The Worth Of Souls Is Great

What a week! We have just seen so many miracles! There are a few families that we are teaching that I am just oh so excited about.

There is this cute little family we met recently and all the girls talk about is coming to church! Seriously, IT'S ALL THEY TALK ABOUT! We are so excited to have them there this Sunday :) and they are all reading the Book of Mormon together. It is just a beautiful picture, and I know that this is the best thing they will ever do as a family. I'm so happy to be able to teach them these amazing truths that will bring them so much happiness in life!

We met another woman lately that I am very excited to teach. She was standing outside waiting for the bus, and I'm glad she was because she said normally she would have just ran the other way. She currently doesn't have a belief in God because of some hard things she has experienced in her life. But by a miracle we were able to meet her and taught the Plan of Salvation to her. She said it would be amazing to know that there was someone out there who knew her perfectly the way we say Jesus Christ does. It really hit her and now she is doing her best to read the Book of Mormon  and said she would even say a prayer! It is amazing how simple and profound truths, like the Plan of Salvation, will help people make small but significant changes in their lives. I know she will never be the same because of it. I love being a missionary!

That leads me to something else I learned this week. Elder Nielson of the seventy came and visited our mission! It was amazing!!! As he and his wife were teaching us at zone conference, they stopped and said "Well, we didn't plan to talk about this, but I guess we need to" and by divine design they talked for a good long while about what it means to be a child of God, how we can understand our divine worth, and how important it is for us to remember that everyday. That is something my companion is helping to teach me right now, something that we are blessed to learn from the Plan of Salvation, and something that if truly understood will change our whole outlook on life. I urge each of you to get on your knees tonight and pray and ask God what he thinks of you. Spoiler alert, I already know the answer. He thinks the world of you! He wants you to succeed and cares about your every need.  

"Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God" 

(Doctrine and Covenants 18:10)

I love you all, just keep smiling!

Just Love

This week I want to talk about love. Everything in life that means something comes from our loving Heavenly Father. When we understand his perfect love we are better able to love others. Sometimes it's hard to love. It's especially hard sometimes to love yourself. But that's ok, because His love makes up for it. It makes up for everything. It makes up for those times when we don't have the motivation to do anything, when our own fears and doubts keep us from doing anything, or when what we do doesn't seem good enough. But thats ok, just do it anyway. God loves that you are even trying. And the most important thing that He wants us to try and do is to love ourselves and those around us.

Love is smiling at a stranger. It is doing what you know is right. It is lending a helping hand. It is finding ways to serve those you love, and maybe even those you don't. Love is making sure people know how special they are. It is really listening to people. It is buying a slurpee for your companion when they are down. It is washing the dishes so someone else doesn't have to. It is talking to people about Jesus Christ's gospel, even when that task seems impossible, because you know it will bless their life. 

Something I have been reminded of this week is how important it is to just love. Just love myself, love the Lord enough to do what He has asked, and love those around me. When We learn to do that, life is happier. And if it doesn't seem happy right now, just do the things that show love anyways. Christ's love will make up the difference

I love you all, Just keep smiling

The Greatest Battle We Will Ever Fight

I don't have a lot of time this week sadly, because I feel like this week was such a roller coaster. I was honestly very down at the beginning of thi
s week, but now life is looking good :) I don't really like who I was at the beginning of this week, but I am grateful for the lessons that I learned in the process of getting over all of that.

I learned two major things:

1) happiness is a choice

2) that choice is only possible because of Jesus Christ 

If you have read all of my posts you will notice that those are things I have claimed to learn before. Something else that I have learned from my mission is that life is a cycle. We literally learn the same lessons over and over again. Sometimes it's the same exact thing that we just can't get, so our Father in Heaven mercifully gives us more opportunities to get it right, and sometimes we are just prepared to learn a new part of that lesson. I feel like I have experienced both of those circumstances this week. 

Whatever life throws at you, just remember to keep moving forward. When you are doing a good thing you will inevitably receive just as strong of forces trying to push you backwards. Never forget though the strength of who is behind you. Do the Lord's work: serve others, love, forget about yourself, and be happy. The adversary will put untrue things in your head, roadblocks in your path and do anything he can to keep you from spreading good. In those moments, rely on Jesus Christ. He wants more than anything for you to succeed and if you do your part, just your small part to look to Him, you will receive Heavens help in your life and see miracles! This is the greatest battle we will ever fight, the battle for our own happiness, and with Jesus Christ we will always win.

