Thursday, October 29, 2020

Adventures in the CLAM: The Tender Mercies of the Lord (November 25, 2019-December 1, 2019)

Hi everyone!
The theme of our letter today is the tender mercies of the Lord. Whenever I say this wonderful phrase, I am referencing a scripture that means a lot to me, 1 Nephi 1:20. It is beautiful and comes with a beautiful story, so I wanted to invite you all to read 1 Nephi 1 and think about what that phrase means to you. I'd love to hear what you all think in the comments.
Last night I found out that one of my angel friends from the Wilshire ward died this week. She's one of the most faithful women you'll ever meet and now she has returned home to that God who gave her life. (Alma 40:11) I miss all of my mission friends like crazy, so much that this week it has hurt. But I am grateful that missions are the things of eternity. I will see all of them again in this life or the next. Until then, Sister Elizete. I love you so much.
Enjoy!


 Hello one and all!
LA LOVE:
The lights are on at the Los Angeles California temple! It is a beautiful sight to see! Come visit our temple and visitors' center if you want a special way to feel the Christmas spirit.
EVENTS OF THE WEEK:
On p-day we had another great week of gala practice. I love the missionaries I am singing with and the joy of Christmas that we get to share through music.
We had a great district council where we learned about finding people to teach and what it's all about--faith. If we don't have faith that the Lord is preparing people for us to teach, we will never find them. It was a great council because that is something Sister Birch and I have been working really hard on. We want to find people to teach, and we want to have the faith to be able to do it!
We had a Thanksgiving finding activity with the other companionships in our ward! We set up a poster ona busy street corner asking people what they were grateful for. People wrote on stickies and added them to our poster! We were able to invite them to our visitors' center and get some contacts as well. It was a great opportunity to remind people about the goodness of God in all of the blessings we have.
We had a great Thanksgiving! We spent much of the day delivering treats to our friends. We had dinner that night with our dear friends the Di Niros and the elders. The Di Niros do not even celebrate Thanksgiving, but they wanted us missionaries to have a dinner for Thanksgiving! We love them so much and it was great to spend the evening with them.
We went to a beautiful concert at the visitors' center with Abulla and Brother Duncan! It was a great night of classical and Christmas music. Abulla is seriously so famous; anytime we go anywhere with him everyone wants to talk to him.
FRIENDS:
This week with Abulla we learned about how God is our loving Heavenly Father, and I really mean WE learned, because the whole lesson was pretty much just Abulla bearing super powerful testimony of all the ways God blesses us and manifests His love for us, including guidance from scriptures, missionaries, and a living prophet. And in the closing prayer, he prayed to Heavenly Father to bless Sister Birch and I so much. Wow. We love him. He bore testimony on Sunday (I sadly missed it, being in the Olympic ward) and came to the temple with us to see the lights and the concert. We talked about him going to the temple soon while we were there, so stay tuned!
Rhona had read Alma 32 this weekend, and loved how Alma was quick to point out to the people that we can worship God anywhere we are. We talked about how much God loves us and how He blessed us with the gospel and our failies, and answered a lot of her questions about what we do as missionaries. At the end of that lesson we said we wanted to talk with her about prophets next time. To our surpirse and joy she said she had been wanting to talk about prophets too! We discussed how prophets work through priesthood authority, and how that authority must be given directly and physically from Jesus Christ, or from someone else who holds that authority and thus got it directly from Him. the priesthood is the power by which all miracles are wrought. She had a lot of questions about the prophets of the Book of Mormon too. It was our opportunity to testify that the prophets in that book were called the same way the prophets of the Bible were, and that the Book of Mormon is a totally separate and complimentary companion scripture to the Bible, another gloriously true testament of Jesus Christ.
We read Ether 12 with Destiny this week and discussed the role of faith in performing miracles. We also did a super fun activity where we all made a written plan of what we wanted to do to improve ourselves--Destiny's was a goal to be baptized, Sister Birch's to be a better missionary, and mine to have a happier life! We loved setting goals together and especially so we can support each other and keep each other accountable. Being called to repentance feels so good!
We had a great lesson with Brother Yoon! It was our first time meeting with him. Brother Yoon speaks Korean, but thanks to the translation of our Relief Society president Sister Lee we were able to teach him! He loves God and has a desire to be baptized. Despite language barriers, the Spirit was present in that lesson. God always find a way for His children to receive the gospel.
As you can see, Sister Birch and I have been working hard to achieve in our area, and it is beginning to pay off! Our faith is growing and thus our eyes are being opened to the tender mercies of the Lord.
I was contemplating the blessing of being a missionary and I would just like to take time to glory in my calling. It is so amazing to be able to serve God and His children and focus all my energy on the Lord's eternal purposes for eighteen months. There is no other foreseeable time in my life where I will get to have this level of romantic consecration. It is a beautiful thing and i need to do it while it's mine.
Thanks and much love!
--Sister Day

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