Tuesday, November 28, 2017

November 28, 2017

A letter from last week--

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
 


 

No comments:

Post a Comment