I'm back!!! haha we were in monton before but now we are in amherst and we got on the library computers here.
so
anyway that talk is really good, one part in it says "Brothers and
sisters , we have to stay with it. WE don't acquire eternal life in a
sprint- this is a race of endurance. We have to apply and reapply the
divine gospel principles. Day after day we need to make them part of our
normal life." We are working with this lady named laurie, she's a
member but is struggling to do the things that she knows she needs to do
to get a temple recommend and receive her endowment. She's always told
herself that she'll be better at reading her scriptures ONCE her life
gets back to "normal" but recently she's realized that her life is never
going to be this perfect non stressful "normal" life that she keeps
imagining. I have definitely told myself that I will be better at
something when life gets back to normal... but what will happen the next
time when life gets crazy and busy again?there will always be things
that will pop up and that will keeps us busy and it's in those times
where we need to act and where we will realize where our priorities are.
Sometimes we might disappoint ourselves when we realize that our
priorities aren't where we know they should be or where we thought they
were but there is always time to change:) Don't put change off until a
later date. In zone conference president Pratt told us about the danger
of having an attitude of "when I grow up..." we ARE grown up! and now is
the time to be the person that you said your were going to be. and in
my case, now is the time to be the missionary that I was going to be.
I've been lacking faith without even really realizing it but now i see
it. I lacked faith that the investigators we were teaching would be
baptized and that they would even want to be baptized. I lacked faith in
a lot of things, faith that our message of the gospel is for everyone,
faith that people would actually change their lifestyles to accept it,
but ultimately I lacked faith in God. This past week though we were
promised that if we worked as hard as we could we would find a new
investigator and we did, randy and 3 kids, and I was reminded of my
purpose. I've learned that I need to have more faith in our message,
higher expectations. I've learned that I really do want to teach people
and to have more trust that God will fulfill His promises. I also
learned that I need to get on my knees more and ask for help. I am so
inadequate, I don't know where the people are that are being prepared to
accept the gospel and I don't know what it is that they need to hear,
but God does and He wants to help but I just need to ask:) During this
one point of zone conference I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and down
because there are just so many things that I expect of myself and so
many things that God expects of me and I just knew that I could never
measure up but then sister pratt said something that I think was
directly from God, and was meant right for me at that moment, she said,
"If you are struggling then GOOD FOR YOU!" and I looked up and in my
head i was like what, in my case struggling meant that I was
unorganized, that I didn't understand my purpose, that someone else
could do the job better than I could. and then sister pratt continued
with, "You are doing what you were meant to do when you came here...you
are changing." I hope that if you are struggling right now that you will
let this touch your heart. Our Heavenly Father loves us but He is more
concerned about our progress than our comfort, and we should be too.
something
else that president Uchtdorf says in the talk is "Knowing that the seed
is good is not enough" so many of us know that the gospel is true , we
know that it's "good" but we don't nourish it...why? do we think that
it's not worth our time or effort, do we lack faith in God's promised
blessings, do we forget to put our spiritual goggles on, like elder
stevenson has said, and only care about our wants here on this earth and
not about our eternal well-being? He says "by patiently walking in the
path of discipleship, we demonstrate to ourselves the measure of our
faith and our willingness to accept gods will rather than our own." IN
that other talk about real intent the question is asked, "am I going to
do what god wants or am I going to do what I want" this I what I had to
ask myself before I served a mission and once we narrow down our problem
or concern to it's core and realize that this is the real question we
are asking ourselves, how we answer it can really be a make it or brake
it moment in our lives.
there
are so many other things I want to write about but now I am really out
of time haha. If you have time between all of these other talks that
I've said you should read you should also read or listen to "understand
who you are" haha by robert c. oaks
also
we taught this lesson to this guys luciano and his family last night
but his house was out in the middle of no where and was so sketchy
driving to and we just thought that we were going to get murdered out
there. we pulled up to this dark falling apart garage and then these two
people with flashlights were walking towards us haha but he turned out
to be the nicest guy and his 3 kids are so sweet!
have a great week!
love sister wood
A letter for this week--
So we just finished up some solid grocery shopping at the dollar store,
got a loaf of bread some pasta sauce and some glow stick bracelets for
our light the world FHE with the Lee wens tonight.
My current balance on the mission card is $2 and 40 something cents
hahahah I promise it is not like this all the time though, our cards get
reloaded at the beginning of each month so end of the month shopping is
always a little iffy haha but we will survive!
We have 4 appointments tomorrow so thats shy our pday is today. We are meeting with John who is a paramedic and a new investigator at 9am
then sarah who is the only ysa here and is less active but coming back
at 11 then nicole at 1 and then randy at 4. Yesturday randy and Chloe
were suppose to come to church but neither of them came. We walked over
to randy's at 9 yesterday to help her get her kids ready for church but
when we got there she had just gotten up and she said that her kids were
sick and she didn't want to wake them up:( we are worried about her
real intent and if she is willing to put in the effort to find answers
for herself. Chloe is 12 and is so smart she asks really good questions.
right now she has a baptismal date for december 30th.
This
past week we helped out at the moncton parade haha the float was a
little bit of a disaster but we worked with what we had. The parade had a
theme to go with canada over the past 150 years and so the float was a
covered wagon. We also had the miramicha sisters in amherst for
exchanges this week on friday and saturday.
This is sister greens first transfer (she's a greeny haha) and
apparently she was in my ysa ward in edmonton!! haha what the heck!
She's so awesome and I'm so glad that she chose to come out on a
msission:) she told me that bradly pierson got called to this mission
too!
I hope that you are all getting ready to
do light the world!! acts 20;35 says "it is more blessed to give than to
receive" and that is what christmas should be all about, giving :)
also happy early birthday michaela!<3
love sister wood
