E-mail dated 11/3/08

Of course I had malaria. Everyone here gets it at one time or another. The symptoms are fever, chills, aches all over your body, throwing up, and my favorite runny stomach (diarrea). It actually wasn't to bad but it just lingered for alot longer than it should have. But I'm back to 100 percent now so no worries. My companion got malaria once back at his home and he is terrified of it. He won't sleep unless his mosquito net is up.

I learned something at zone conference this past thursday. An Elder was giving instruction on adjusting to the need of investigators. As missionaries we make a lesson plan for every lesson that we teach and I'm telling you from experience that we don't always teach what we plan. This elder made it very clear that planning gives us the spirit, which in turn helps us adjust to meet the needs of our investigators. I realized that I was in a little bit of a slump the last two weeks (partly because I was sick) because I didn't feel like I was teaching by the spirit. I was getting very comfortable with myself and my knowledge of the lessons that I actually started to rely on my own understanding of the lessons and wasn't teaching with the spirit. I realized then that it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have, it will do nothing for you if you don't rely on the spirit. We should always ask ourselves Am I relying on the spirit or my own understanding? If the answer is different than the spirit, then an adjustment needs to be made.

Story of the week. On Saturday we met with one of our investigators who is having a problem with the Word of Wisdom. When we arrived we found him reading from the Book of Mormon (yay) but he was using a cigarette as the bookmark (no). We made him make an agreement with us that everytime we see him smoking we can take the cigarettes away. My companion took the two he had at the time and smashed them on the ground right in front of him. We gave him some scriptures that can help him and told him that If he wants to stop it all depends on him. He came to church the next day and is really progressing. He has a strong desire to change and wants to make his life better. We'll see how his smoking problem goes this week, but I have confidence that he will stop soon.

Elder Degen

PS GO UTES AND JAZZ!