Taco Bell and Telling the Truth!

What have I learned this week and continue to learn is that a mission is hard. However, a mission is Godhood in training. If I truly want to become like Jesus Christ, I must walk a hard road… yet because he already walked that road, he can walk it with me.

The Picture above and below are me with all of the missionaries in my current area.

Picture above is all of the missionaries from my zone.

Picture above: President and Sister Zimmerman on the left and Brother and Sister Peterson on the Right. Both were just released and went home the end of June.

This week as always flew by. I feel as if my days as a missionary are falling through my hands. There are so many miracles that happen every day and by the time the day ends I'm exhausted. I want to record everything so that I show the Lord that I'm appreciative of it. However sometimes and quite often I fall short. I am working in several areas because of the situation with my old companion going home early. Being in this Trio we are trying to do my old area and my companion’s area too. This makes it difficult to keep in daily contact with our friends. Because of this we've been working more with the members and having members reach out. We've seen great success with this. Even to the point where we had a few members inviting themselves to listen to our discussion, haha you don't see that often.

One of the biggest obstacles we're seeing this past week is fulfilling the missionary purpose of asking others to repent. Extending invitations at every contact or interaction allows for people to utilize the Doctrine of Christ. I am working to improve upon that principle of asking people to change through extending specific and faith-filled invitations each time we meet with them. We have had some special experiences with expecting miracles. We went over to one of our friend's houses and had expected the friend to be home. However, the friend was not home. We prayed all day asking for help and praying that the friend would be home. So, why were they not? Well, the Lord can give us something in lieu of the friends because we had been prepared. He sent us John. John has been looking for the gospel. Every time he gets close to it, he says the adversary takes over. He even asked about baptism. We referred him to the Elders in the Oaks area. They then learned that he was moving into the Hurley Elders area. The surprising thing was the apartment that he was moving into was the same apartment complex as the Elders. This opened my eyes to the fact that if we hadn't found John that he would be found eventually. The Lord gives us an infinite number of opportunities to make covenants with him. So that we can call him our God and he can call us Christ's children. The covenantal relationship is a special kind of relationship, an eternal and binding relationship that brings more power to God and to us. We are constantly finding people through this way. Referral after referral that led us to prime people! The same thing happened during companion study. We were practicing teaching the restoration with one sentence explanations, later that day we made a street contact with a man. After testifying that this message would help him be a better dad he said, "okay you have 2 minutes, GO!" Due to earlier preparation, we testified powerfully and simply. We were prepared!

Sister Arnold has been finding more joy in the work. And interesting how a trio really allows individuals to be seen and heard. I'm able to comfort sister Fife in times when sister Arnold needs space. And I'm able to be high energy for Sister Arnold when Sister Fife is feeling down. `

Wow well I see the hand of the Lord every single day. Most particularly giving me patience. I will ask questions during my study and then later that day that question will get answered. But even more than that I see it in our friends’ lives. Our friend Roy has been progressing so much. He said that he would have to cancel his lessons for a bit. After he called, we prayed for him and shortly after this we get a text that said that he actually wouldn't have stop meeting with us because his prior commitment ended up falling through for the whole month of July.

Another story, A member was sick but told us that she left money under her doorstep for us to go out to eat. On our way to pick up the money we saw somebody on the street. Sister Fife ran out and started talking to this lady. Turns out that she had been struggling. She just left a domestic violence situation in Pennsylvania and was new to California as of 2 weeks ago. She was looking for a church where we were able to testify about the Atonement and the Plan of Salvation and guess what, she's coming to church on Sunday. These types of things happen over and over I must remind myself that this is a cosmic God pulling cosmic strings to make an eternal purpose come to pass.

The principle of complete honesty and dignified language is something I have been striving to do this past week and want to continue to build upon. It is quite interesting that once behavior is noted you often notice how much more you truly need to work on it than initially perceived.

I'm working on being completely honest in every word, in thought and deed. Even when it's embarrassing. We had a goal setting meeting at President Moser's house. We had gotten Taco Bell for dinner for dinner, and we had the wrappers left after we were done with dinner. There was no trash can in sight and so we put it under our car. That way it wouldn't smell the car while we were in the goal setting meeting. However, after the goal setting meeting Sister Fife was feeling nauseous. So, she asked if I would drive home. Of course, this messed up my system of how I would remember that the Taco Bell was placed underneath the Car in the Stake Presidents driveway. Long story short I didn't account for the possibility of me driving so I had to call the Stake President's wife and tell her that there may or may not be trash on the driveway. The problem is we had told her we did not need dinner that night because we were eating with a member. (We were but she got sick thus the taco bell with the money the member gave us) Anyway, sometimes telling the truth can be complicated. Then on top of that we got a text from the Del Norte sisters that they had seen the trash and picked it up. Oh well! HA HA!

But yes, the principle of always having the spirit to be with me is something I'm going to continue to work on. But I've truly seen it grow in me. I love the line in Preach my Gospel that says, "as members of the Church of Jesus Christ share the gospel, they will have an abundance of the spirit." I'm a member that means even after my mission I'll have an abundance of the spirit. I'm excited to apply the teachings of the gospel.

I love you all!