"Humbled!" 8/19/13

Wow thanks for your great emails! i honestly cant believe everybody is coming home! haha its espically weird for Steve to be home cause we entered the same day! Glad to know everyone is doing good! This week was humbling! oh man quad zone conference was good and we were super busy getting everything ready for it. our training on wednesday was kind of a dud, it was good but not what we expected. i learned a valuable lesson and it humbled me for sure. Thursday was a little better, we changed some things but we were right before lunch so we were crammed for time, all is well that ends well, take the experience, learn from it, and GO! For our work we saw miracles happen this week with the family we are teaching! the dad has been less active and just recently got the priesthood, we worked with the bishop to help him be the one to bless the sacrament on sunday, we gave him a polo, tie and slacks. as we taught them this week we saw his attitude change and the desire grow, his whole contenece seemed to change! he shared a desire to use his priesthood so he could know what it feels like. When i saw this man up there on the stand blessing the sacrament, i couldnt help but be filled with love for this guy and joy for the steps he is taking to honor that priesthood! it was once of the sweetest experiences of my mission, the Lord is really preparing this family. the son though has to make a tough decision, he got offered a job pretty far away, if he took it he left today, we find out later when we go there to teach, its tough but God is in the details. Im so excited for the things that are happening, for the trials that are coming this last few weeks. we laugh about it here saying we are going through the last bit of refinement before we die haha. (mom thats just a mission term, we're not really going to die) haha. I really appreciate all your support and love and know that we are going to finish this out strong and leave nothing! Mahal ko po kayo! Elder Machen