こんばんは！私は日本にいますのでとても感謝してます！
Hello from Japan! I am so grateful to be here and love it! This week has been really challenging with taking over and I am trying not to stress out to much. But I do have a tendency to be a perfectionist at everything and......yeah. That's a no go for the mission. Haha. When I was talking to the district leader on the phone for nightly calls the other night I told him I just didnt want to mess anything up. He assured me that I would mess things up, which took me by surprise. Haha he continued with saying, "you are human and The Lord works through imperfect missionaries to do his work, that's how you know that it is His work!" True dat. During study this week I was reading in Jesus the Christ about the blind man who was healed through Christ putting clay on his eyes that was mixed with spit and he was to go rinse his eyes off in the pool of siloam (which was a nasty pool) and he was healed! I remembered sharing that story about a year ago with my mom on the phone while I was in jerusalem and I had just visited the pool of siloam that day and I remembered thinking, that is so cool that christ would show everyone that it was not the clay or the spit or the nasty pool of siloam, it was Him and God's power alone that the blind man was healed. When I remembered that at my desk in my personal study this week I realized that I am right now that clay, that spit, and that pool of siloam that I learned about. I am an instrument in His hands, I am not performing any miracles, but He is. I am that imperfect thing that Christ shows to all of us that God is here and he is real. It surely is not me. No, it is only He that created us and knows us by name that has brought so many miracles to come to pass. What a humbling thought that was for me this week.
On Monday night we got a call from Summer saying that we could not visit her anymore in the hospital (she had major surgery 6 days before) and we were so confused as to why and she said,"I am coming home, the surgery went incredibly well!" We were overjoyed!
After sister Clark and I found out that she was moving companionships we wanted to make sure she could let all of our investigators know. We called Summer who just barely got home from the hospital and we asked her if we could visit her and she said it was okay and we went over to her apartment and when we rang the doorbell we were nervous because we didn't know how well she would be or if she should be walking around or things like that. We were really surprised when she just flung open the door and she had a big smile on her face and seemed healthy as ever. She was just way upbeat and we were so glad! She sat us down and she told us how well her surgery went and that it went perfectly! She said that she knows it turned out that way because of our prayers for her, she said, "I have a testimony of the power of prayer! I know that it works and that your prayers are what helped me!" (We had promised her that we would kneel down and say a prayer for her around the time that the surgery would start) She talked about Heavenly Father and how comforted her right before her surgery she said a prayer and she pleaded with The Lord that it would all go well and that she would be able to go back to China to go and bring her daughter back home with her to Japan. We read Alma 37:36-37 with her and she said, "hey they wrote this for me! I only pray when I am lying down!" She said that she really likes the Book of Mormon and is determined to read it all the way through. She says she reads the Book of Mormon everyday and is trying to read at least 1 page a day even though it is very hard for her to understand it, she says she likes reading it in English better than chinese. She is determined to read the Book of Mormon with her daughter every night when she gets her back and she wants to teach her how to pray. The Lord is changing summer's heart! A month ago summer could only fathom science and how it explains everything, now she connects everything to Heavenly Father!
We met with one of our new investigators on thursday and her name is Yuka! We went to a cafe with one of our ward's recent convert's Ida Shimai and Yuka came and we had a wonderful time! She was so interested! She is so prepared! We gave her a Book of Mormon and she really wanted to read it and she loved when we talked to her about prophets and she just ate it all up. We were so excited for her, but she is crazy busy with her job. We are hoping that we can meet with her again on tuesday.
Today we went to go visit a ward member Hunsu Shimai and we set up a time for us to go pray with her and then we would go dendo (proselyte) around her house. Well I had a hard time figuring out how to get to her house and I felt so bad when we got lost. I called her and told her we couldnt find it and I asked her if we could just pray over the phone and I could tell she was disappointed. I felt so bad! We prayed over the phone together and Sister Owens and I went to go start dendoing and I just said, lets just go down this street and starting housing. We went through an apartment complex and no one was there and then I went to the house next to it and realized that that house was Hunsu Shimai's house! I rang the doorbell and she was jumping up and down happy! I was so happy to see her and I could tell how much it meant for her to have us come over and pray with her. It was humbling and I promised myself that I wouldnt give up so easily next time. I realized how much it means to the members when we visit them and I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with some of the most faithful people I know!
Sister Owens and I are young and sometimes after we have a phone call we both look at each other and have no idea what just happened. But, its part of learning and growing closer to The Lord and relying on Him.
I love you!
Sister Staples!
I went to a bar on P day. And it felt good.
A CHOCOLATE BAR.
No comments:
Post a Comment