Independence Day

Monday was Independence Day in St. Lucia, so Rob was unable to send email until today. Since his camera broke, I am including a panorama shot of St. Lucia I found on a google search. The new camera arrived yesterday, so we will hope for Rob's photos to resume next week. Here are his notes from Castries: "Hey, sorry I wasn't able to email you yesterday. Things got held up at the email place, but independence day was so cool! Lots of people doing a whole lot of stupid things haha! It was cool seeing all the lights everywhere and all the cool decorations though! How's everything back home??? The baptism is going to be this weekend, so we'll see if it still goes through! :D I'm excited for her. I think she's very apprehensive but it's nice to have her mom there with her because she went through the same thing and she basically tells her 'its scary at first but don't worry. Once you get in you won't even care who's around you, you'll just be in your own world.' lol So it's good to have her there for the positive encouragement. It truly is inspiring to me how hard working Dad is. I look up to him big time for that. I tell people all the time out here 'my dad's a freaking champ. He kills cockroaches all day!' haha I don't know how you do it but you are one awesome man! I miss you guys too. Thanks for the prayers and everything you do for me. I'm trying to be better every day and work harder at being a more consecrated missionary, as hard as it is sometimes. I catch myself falling short a lot of the time and I just need to be more focused and choose what is right on a constant basis. Something that's really stood strong with me is that as long as we keep the commandments we will prosper. I know it sounds simple but when we look back at the last general conference sometimes bringing it back to basics really is the key to all of this. I don't think the Lord wants His church to be all in depth and complicated, He made it as simple as it needs to be but at the same time a never ending supply of complexities, not to confuse us, but to have us constantly working. The Lord will only give us as much as we can handle right? Anyway, I'll send pictures this week from the baptism. Hopefully all goes well :P Love you guys more than you'll ever know! :) Tell Baxter i love him ;) That must've been fun to have the kids over though. You should send me a copy of President Fisler's book! Sounds really good. President Fisler is a super smart guy. Plus I love the way he treats people, I bet it'll be a really good read. :P Thanks for the uplifting encouragement though. I feel bad I always write you guys about how hard the mission is. I should really be writing more uplifting things. There's a lot out here that is really cool and a lot of good successes happening and I'm just trying to push forward and do good. We have zone conference coming up this weekend. Life is good. My understanding for our Savior's Atonement has been magnified quite a bit in these last few days. It's so hard to even really gain a concept or even grasp what it is or how it happened but boy am I grateful for it. I just can't believe how much He must truly love us. It's quite amazing. But I have to go. Sorry it's short but I loveyo u guys a LOT! And I miss you guys like nothin' else but I'll be home just now to come and hang out and start tackling life! haha love u! ,