May 23, 2016
I have WAY more to say than I´m going to be able to say!
President
Holland. Really amazing. I´m put down some of my favorite points of what
he said. He made me cry in the very first thing he said. EXACTLY what I
needed. He said: " You´re probably not perfect. But we feel that you
are! Even if you have a long way to go to be the missionary (you can put
in whatever fits, mom, dad, brother, sister, bishop, leader,
friend.....) you want to be, THANK YOU for the missionary you are. We
love you"
Yup. I cried, and THEN he continued with the part about our musical number. SO MANY EMOTIONS!!!!!
He
said that we are the 2 thousand stripling warriors in the LDM fighting
for righteousness but multiplies to almost 80 thousand missionaries (by
the end of the summer 75 thousand now)!
Never
in our life will we do something MORE important than what we are doing
now. There will be things equally important, but nothing MORE important.
Our first priority when we return will be to marry, start a family,
raise children in the gospel and this is what we´re doing here on the
mission: putting into effect the Atonement in the lives of others.
SALVATION! Giving them the blessings of eternity, the same work as a
mother of father. This is a moment rare and celestial.
He
also said that we are apostles. "But before you go running to email on
Monday and say to your parents that I called you to the Quorum of the 12 apostles.....your apostle has a little "a". Mine has a big "A". Little
a, big A, but we´re all here doin´ the same thing" We are
witnesses-someone sent with a message and ours happens to be the most
important in all of eternity. (He also said that we get a release from
our calling....he has to die! He is SO FUNNY!) "We´re companions. We´re
in this together. We´re doing it together. We´re all here together in
one big zone!" Imagine an APOSTLE OF GOD right in front of you telling
you that you´re companions, working together, doing the same thing,
working side by side for the same end.....whoa......I want to cry again
just thinking about it....such PEACE!)
He said
"We love you and are grateful for you.............BUT IT GETS SERIOUS
WITH MISSIONARIES" (and he´s also not afraid to yell in the
microphone...) He told us about how he takes his mission seriously. A
mission changes EVERYTHING! Then he stopped, looked at us and said, " If
you are obedient, if you are trying to do your best, I´ll do ANYTHING to
help you." Wow. He talked about how his mission is a milestone of his
salvation. I WANNA HAVE A MISSION LIKE THAT! I WANNA MAKE MY MISSION
LIKE THAT! He then talked about how we are the ONLY church with the true priesthood, baptism, temple covenants, and God that is true and living!
" Understanding of these principles is the marrow in my bones"
....AND dun, dun, duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun...I´ll write the rest next week.
Rosa.
She is an angel sent from Heaven! She was baptised yesterday, and it
was the most beautiful thing ever. We sang "Teach Me to Walk in the
Light" and everyone cried. It was amazing, looking to her, and the LIGHT
she has! After only a WEEK AND A HALF after meeting her, she was
baptised, she was ready, and she FELT the truth of everything we taught.
It was amazing to see the blessings of the Atonement in her life.
Everything in her past was washed away.
She is in PEACE. Complete peace! Next Sunday, she will receive the Gift
of the Holy ghost and be able to have this peace and comfort with her at
any and every moment she needs.
I had an instructor in the CTM that his
role play investigator´s name was Felipe. He progressed SO FAST! It
seemed like he already knew what we had to teach! He was baptised in 2
weeks. Our last day of class, our teacher brought a picture of his
baptism for us....and told us his first name...Felipe. It was HIS
STORY. Since then, I´ve been praying for my whole mission, to be able
to find "my Felipe", somebody SO READY to accept the gospel and their Savior. Well, we found her. Really, she fell from the Heavens.
She was a reference that took 10 days to get to us. A reference from a lady who
lives in Atlanta, GA (yes, the USA). A friend of Rosa-they´ve never
actually met personally. They started talking on Faceboook (bc Rosa was
thinking of moving to the US to work and to live closer to her daughter
who lives there). One day, this Irmã posted something about a blessing,
if anyone needed a blessing, and Rosa responded. Iranildes started
talking about the church, and passed Rosa´s information to us....but to
the wrong bishop...FINALLY, she fell into our hands, we went to
visit her for the first time, she was waiting, READY for us. We taught
the first lesson about the Restoration of the church, and she FELT so
strongly the Spirit testifying. We all cried a lot in that lesson. She
read the Book of Mormon that night and fell asleep with it on her chest
(she has insomnia bc of the trauma of everything that happened to her, and this was the first time in years that she slept a whole night in
peace. She told us the next day about her experience, and we all cried
more (we´ve done a lot of crying together)... Em fim, she´s amazing. She
always thanks Heavenly Father in her prayers at the end of the lesson
for the wonderful sisters who have become her daughters and helped her change her life with this amazing message. Like, what?!?!?! We didn´t
even do anything!!!! I am amazed! She was so ready to hear, and the Lord
trusted us enough even with all of our weaknesses. The Lord sees who we
really are. Even when you are feeling that you´re doing EVERYTHING
WRONG, He sees something more-something TRUER! So yeah, I´m gonna trust
Him more and do EVERYTHING I CAN to be more consecrated in my work and
efforts.
My zone.....everyone got up before my camera took the picture....you can see my desperation! (Another elder as well!)
I
sat down at the computer today, tried to type my name to enter into the
email...and......got stuck...as....h? yup........took me a minute.....
D&C 24:12
Galatians 6:9
John 16:33
D&C 12:8
Love you all! Keep on keepin on!
Sister Little
