I would like to put it out there one more time that doing nothing is terrible and that without facebook or video games or books it is a bad bad idea to put on your things to do book.

And that is my rant for the day.  Amen.

Everything around here is going great.  we're doing our best to teach Jaime not to speak blasphemies and we are trying hard every day to find new people to share our message with.

My health is good, I've had a cold for 9 days but that's kinda just a result of rain season.
On Sunday we got pounded by rain in the afternoon and we had to trudge through the ankle deep river that we usually call the highway.
Me and Elder Taylor have been talking about getting us a boat for the next encounter with Ecuador's nutting rain showers.  Apparently in other cities the water goes up to the waist.

I'll write you all next week.  Imma go take a five minute nap and then get to work. (Pday ends at 6:00)

I'll talk to you all later!


~Cameron