Hello Beautiful Family!
Reading your letters just sets my heart aglow! :)
Luke! I am so proud of you and your ridiculous drum skills! And I am SUPER impressed at your ability to remain calm and read music upside down. Ha ha! Good job, Luker. You da champ. ;) Good luck at state, Little Chubs! I know you will knock them dead. I am praying for you! :) I am so excited to come home one day and wake up to the sound of your ridiculously loud drumming again... I miss that. Ha ha :) I hope you saved my mallets for me, because you're going to have to teach me all your drumming abilities! :)
And Cail is in Mexico? What the?... That is awesome! That is so Micail. Get home to your family from a year and half in another country helping people and then turn around and do it some more. Ha ha! :) She will love that. That means she is just a little closer to me right? Maybe that is why the flowers are a little brighter and the sky a little bluer. :) I love you, Cail! Have fun in Mexico! :)
And Mom and Dad. :) Can I just thank you one more time for everything? There are no words to decribe how truly grateful I am for our family. Thank you for making my life beautiful and teaching me in a home where love is abundant. I love you so much. I miss you too. :)
Also, guess what! I met a family from KAYSVILLE here in Brazil. How crazy is that?! Sister King, who has been serving here, just finished her mission and her family came down to pick her up AND they stopped in Senhor do Bonfim to visit! We were in the middle of studies when I heard someone calling, "Sister! Sister!" at the door. I was very surprised to see a white, American family standing on our doorstep. Ha ha! :) But it was so wonderful to meet them. They even shared some Skittles with us! :) I gave them our phone number, so maybe they will call you! :) As they were leaving Sister King's dad was helping them with the luggage and getting the bus tickets all ready and I said," Wow! A dad doing dad stuff!" And it made me miss you, Dad. I miss you and you doing "dad stuff". :)
This week in Senhor do Bonfim was a bit like what they call "walking through a bed of roses." While you are walking through, all you really notice are the thorns shredding your legs up, but once you are through and you look back, all you see is a beautiful field of roses.
All week I felt like we kept hitting dead end after dead end: investigators not wanting to be baptized, people not being home, people not listening or progressing, and we ended up having to cut a lot of lovely people from our teaching group which is the worst. There was one day this week that was especially discouraging.
We had been teaching a wonderful, wonderful family for a month, and just the other night we had to take them out of our teaching group. It was horrid. The dad of the family and the kids were super excited about the church and knew it was true, but the was the mom was very doubtful and wasn't quite ready to leave some worldly things behind, get leagally married, and change her life. The dad told us that he wants to get baptized, but he wants to love and respect his compaion too and so, he would wait until she was ready to change. It was so hard to hear. After a month of seeing their progress, desire, and testimonies grow, they just couldn't put themselves to it and change. I loved that family so very much. Maybe too much, because cutting them from our teaching pool was like cutting off a little piece of my heart.
But later that night while I was washing the dishes, I got thinking about it some more. I thought, 'Well, I can be sad some more... or I can just trust God and continue on and find some more families.' And as hard as it was, I decided to choose the latter. Something that I have a flourishing testimony in is faith. Faith is knowing Heavenly Father loves us, that He will never hurt us, only help, and then to trust Him whole-heartedly and act upon that knowledge. I remember mom saying to me, "Everything will work out in the end. And if it hasn't worked out, then it isn't the end." I don't know what will happen to my little family, if they will come back to church, if they will forget us, if they will find the courage to change, but what I do know is I did my best, and Heavenly Father will see to it that everything works out.
As I look back now, I can see the "roses", all the wonderful times we had together, all I learned from them, and how the Lord has strengthened me in my time of sadness. I noticed too that my companionship with Sister B. Sousa was strengthened as well as we helped eachother in our time of need. I am grateful for all the roses Heavenly Father has given me, thorns and all, and how they make my life colorful and beautiful.
I am excited to find more familes and more people who are ready to hear the truth and join the church of Jesus Christ. I know they are out there and I know Heavenly Father will help us find them. I trust my Heavenly Father and I know He loves us. I love Him. :)
Thank you for all you do for me, family. Especially for your prayers. I feel them. Good luck to you in all your endeavors this week. I love you so, so, so very much. I miss you! :)
All of my love,
Sister Mann
No comments:
Post a Comment