Thursday, October 20, 2011

Courtney's Week #26

I´m so happy that you all went on a picnic this week. That sounds like a lot of fun, even without bread. Mom, I hope you are doing okay. I love you!
 
So the way conference works here is that everyone has to go to the Stake Centers, because I´m pretty sure only the stake centers have the technology to receive the satellite transmission. It starts at 1 here, and I kind of lost track of the time difference, so I am not sure if that is live or not, I´m pretty sure not because it was already translated into Spanish at that time. All of the norte americano missionaries in our stake watched conference on the second floor in English, which I was very grateful for. A lot of the emotion and effectiveness of the messages gets lost in translation in my opinion, and so I was very grateful for the opportunity to watch the sessions in English. They also retransmitted the General Relief Society meeting Saturday morning so that was pretty cool, Mom if you did not go to the Relief Society you missed out, you should definitely look up Pres. Uchtdorf´s talk.
 
This week we had interviews with President Essig. I was really grateful for my interview. Sometimes I feel like I am working so hard but nothing is happening, I was starting to feel discouraged. But it felt really good to be told that I am a great missionary, and though even though sometimes I don´t feel like I am making much difference at least God knows I am trying my very best. He also told me that I am doing exceptionally well with the situation that I have been given. I am just really grateful because I think I just needed words of affirmation.
 
On that same topic, so one of the changes that President has made to the mission is that our districts are bigger, instead of just having 2 companionship's in a district there are 4 companionship's. This would be fine, but there were also rumors in the mission that the District leaders should only call the Hermanas in their district twice a week to see how they are doing. Also, my District Leader is one of the Elders who seems to be afraid to have any association with the Hermanas. I felt like I could have died in the mission and no one would even know for like a week and a half. Anyways, I mentioned this while just casually talking to Hermana Essig, the mission presidents wife, and a group of Elders who were also waiting for their interviews with president, including the zone leaders. Since that conversation our District Leader has been calling us every night. I didn´t mean to cause more work or trouble for our poor District Leader who is trying his very best to keep track of 4 different companionship's, but it does make me feel better knowing that if I died it might at lease raise a little bit of suspicion.
 
One thing that really stuck out to me during conference is the importance of asking for the help of the Lord. This was the message that I kept hearing during conference. God loves us and wants to bless us, but he can not bless us until we ask for his help. One thing that I noticed is that a lot of the messages had silly stories of things that they asked for, and I always kind of thought that sometimes these small answers to prayer are just small coincidences, and perhaps they are, but that does not mean that we shouldn´t ask for all the little small things that we desire in our lives. God loves us and wants to bless us.
 
This is something that I have really been thinking a lot about lately. We have an investigator named Abraham who does not like to pray because he doesn´t like to trouble God with all his problems. He feels unworthy to receive blessings because he feels that there are other people who need the blessings so much more. We have been working really hard with him to be able to understand why we pray. One thing that I really like from the Bible Dictionary on Prayer says that when we understand that God is literally our Father prayer becomes natural. This is so true, when we fully comprehend that we are sons and daughters of Heavenly Father we will have a natural desire to talk to him and to ask him for the true desires of our heart. God loves us and wants to bless us, but sometimes he is just waiting for us to ask him for his help.
 
Well that is all for this week, I love and miss you all.
Hermana Evans

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