Hello everyone!
In this letter I write about a friend named Nick. Sister Allred and I were teaching him, but we passed him off to the YSA missionaries because we thought it would be better for him. I went home about two weeks after that, so I didn't get to be much a part of Nick's progression in the gospel after that. I did, however, about a month later get to attend his baptismal service over Zoom. Nick is doing great and he loves the gospel of Jesus Christ. I guess I wanted to share that because I think that we don't always see the end of the story, for a lot of things in life. As missionaries, friends, family, teachers, mentors, all sorts of things, we don't see how people progress in their faith journeys sometimes, even people that really mean a lot to us. In many aspects of life, when we try our best to make a difference but don't always get to see the big picture. I wanted to remind you that little miracles are happening all the time, and you're a part of them. My favorite scripture from the Book of Mormon is Alma 376-7. I'd loved the first of the two verses since I first discovered it as a child, but the pair of verses together took on a new meaning when I became a missionary:
"Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.
And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls."
The context of these verses is a father (and prophet) speaking to his son about the plates that the scriptures are written on, how he needs to maintain them and have them retain their brightness. While it might have seemed like a simple thing, it was still extremely important. I know that firsthand, because since those plates were maintained now we have the Book of Mormon. It was simple, but that didn't mean it wasn't great.
As our dear friend Cinderella once said, "Have faith in your dreams, and someday your rainbow will come smiling through."
Enjoy!
LA LOVE:
I feel that most of you don't know this about me, but angels are a very important part of my life. In almost every priesthood blessing I get angels are mentioned, promising that they will be with me if I just ask for them. When I was set apart as a missionary, I was blessed to have angels literally on my right and on my left. There have been many times on my mission when they have been with me, but this week was very special. Sister Allred and I walked into our apartment and Sister Nault asked (they practically live with us at this point because our apartment has the wifi), "Does anything weird ever happen here?" We said no. :She said, "Something's definitely here." That made us nervous, but then she said it was something good. She heard voices whispering, saying, "Jesus, we love Him!" She did some investigating and just felt the most beautiful feeling. Sister Allred said, "Oh, it's Sister Day's angels." I've heard them since then and so has Sister Allred. So yeah, we have angels living in our apartment! I feel so blessed by the Lord. He really does fulfill His promises!
Another Congratulations Call tradition is Elder Mangum singing "Hallelujah" as a special musical number and leading the team in song. It is pretty much the best.
EVENTS OF THE WEEK:
For p-day we had an awesome day of makeup shopping, picking up a new RAV-4 for Sister Nault and Sister Goodrich, and doing a spa day with all of our sisters!
We had the best zone conference ever this week. Pretty emo when I realized it was my last one, but such a bop. I feel like a common theme of zone conference was needfulness, which was awesome because I LOVE the concept of needfulness. As a missionary there are a lot of ways we can study, teach, and find, but we need to make sure we are doing the most IMPORTANT things and doing those things the BEST we can. It is not enough to just study, we need to study things that will help us invite others to come unto Christ! It is not enough to just teach, we need to teach in a way that will really help our friends understand the doctrines of the gospel and prepare to make covenants! It is not enough to just find, we need to find in a way that is effective and strengthens our area! "There's a right way in everything you do." We also talked about the importance of doing service so we are going to be focusing a lot on that as a mission! I am so grateful that I had the great opportunity to learn how to help y area for my remaining time here.
We had a great district council this week about improving the way we extend commitments (again it's not just about doing it but about doing it the best we can) and do Sabbath worship experiences!
We had a great Bible storytime this week where we learned about prayer!
It was Rohan's last mission prep class this week. Pretty emo. He reports the day I go home. He is so prepared and we are so happy for him to get to serve his mission. We love him so much!
The Redondo 1st ward hosted an event about being with our families forever! All the people who participated shared the most beautiful testimonies of the reality of eternal families. And I had the privilege of singing a song for the event too!
We had a great snow queen theme for Makeup with the Sisters this week!
FRIENDS:
This week with Tomm was pretty crazy. We had a lesson with Elder Mangum and Elder Creighton about the Holy Ghost but it didn't end as we expected. He is definitely facing a trial of faith, but we think as we follow the spirit this crisis will be the answer to prayers to grow his faith. We felt like we should start memorizing scriptures with him and that this will be an important part of his spiritual progression!
We love Beverly so much. We got to share Helaman 5:12 with her and she loved it! She knows Jesus is the foundation that we must stand on.
We taught Khiara and Sophia about the laws of tithing and fasting this week. She is so amazing! She really understands the concept of sacrificing for the Lord.
We went with Elder Mangum and Elder Creighton to give Nick a priesthood blessing. He loved it so much! We taught him together about the gift of the Holy Ghost and he has recognized moments of feeling the Spirit in his life. We also taught him about baptism and he says that he would like to work towards baptism! It was so amazing and exciting. We taught him about the sacrament so he could be prepared to go to the YSA ward which he loved. We are no longer Nick's missionaries but we are so happy for him. We know that YSA is what he needs and he is already doing so well there!
We made a new friend Cindy! She is John's friend and so awesome. She said he gave her a Book of Mormon but it was super strange because he treated it like a treasure. So we explained why that was! She is so awesome and we already love her so much. We are looking forward to reading the scriptures more with her!
We had the pleasure of teaching Lupe about the divine mission of Jesus Christ this week! We taught about how the scriptures can help us with that and we are looking forward to doing more scripture studies with her!
We had a great lesson this week with Craig where we talked about the different reasons people fear commitment. He has so much faith. I wept as he prayed for me to have a beautiful life after my mission. We also talked about premortality and how we already promised to follow Jesus back then--now we just need to follow through. Craig said it's time to snap into shape!
Cathryn is doing so good! We talked about repentance in the context of godly sorrow. She didn't know what that was before so she loved learning something new! We talked about how it applied to her life and how now that she knows about it it can give her so much more power.
I just want to close by talking about the concept of agency. This is a beautiful gift. When you break down the word and really think about it, you realize the root of the word is "agent", something capable of producing a certain effect. Agency is the gift to choose from God. Imagine: God could be a controlling God, but He never would. He loves us more than that; He knows how important it is to choose. Agency is the ability to choose, while accepting the consequence. When we follow God and do good, we receive positive consequences. When we go against God and do evil, we receive negative consequences. God never forces us to do anything. He just tells us what to do and what the consequences will be, whether we choose to accept or reject His ways, and He lets us choose our own fate. God doesn't really punish us. He tells us the options, and we choose our own end result. My dear friends, I implore of you to choose God's way. His delight is to see you happy. It is mine as well. And I can testify that God's way is THE way! This is the way, and there is no other way. (2 Nephi 31:21) Come join in on the happiness!
Thanks and much love!
--Sister Day
No comments:
Post a Comment