Week 27

Stake Conference, extraordinary efforts

Sorry for the lack of pictures! I need to be better about taking pictures haha. 

Another crazy week! 

We had another great lesson with Jessica! She's been remembering a lot more about what we are teaching her and she's really progressing! Her mom was crazy busy with some family problems sadly, so we delyed the baptism by a month. But she will be ready by then!

We've been working really hard working with the members and it's been going really well! We've had lots of trust gained from working with the ward and asking who we should stop by and then actually stopping by! So we've been working really closely with everyone and we've seen lots of success! For example we stopped by the Pierre family and the Relief Society and Primary Presidencies have been loving working with them to help them out! Well we stopped by and talked for a while and found out that she only works twice a week now (she had a contract as a nurse with a previous hospital), now she wants to come back to church! She also said to come back for a message/dinner. We talked to the Primary president and Relief Society president and told them about what happened! The key is to communicate right away and let the presidencies know whats happening!

Miracle! So we've been trying to get into contact with is one particular guy named Bro Sharp. He's a detective and super busy. So we keep trying to say hi and get to know them and see how we can help them, but nothing, no answer. This past week though, we were heading to language study at 8 and the word Sharp just appeared in my head. It's already late, so it was an interesting thought, and Elder Merrell and I talked about it and prayed about it and we went to the Sharps! He opened his door! We had a good conversation and gave him cookies! So that was a cool miracle, Elder Merrell has been trying to get into contact with them for about 3 months! Pretty crazy! 

Spiritual thought:

Focus

Outwards

Rather

Than

Inwards

For

Yourself

in Christ! 

Whenever you focus on yourself or beat yourself up because you messed up, that only makes things worse. The scriptures constantly use language that implies that Christ is right there guiding us along. I really love 2 Nephi 1:23, 

"Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust."

Wow! What a great message and reminder that we need to simply shake off our "chains", our sins, and follow Christ! Following Christ is still hard, it requires sacrifice, it requires trust and humility to let Christ lead your life. We need to humble ourselves and recongize that Christ knows best. He knows us perfectly! So when Christ is asking us to shake off our chains, realize that we can then be yoked to Christ. Yes there is still weight on our backs, trials in our life, but instead of chains dragging us, it's a yoke, yoked with the only begotten son, Jesus Christ! We need to trust that being yoked to Christ is better than chains. So shake those chains off! Whatever they may be! 

I love you all very much and the experiences and adventures I've experienced with you all! Keep growing and serving and be safe!

Love you all!

PS-My dad was able to drive my car around the block back in Virginia!  He still has work to do on it, but it's actually running!