Flat Tires, Punched Appointments and Pink Laundry: Everything has a Purpose

Dear Family & Friends -

Below is Elder Coffman's latest email.  If you didn't already hear, last week while doing his laundry David put a red towel in with his whites!  Needless to say, they all turned PINK!   The remedies we sent didn't work and Sister Sagers was working with him also - with no luck.   So a lesson was learned and looking back, it will be a good mission story.  Thanks so much to the Parkinson's and their generous help in replacing those items!   Thanks also to Anne and the suggestions and support.

Also, as you'll read below, Stephen jumped right on the request for hymns and talks in Spanish and we're mailing those out today.

Have a great week and take care.

Love,

The Coffman Family

Fort Worth Snow? Yep - 2/12/12

OK, I’m going to write in Spanish (: jaja I like Spanish more than English.  But thanks for the advice on the clothes.   I can send the shirts.  This week was hard because we had a lot of problems with our bikes.  We were riding on our bikes to our appointment and suddenly, my bike tire had a flat so we couldn’t get to some of the appointments and we had to walk.  It was really slow, but we stilled tried to work.  We bought new tires from Wal-Mart, but that one already had holes and we had to walk more and it was so slow.  Finally, a member helped us with the bikes but even so, our numbers weren’t very good.  It was very slow and many of our investigators “punched” in our appointments.  “Punched” means they weren’t there for our appointment.  But this made me realize that the numbers aren’t so important.  They are important, but we still had many good lessons and we had immeasurable success growing individually, just like our investigators.  I learned, like Stephen said, that everything has a purpose because we had some opportunities since we had problems with our bikes.  I was reading the talks from last general conference and there are a lot of good talks, but the one that especially called my attention was the talk about missionary work.  It was given in the Priesthood session.  It says that every returned missionary should look at his/her mission experience and realize how the mission helped him/her.  By doing this, we will use these things that helped us for our own wellbeing and also that of our families.  So, papá (Daddy) and Stephen, read this talk because I know that I can’t understand it completely, but look back over your missions and you are going to have many blessings from your mission.

Mother, thanks for the advice about my clothes.  Good job with your phlebotomy class.  I am always going to pray for you (: I liked it when I saw the words “pink shirts” in pink jaja it was really funny.  But I’m really grateful for our families and I always tell our investigators that this is one of the most important things to me, that I know without a doubt I can live with my family forever with my Heavenly Father.  God has given us all the things we need to return, but He doesn’t want us to do it alone.  That’s why we have a family.  I love you Mother.

Michelle!!!!  Little trickster!!!! jajaja jk but what is open mike night?  Is it during school or what?  But you can sing really well.  Don’t be afraid hermanita (little sister) (:  I know it is important not to judge others also.  This is the Work of Jesus Christ because He knows everything we do with a perfect knowledge.  I love you hermanita.  Do you still want to serve a mission? Bye.

Papá (Daddy), that’s really good for Parker.  And that is really funny about Russ also.  I never thought he would say something good about BYU, but he did it jaja and muchos nosotros!!!! wowow gluton jaja but we don’t do anything besides the Work on p-days.  We just write and clean and other such things.  I don’t like p-days a lot.  I just like working.  But I know they are necessary.  You can see these videos in lds.org also.  I like it a lot.  And good job with the Book of Mormon.  That’s a great blessing in our lives and we should delight in the scriptures like Nephi.  I love you.

¡Hermanito!  How are you doing?  I am going to send Alma a letter this week.  And I have a testimony that God has a plan for every one of His children because I have seen a lot of miracles that happen by means of things which are, seemingly, coincidences.  I love this work and thanks for your advice.  Maybe you could send me more music in Spanish, like Hymns, etc... and CDs with general conference talks in Spanish because I need to hear the language.  That’s that hardest part for me.  Sometimes I can’t understand what people are saying.  I am trying to watch movies about the Restoration, etc… in Spanish, but it’s hard.  Especially with women and children jaja but what helped you with this? Bye.