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| 2 weeks ago marks a yr since my mission call and this last week marked 9 MONTHS of me being a missionary 🐫🐫🐫🐫 It's so cray how time flies. |
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| HUMP DAY 🐫🐫🐫🐫🐫🐫🐫🐫🐫 I'm half way. |
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| Again I'm just in love here 😻😻😻. These pictures really DON'T do these sky's justice. |
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| My new home ...Yeah this is really the summer home of the Chicago Bears. |
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| Sis. Lewis made us Rae tomato soup and lemme just say .... WOW 😻😻😻😻😻😻 I LOVE THIS STUFF. It's probably my new favorite food. |
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| Elderly lady Darlene who kept asking if we are single and giving us advice for marriage 😂💍 |
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| My new comp, Sister Anderson 🐫🐫🐫🐫🐫Y'all I OFFICIALLY HIT MY HALF WAY. MY HUMP DAY" was officially on Rod's birthday. And I KNOW there's NO coincidence in that. Rod was and still is one of the BEST missionaries I ever had the pleasure of knowing. I feel him everyday on my mission. I am grateful to be serving with him. Even though he's gone I KNOW he's doing work on the other side. So we had a fun birthday celebration on OCT 6. 🎈🎁🎈
🐫🐫🐫🐫🐫 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ROD. 🎈🎈🎈🎈
I am very very grateful for Rod's example of always "leaving it all on the court". That surely is what I not only hope to continue, but what I WILL do for the rest of my mission. I was happy to get to play basketball and celebrate Rod in this way.
Love you Rod. Let's keep moving this wonderful work forth. ❤️ Rod's legacy will forever go on.
This world is awful. But we can look for the good. The world tries to tell us we are something we aren't. Flora Benson (wife of a Prophet):
"Don't worry about the worlds opinion of you ,as long as you're right with the lord. "
Listen to the still small voice of the lord as he reminds you of your beauty and that you matter to him. He knows it all...and still loves us all.
We are like boats in life, and this world is like the ocean
Barnacles are temptations.
We need fresh water to remove them, like scrip study and going to church. "Without meaningful goals Our lives are pointless."
SMART GOALS = specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, time bound.
Dessert = new cuss word. Oh my gosh, my body officially HATES me. 😂I'll just be eating rabbit food and water for the rest of my life. Haha just kidding, but I want to because my body isn't immune to all this sugar anymore. Luckily Sister Anderson and I go running almost every morning but that's awful too, because I'm sooooooo badly out of shape. 😂But it's fine.
It made me think this is like the gospel. If you don't work out spiritually, then you'll be so out of shape. And it feels like it's too hard to come back, but it isn't impossible. It's just super hard and you'll be in pain and out of breath and you'll wanna give up. But LEMME TELL YOU: ITS NEVER EVER TOO LATE TO COME BACK. I could barely move the first day. As time has gone on I've improved and my muscles are getting better and stronger.
It's the same with our spirits..... If you don't do the small and simple things the Lord has asked you to do, you WILL lose your faith and then you WILL have a hard time because your spiritual muscles are weak. But again it's not impossible. Because we have Jesus Christ to help us. It's really never too late to get back into being spiritually fit.
I'd like to invite you to look for 3 ways you can become more spiritually fit and APPLY it to your life.
Same thing goes with faith. If we don't have faith in Jesus Christ then we gotta exercise that back up too.
"Ye do not remember the Lord your God in the things with which he hath blessed you, but ye do always remember your riches, not to thank the Lord your God for them; yea, your hearts are not drawn out unto the Lord, but they do swell with great pride, unto boasting, and unto great swelling, envyings, strifes, malice, persecutions, and murders, and all manner of iniquities."
God gave us everything, so if we aren't consistently THANKING him for ALL we have, we aren't being very grateful. We don't get anything out of our riches and all the cool things we have or how good we look. When we love the wicked things of the world they become "green eyed Monsters". These good things we have come from a Heavenly Father, our God who LOVES us all individually unconditionally.
I've learned lots of things from my dad, and one that's really stuck with me is a saying he says a lot...
"be generous within your means."
I really love that because it's helped me to stay away from becoming that "green eyed monster" the world wants us to be.
We all have different circumstances and come from different backgrounds.
We have different jobs and family situations.
We all have our different struggles. Different jobs pay differently. And so we don't all get the same income or always have a lot of money. Some are barely making it by while others are raking in the dough. It can be hard. And yet I know we can all be happy as we look for more ways to be more generous and yet WITHIN our means because GENEROUS looks different to us all. I wanna challenge y'all to look for a few ways this week that you can be " more generous within your means " and help those in need of those who need an extra lift this week. I know that as y'all do this that you'll be able to feel of God's outpouring love for you and his children you serve as you'll be able to see them better through God's eyes. One of my favorite things to do is pay for people's food in a drive thru or grocery store or buy my companions food and drink before she can pay. One time my family and I saw a homeless man right before I entered the MTC. It was snowing and super duper cold outside, so we got him a hot drink and something to eat. I gave him $2 cause it's all I had but oh my gosh .... Seriously one of the HAPPIEST moments of my entire life.
