Alright so to start this email off I wanted to post a correspondence between me and President that made me feel pretty good, every week we email President and just talk to him about how our week went and experiences we are having so he can better help us and so this is what I said to him:
"I've been thinking a lot about that story in Preach my Gospel about Heavenly Father being proud of Jesus and how I want Him to be proud of me too and it makes me wonder how God will introduce me to people. Like if he would say "this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased" it really makes me want to live up to the standard where I would merit that introduction it calls for working as hard as you can though, not perfection because he wants to say that about each of us!"
to which he responded:
"What a wonderful thought and I pray that you will always remember it, because a loving Heavenly Father has prompted you thorough the spirit to pay attention to this experience, so that you can say:"Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again." Elder Guymon print out your email you sent me and put it in a place where you always will be reminded of how much you desire that the Father will introduce you as:"Beloved son in whom I am well pleased." Well elder Guymon I can surely say:"This is my beloved assistant in whom I am well pleased." Thank you for not giving up when the work gets hard and putting your trust in the Lord."
Basically President is the most awesome guy ever, he honestly has helped me to learn so much, it seems like every week something else happens that is just a confirmation that he was definitely meant to be my mission president! So ya that was an awesome spiritually uplifting experience that I had!
I took Elder Eddings and Sister Ariza home this week! It was pretty sad, Elder Eddings is such an awesome guy I'm going to miss him a ton. It was weird saying bye to him because he was just like "well I'll see you in a few months!" AHH! Kinda weird to even think about. It's comforting knowing I can see these awesome people again though! #goUtah Which I guess made taking Sister Ariza home extra sad because the chances are pretty low that I'll be seeing her again! Lucky us that we live in todays times with modern technology!
I also wanted to explain what Summers do to Albania, it makes missionary work pretty rough. Basically end of July and all of August everyone goes on vacation to the "plazh" (beach) and all the cities just become skeletons of their former selves. Like church attendance plummets (except in Kosovo which is a land locked country so I didn't notice last year) and pretty much all the numbers go down. It just gets so hot here that people just don't go outside in the afternoons they just sleep and then head out in the evenings. So that's just another little struggle that we are dealing with right now. Everyone is just like ya I'm not in Tirana right now call me at like the end of August. All the members that do still come to church are all straight brown! Then I'm just here like well my back hasn't seen the sun for 2 years! It's great though just another interesting thing about the place I serve!
Something that I realized this week which kinda took me by surprise was that I honestly love the Albanian people. To this moment I can't believe I'm saying that! A year ago I wouldn't have believed I would ever say that, not that I hate Albanians or anything of course not but I'm just so immature/impatient/prideful that I just used to get so frustrated with the people I served all the time! But this week we taught a couple people who just didn't really seem like they were totally understanding our message and were going off about all their problems which is when I would normally just tune them out and roll my eyes and stuff but I just realized that to some extent I understood them. Like I'm not saying I'm Christ or anything and have perfect compassion for anyone but I truly believe that as I have served these people I have been given just a small view of how He sees them. I really don't think there would have been any other way for me to feel like that if I hadn't just come here and tried it for myself, really tried to serve the people as best I can and help bring light and hope into their lives because I know I need it every bit as much as they do. I still know that I have a lot to learn and a long way to go but I never could have imagined that I would feel this way honestly. I keep seeing so many things that I know I needed to learn while I am out here. I wish there was a nice little matrix computer program that you could just plug yourself into and you could download all these experiences and all this knowledge into your brain in an instant but it doesn't work like that. I could have never reached this point if I didn't work for it. You truly have to go though it all to be able to learn some of things that you will learn on your mission. I just don't think there is any other way!
Anyway maybe this email was a bit self reflective but it was a big deal for me! If yall don't want to read the new hit novel about coming of age in the 21'st century then you don't have to read it! haha
Love you all have a great week! Try not to miss me too much while you are surfing in Mexico!
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