I love you all, have a wonderful week! And just keep smiling!

 

 

Look To Christ and Live

What a week! Here are some highlights:

I finished reading the Book of Mormon again! What was even more fun is that Sister Tobler and I finished on the same day :) I cannot tell you how much I have learned from this book. This time through I learned a lot about how to receive answers to prayers. It has shown me so much about faith, God's plan for me, His commandments. Most importantly it has pointed me continuously to Jesus Christ. Through it I have developed a stronger testimony of who He is and why I need Him so desperately in my life. And through consistent study I am grateful to know that testimony will never stop growing.

 

 

Other exciting news, my friend James got baptized! I first met her in band and she is just so great! She is one of the most caring people I have ever met. Well, while I was still at home I found out she was meeting with missionaries! She was actually preparing for baptism, but the timing wasn't right. A few months ago I felt prompted to reach out to her and discovered she was still meeting with missionaries! She attended church regularly, read the Book of Mormon often. Her testimony had grown immensely, and even though I only had the opportunity to chat with her through Facebook I could tell that she was filled with such a different light than she had been before. This Saturday she made the step of being baptized! I could not be happier and I am so proud of her!

Another highlight of my week was that on Monday I got to go on exchanges with the amazing Sister Clark! Boy have I missed her sweet spirit. It was an honor to be able to serve with her in Lancaster again for the day :) One of the biggest miracles we saw was Amy. Sherry Price, who was baptized recently, had invited her Sister-in-law Amy to attend. By attending that baptism Amy realized that this gospel is what she has been looking for and what has been missing in her life. She is absolutely amazing and so dedicated and excited to learn all she can about Christ's restored gospel. Elder and Sister Thompson have been working closely with her, and Sister Clark and I had the wonderful opportunity to help her accept a baptismal date! She is so prepared and I know this is going to change her life!

Baptism is such a special and exciting thing that helps us to look to our Savior Jesus Christ!

 

 

There have been many miracles that have happened this week, but it has honestly been a crazy one! I feel like we were constantly running all over the place, trying our best to help people, and still never feeling like anything would go according to plan. BUT this week was a great reminder to me that it's not my plans that matter, but it's God's plans that will really make the difference. There were countless times this week that I was stressed feeling like nothing was working out or that I was not being successful. But then right after those moments, or sometimes even during, we would experience some huge miracle like finding three new investigators in half an hour or because we were running later than planned we would pull up at just the right moment to see an investigator we really needed to get in contact with who got home at that exact moment. It is moments like those that confirm to me that I am exactly where God needs me, doing exactly what He hopes I will be doing. 

Sometimes though that confirmation would not come. There were moments that I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere else, doing some other thing, or that no matter how hard I try I can't possibly do the task the Lord has given me. Those moments are really hard, when I know I could be more successful. What do we do then? Well, we learn from our mistakes and keep on trying. This week I have been studying my favorite talk from this most recent General Conference titled "Until Seventy Times Seven" by Elder Lynn G. Robbins. There is a question he poses very early in his message that really related to how I have been feeling lately. He says, "We may wonder—if both Nephi and Moses were on the Lord’s errand, why didn’t the Lord intervene and help them achieve success on their first try? Why did He allow them—and why does He allow us—to flounder and fail in our attempts to succeed?" I have been wondering that same thing, if I am on the Lord's errand and doing His work, why does it seem like everything is against me or that I can't accomplish this work? Elder Robbins made another point that helped answer my question. He teaches us about the necessity of having real intent as we use the Atonement of Jesus Christ to become what He wants us to be. He says that when we do this we change. "That kind of change results in spiritual growth. Our success, then, isn’t going from failure to failure, but growing from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm."

This life isn't about being perfect. That is what we are all striving for, but we will never get there in this life. And we certainly won't get there very quickly if everything is handed to us. That is why, even when we are doing the work of the Lord, it requires great effort and sometimes what even appears to be failure, otherwise there would be no growth. We are successful simply by getting up after we fall. Each failure or hardship that we experience, if we rely on Jesus Christ to give us the strength to rise from it, will be an opportunity to grow one step closer to success. I urge you all to focus on Jesus Christ in your daily lives. As you do so, you will gain the perspective you need to never lose enthusiasm as you are given the experiences necessary to grow spiritually in the ups and downs in life's journey.

Look to Christ and remember, just keep smiling!