Well y'all, I'm surviving the heat of Vegas. I forgot how exhausting it was to go tracting in the heat. WOOO baby it's awful!! We met some interesting people, an old hippy lady who invited us in for water and we ended up talking for about 20 minutes with her, then we tracted into a man who said he was waiting for us. I felt a little sketch about it, and with good reason. He talked our ear off for 30-40 minutes about how false the church was, blah blah blah, and it took everything inside of me not to laugh. He seemed genuinely concerned for our souls and told us to make sure we had a foundation and testimony of our Savior, Jesus Christ. So we bore testimony about how we know He is our personal Savior and told him that we were thankful for his concern. Man. Vegas!!! How I've missed thee...
OH!! Today we went to the temple (beautiful of course), and I SAW LEA GLENN!!!! She was a RC from my first area and it has been almost a YEAR since I've seen her!!! It was so incredible. Man. I love it.
So we have a couple good investigators. Jeremy is good, we'll be hopefully setting him with a date soon. Thaddeus has turned around and is doing well. But other than that, we don't have much work going on. President Black came to our disctrict meeting and told us a story about a pioneer young man carried his four-year old brother across the plains for 16 hours and arrived at camp, and collapsed, dead from exersion. So I've decided I'm going to collapse dead from working so hard as opposed to "dying" simply because my 18 months is up. I've been sent here to work, and to work hard. I plan on it. I ache for it. I'm so thankful for this opportunity.
Dad requested I do a "top 10 things I've learned on my mission" thing and so I thought I'd get started and do a couple every email session.
1. Jesus Christ is the head of this church. This is HIS work I'm doing. That really hit me the other day when everyone was pretty rude while we were tracting and all our appointments either cancelled or didn't show up. It would be discouraging except this isn't about me. I feel sad for the people because they don't understand what they're missing out on. I feel sad for the Savior who is trying to do everything He can to help us return to Him. He is putting people in our paths, thoughts, scriptures, friends, family--everything. Why don't we listen? Fear because the lifestyle changes that will have to happen? Because we're not sure what others will think or say about us? Fear is the opposite of faith, and perfect love casts out all fear. Pray. Just pray to know. I promise promise PROMISE He will answer. Jesus Christ leads and guides us today. His mouthpiece is Thomas S. Monson, and we would do well to listen and heed his counsel. If we follow the prophet, we are promised we will never be led astray. What an incredible blessing.
2. The fight in this life isn't with others--it's with ourselves. I love that because I have a hard time trusting others. I've learned to take the focus off of others and put it back on me. This is a journey that I'm making with my Savior. This is a battle against my natural man, against my natural desires. I can't rely on others reading their scriptures and others prayers on my behalf for my salvation. I must do those things, be an example to those around me, and move forward. I can't lift others higher than I am myself.
I love my mission. I love everything it's taught me. I'm so excited that Justin has put in his papers and made the choice to go. I am so thankful that the prayers have been heard and he has heeded the call of our Savior. He wants all of us to come unto Him, and be perfected in Him, and show others the way.
Who could use the light of your testimony this week?
love love love,
sister mack
picture 1: me with Meow Meow (or mr bigglesworth)
picture 2: Sis Knighton and me outside the Vegas temple :o)
0 comments:
Post a Comment