October 20, 2014

So this was another good week:)  I feel like things are steadily going uphill here:)  This past week we were able to teach fifteen lessons to investigators with a member from the branch here with us, seven others, and seven lessons with recent converts (and for my mom and nana, those numbers weren’t even influenced in the slightest by my Irish side;).  Craziness:D  We have five people who are getting baptized in the next two months, one of whom is Jose who is getting baptized this Sunday after church:)  He is so ready and I'm super excited!  He makes me think of a pirate and that makes me smile (I am not sure why I added that detail but there you have it).  Also, we had three different lessons this week were members introduced us to a family member who is not in the church and all of those lessons went super well!  Less active members are started to come back, and it is beautiful to see whole families sitting together in a row:) 

We got to watch general conference this weekend HURRAY:D  It was awesome!  Our investigator Kevin was at all five sessions and is starting to make some friends:)  Pascal was there Saturday morning and just loved it.  He had called us earlier that week after our lesson with him and said he had found the answer to his prayer while reading in the Book of Mormon and shared it with us like an excited child:)  We had six investigators at church Sunday morning!  A young girl named Nathanielle (21) came for the first time and loved it:D 

We were invited to dinner too many times this week and I am lucky to still be alive.  I know that that makes us sound ungrateful, but one night we went from one dinner to another with no way to escape (our own fault for the bad planning) and were stuffed beyond reason.  Luckily I love the food here.  My favorite thing to eat is faratas (it is sort of like the bread used for panini's or a bit like naan) that you eat with curry:) 

I was thinking about trials this week and about how it is in our nature to want to run away from them.  I asked myself, why do we try to pray away our trials?  After all that is the whole reason why we came to earth, to have trials, because without them we will never be stretched to grow.  Yes, what a somewhat unfortunate truth, we need to hurt to change.  Trials are painful sometimes because changing our spirits, our very nature, hurts, but it is worth it.  It’s like working out or training for a sport.  The harder you work the more satisfying and incredible the outcome.  So I need to learn how to better live through my trials and not just wish them away, because they are some of the greatest blessings from God.  Just like we can learn to like exercise I believe we can learn to like difficult situations in life and enjoy working with them and through them.  We might as well, because like it or not they keep on coming;)

Hope that everyone has a great week.  Appreciate every moment that you have, life is beautiful:)

Love,

Soeur Wilson