This has been a great week! I've been learning so
much and growing so much as well! I'm so grateful for the opportunity I
have to be on my mission. There's a quote from a church video that says
"it's one thing to survive, it's another to find joy in surviving." (the
video is principles of peace: faith... highly recommended;)). Every
moment on this earth is a blessing! I don't want to waste a single
second by wishing for something else. God has given me anything and
everything I could ever want or need to be happy. As long as I have the
gospel of Jesus Christ in my life, I can be happy.
This
week we found an amazing girl to teach! I'll call her Sage. It was kind
of an interesting situation because we were sitting on a university
campus talking to this one girl named Rabia when Sage walked up.
Apparently she is part of a mentoring program (some type of life coach
thing or something). She is only 18 years old and was trying to recruit
us to join her mentoring thing. Apparently what they do is meet up with
people and coach them on their life. Which is basically what we do
except we just teach people about the gospel. We agreed to meet with her
but were both kind of nervous because we felt that we wouldn't be able
to teach her the gospel and she would just be trying to recruit us for
her program the whole time. However, we were both proven wrong and ended
up having a really powerful lesson on the plan of salvation. The spirit
was so strong. It was unlike any other teaching situation I've been in
because it was apparent that she did indeed just want to recruit us for
her program. However I watched the spirit soften her heart right before
my eyes. She listened earnestly to us and shared some of the difficult
things that were happening in her life. It was just so clear to how much
she needs this in her life. I honestly can't express is in words but
one thing I do know is that the spirit really is there. I know that this
work is true and that Christ directs it. Sage agreed to meet with us
again and seemed really excited about it. However we were both quite sad
when she texted us and said she just didn't have enough time at the
moment to continue meeting. It was heartbreaking.
I
feel that a lot of the miracles on my mission have ended with people
getting too busy or chosing to discontinue meeting with us. That does
make me pretty sad, but one thing I've grown to know is that God's plan
is much bigger than my own. I can only see one step ahead, meanwhile God
can see the whole picture. I used to think I could plan out my life but
I've realized that while I can make plans, I actually have no idea
what's coming next. But I'm grateful that God knows. I'm grateful that
He knows, because His plans are bigger than the plans I have for myself.
I'm so grateful we walk by faith in this life rather than by sight
because I think if we walked by sight, we would stop short everytime.
Because we wouldn't realize how much we truly are capable of. We are
blinded during our time here on earth so God can help us to reach our
full potential. Because that's much grander than anything we could ever
imagine. It's as if our journey here on earth was one giant hike with a
ton of false summits. It we could see everything, maybe we would be
content with the view at the first false summit. But God doesn't want us
to stop there. He wants us to reach the top of the mountain, even
though it's impossibly hard. Even though we might think we can't do it,
He knows we can.
We are also teaching this
amazing girl from India. I'll call her Jasvinder. She comes from a Sikh
background and recognizes that when she was a child, the gods in her
Sikh religion were able to comfort her. Now however, her problems have
changed and her way of handling them needs to change. We taught her
about the atonement and it made me so happy because I know that the
atonement is the one thing that can heal all broken things.
This
week we had the miracle of having a random person in the phone text us
and want to meet up! It turns out it was someone who had been learning
in the past but then went to India in the summer! And it's someone I
remember the STLs working with when I was in Brookswood last year! She
has just come back from India and really wanted to start learning again!
It made me so happy!
We had zone conference
this week and it was so good! We talked a lot about being happy! There
is really so much in this life to be happy about!
I hope you all have an amazing week!
Sister Bloomfield