I just wanted to share these examples from my life and how much Ive enjoyed helping others as Ive chosen to serve and give of my time and money and talents instead of keeping them for myself. God has given us ALL we have. And we won't ever be able to fully repay him for all that his does for us or all he continues to do for us or the Atonement but we can do small and simple things and keep the commandments to
" pay it forward " to show God we love him and are doing the best we can with what he's given to us.
Think about it this way , you have a best friend who you love very much and their birthday is coming up....you search everywhere for the perfect gift You know they'll love ! And you have been searching EVERYWHERE. and you finally found it !!! You're so excited because you can just see the expression on their face as you close your eyes to envision it in your mind. You know it's gonna be a lot of money but you sacrifice to buy the gift anyway because you love your best friend and you take it home and wrap it in beautiful sparkly wrapping paper with a really gorgeous bow. You neatly write their name on it all fancy and then begin to write them a card telling them how much you love and appreciate them and how much they mean to you. You put the card into the envelope and tape it on the package. Your friends birthday is in a few days and your anticipation is killing you , you cannot wait to give them this wonderful gift. Yet as you give your friend the gift they tell you they're too busy to open it at the moment and will open it later. You heart sinks. You insist they open it and that they'll love it and that you thought of them when you saw it. They continued to make excuses and their countenance didn't change one bit....still dwelling in day to day life problems and circumstances. The time comes for you to leave and days later your friend tweets you to tell you " thank you" for present. And yes they don't tell you in person but over the social media. But then you see they sold it on eBay for some __________and it breaks your heart to see how much your friend didn't care or appreciate about your gift. Well that story may be a little exaggerated with the whole Twitter and eBay stuff but still I'm sure we've all had times when we've experienced something similar.
But this is how our elder brother and Savior Jesus Christ and God feel when we reject the Atonement in our lives or when we don't use our gifts and talents to help others.
These don't have to be money or great big skills it can be something such as helping others feel important and special, spending quality time with someone, listening to someone whose struggling reading your scriptures and sharing what you learned with someone, raking leaves, pulling weeds, etc.
I am very grateful for all I've learned about this concept. It's one that is so dear to my heart. Find someone a day !
HOW CAN YOU USE YOUR TALENTS AND ABILITIES TO HELP BUILD UP GODS KINGDOM ON THE EARTH???
HOW CAN YOU SHOW HEAVENLY FATHER AND OUR SAVIOR AND REDEEMER JESUS CHIRST YOU LOVE THEM??....
RETURN AND REPORT. GO AND DO , DONT SIT AND STEW.
PEOPLE ARE WAITING TO MEET YOU. THEYRE WAITING FOR YOUR HELP.
GO BRING SUNSHINE INTO SOMEONES LIFE TODAY.
In "True to the Faith" under 'faith' it teaches us a LOT about what faith is and how we can have it in our lives. I'd love to invite all y'all to go read and apply it.
It's what I like to call the equation of faith.
First you have faith in Jesus Christ. Which means you center your life in him and believing and trusting him even when you don't understand what's happening. And then that leads you to action by REALLY living faith. Then it becomes a HABIT. As you live what you believe, you let your faith grow and as a result it INCREASES.
HOW COOL IS THAT?
Faith in Jesus Christ ----> living by faith--> increased faith as we apply it in our lives
Here in Bourbonnis, Illinois ....
I was pretty BOLD with our buddy, Rick.
He is a contractor. He was on break outside a house. We started talking to him about the gospel, and read a verse of scripture with him. He said he wanted to quit smoking, so he can see his grandkids grow up and enjoy life. I told him we can help him overcome this addiction. I told him we could even get rid of his cigarettes right then. He said no. Then he offered us a cigarette. We obviously said no. We kept trying to tell him he can overcome this the Savior's help. He almost said yes but no. It's crazy how on a mission even the people you meet once and talk to for 20 mins you have such a love for them. And such a sincere desire to help them.
Also it was super funny this week cause EVERYONE kept trying to give us marriage advice for future. 😂
This elderly woman at the elderly folk home kept asking if we are single and kept telling us over and over that when we find the right one we will know.
Sis. Anderson and I laughed so hard. We are still laughing at all the advice.
COOLEST THING EVER!!! One of Brother and Sister Beyers sons served his mission in Long Beach California. And DRUM ROLL PLEASE ...... KIERAN AND STEPHEN KNOW EACH OTHER. Small world !!!! In EVERY area I've served there's been these cool connections. Heavenly Father AMAZES ME. I just love Him.
Car share ... Sis. Anderson and I get the "privilege" of sharing our car with the Elders in our ward. Car shares are complicated enough but it's even more complicated because we can't ride with the Elders.
Sis. Anderson and I walked over a mile and a half to get to a lesson.
Dedicated missionaries? lol.
But I love it. The pioneers walked 1000's of miles and didn't have cars. They got frostbite and bled a lot,and so I CAN do this.
It's gonna require a lot more planning and prep. STRESS OVERLOAD.
This week I've met ppl from Guatemala, Finland, & Guyana. Brother Nava, our ward mission leader, is from Guatemala! Wahoooo. Fast and testimony meeting is one of my favs. Things I took away:
" fearlessly be yourself "
open your eyes and look for the miracles
Family history should be shared
In church :
I love this gospel. I love being a missionary, even through the trials.
Your fav missionary ,
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