First off, I have to say that we had our first taste of sun and warmth this week! Wahoo!!!! It made me so happy to think that we are turning the corner of winter away from the cold and into the warm. I'm pretty excited.
This week we were able to do a lot of coordinating and working with the ward and members. We put on a quick little "Day in the life of a missionary" skit for a stake Primary activity, helped with a missionary prep Mutual for the priests in one ward, got to meet with leaders in the wards, etc., etc. We had a leadership training last week where the focus was on teaching us how we can "knit ourselves deeper into the fabric of the ward" (Elder Boyd K. Packer) and it's super exciting to be able to apply that!
Another fun experience was teaching a 10-year old investigator. We talked a bunch about families, and wow did I remember how much I love my own family!!!! Family is the best thing on the face of the earth! I'm so grateful for all of you and how you support me. Anyways, I really like teaching kids like Cody because you can just make it super fun and exciting. Haha, I mean to say you really have to keep it fun and exciting to keep them interested, and the side-effect of that is that I have a lot of fun and excitement teaching! :P
We also had another baptism in my last area!!! Wahoo!!! Jasmine, a 12-year old, got baptized, and I would attach a picture except I forgot to take one. :( Mostly because I got there a little late ... even though I was the one she asked to baptize her .... haha you live and learn from your mistakes, right? What was cool about Jasmine was that we had tried to contact her for a while, but it was super sporadic and we really didn't get too far. I really felt strongly like I needed to get her involved with the Young Women, and it took a few tries and a few weeks before we were successful, but we finally introduced her to a girl from the ward that lived down the street and that made the difference! She started coming to Mutual and church, and then my old companion was able to keep teaching her. Just a testimony to me of working with members of the ward in missionary work!
Now time for my spiritual rantings and ravings. Man, it's incredible how much you can learn from life. And how much of that learning is nothing more than learning the same things over.... and over. .... and over .... and ... haha my story is in order:
I was really thinking about who the Lord wanted me to be, what kind of missionary He wants me to be, how He wants me to act, etc., etc. I decided to pray about that this week since I really wanted answers and it seemed like I hadn't found much in the past. So I did just that - prayed, thought, and studied. I remember having such thoughts during the week like "If I can just get the answer of who I need to be, I can move forward with such determination and conviction!"
Enter Sunday. Revelation does come at church, by the way. :) I did get my answer, but it was much different than I thought. As usual, right? What the Lord taught me (again...) is that this life is meant to be an experience of working and struggling to find out what I should do and who I should be! He's not going to give me all the answers right away because he's not trying to make me into an awesome puppet, he's trying to build my character step by step. Basically, he told me to just keep going and trying, and that I would learn little by little who I need to be. There is a really great talk by Elder Scott in this month's Ensign about character building in his article "Living a Life of Peace, Joy, and Purpose." So many amazing points. Anyways, any of you who know me probably can see how this is the same thing that I've learned before coming up again, but hey, I guess I just needed the reminder!
Awright, time to go. We're going hiking today, so wahoo! And it snowed this morning, so we'll build snowmen at the top! Yay!
Men are that they might have joy. Go find some joy today, eh? =D
--Elder Usevitch
No comments:
Post a Comment