Happy Valentines Day
 

Life's experiences

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

We as missionaries are always experiencing something new all the time.   Friends, assignments,  apartment, sad news, exciting news, disappointment, and the list can go on and on.  These experiences are for our growth and learning.  They help us become better missionaries and people.  They prepare us for more experiences.  It is how we react to these experiences that is important.  If we take the sad news or disappointment negatively and don't include our Heavenly Father and let him help us we won't learn and grow.  We will follow a sad and lonely path.  And on the other hand if we take the good, happy and exciting news without including our Heavenly Father and showing gratitude for our joy we will still be on a lonely road.   It is through our Heavenly Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, who will support us and show us what we can learn from our experiences, happy or sad. 

We have a sister in our ward, Sandra Morris, that I have mentioned before but I would like to give her honor in my letter today because she has taught me a lot about the hard things in life.  She has had cancer now for quite a long time.  She has been through radiation and chemo more than once.  Each time they think they have arrested it, it gives her hope.  Then another test, another scan reveals another tumor.  She starts over and tries to beat it.  Just as things start to look promising something else develops.  Last week she thought she had a bug bite on her side and found out it was a staph infection.  That has taken its toll on her health.   Then this week she was diagnosed with shingles, very painful shingles in which she ended up on the hospital again.  
We were visiting with her and her little family last week and I mentioned how positive and upbeat she was in the face of such adversity.  She looked at me and said, "I know who I will meet when I leave this life and I want to meet Him smiling and happy."  Every day is a challenge for her and yet she is always smiling and happy.  She is taking the experiences of life and making the best of them she can.  I am learning a lot from her.  We have become very close to this family and love them very much for their diligence and perseverance in the face of adversity.  I must mention that her husband is very supportive and loving as is her little 7 year old son also.  This couple was just baptized last August.

(I began this blog last week and since my writing, Sister Morris  passed away on Monday.  She was a very special sister in the Gospel and a close friend.  I will miss her and her family will greatly miss her.  But they know where she is and are staying strong.  We are keeping in close contact with them and trying to help them in any way we can.  We feel that her best friend is being prepared to hear the gospel soon.  She was so wonderful to and faithful to Sandra.)  

Last week my computer (the new one of course) crashed.  The motherboard went out.  I had to wait a week to get it fixed or I might have had this blog up and running before now.  I realized through this "experience" I could do without a computer for a while.  Things that we're pressing and important to do I did on Paul's computer.  But when mine was finally up and running again I unsubscribed from several emails that distract me from my work.  I usually delete a lot every day and decided that I would permanently delete them and save me time.   Then to top it all off, after we moved, the internet didn't work for 4 days which meant my cordless phone didn't work and my cell phone was giving us fits.  It wouldn't connect to the network.  Just a little glitch in life again.  What did we learn from this?  Life goes on even without cyber space and we added more study time to our days. I am grateful for this experience. 

 It seems that we are always moving someone.  Two weeks ago we helped a young single sister, a new convert, move within the ward.  We've been doing a lot of that lately.  She didn't have a lot but the armoire was enough to do them all in.  It was big and heavy.  A member in our ward had a truck and with the clever arranging of Paul and the Elders we got it all on the truck and in our cars.  We made only one trip across town.  Then we moved last weekend.  After having our apartment broken into last summer and then a new neighbor above us that we were aware of whenever she was home, lots of noise, fighting, etc. we decided we should move and have an apartment that would be ready for the new couple that we hope will move into this ward.  So last month we made the arrangements.  On Saturday, we had about 10 people at our place to help us move our little one bedroom apartment.  The Elders, Bishop, Elders Quorum President, YM President and 5 young men.  Paul told the YM he would contribute to their trip to the Hill Cumorah if they would come and help us move.  They did.  We rented a truck and were moved from one apartment to the other  (in the same complex) in about one and a half hours.  Erika, who we moved two weeks ago, came and helped me put the apartment back together again.  I was so grateful for her help.  Our new apartment is a duplicate of the old one. 

Erika is our new convert, her boyfriend, Dan and our strong missionaries...Elder Farnsworth and McKenna

Paul organizing the truck

Taking it all down

A heavy Load!

Taking it up.  Paul about had a hernia from this load.

Finally it is done!

Beginning the process of the move.  Taking everything apart

I'm too tall for this fixture.  We had it raised...

 The YM were very helpful.

The Bishop helping us move. 

Oh, if you could see the sweat on his forehead...he was dripping.

Erika helping us move

 

  Gotta have my plants

The past few weeks we have been involved with many of the active members in our ward.  We have done a little visiting of less active and meeting with our investigators.  Our investigator that we presented the non-smoking program to basically failed and has had a myriad of excuses.   We're not sure if it will ever happen.  He mentioned that he going about it in a different way, his way.  Well so far that hasn't happened either.  We'll just keep praying for him.  Another investigator  is also struggling with cigarettes and says that it is his "pleasure" each day.   He also doesn't want to disappoint his mother by joining the church.  So we have a ways to go with him.  However, they both faithfully attend Sacrament meeting, have been welcomed into the ward and have positive remarks about the talks and lessons.   We pray that their hearts will be touched by something they hear or read. 
Sadly we met a lady who told us she had been forced to join the church by her husband to please his boss who was LDS.   When I met her and talked to her for a few minutes I told her that we would love to help her understand the gospel and help her gain a testimony which she indicated that she never had.  I felt so sad as she told us her story and just wanted to put my arms around her and love her.  She lived in a run down old house that looked abandoned.  She was alone and I am sure lonely.  I have felt that we should sometime in the near future try to visit her again before we leave for home.  I could picture her in white and hope to help her wear it sometime soon. 

Last week we taught Seminary and then when Sister Burgeson returned from her trip she got sick and so we taught again Thursday and Friday this week.  Although I drag a little through the week and my eyes are heavy a lot of the time, I love being with the kids.  We try to make it interesting and fun to keep their attention.   One day I had a sheet that asked questions about God, the Father.  Questions like; What truths do I already know about Him; If I were to see Him, what would I expect to see, etc.  Each question builds on the one before.   Fridays are Scripture Mastery day and so I always plan games, worksheets or challenges.  Last Friday I made a sheet up where they would write the scripture in the middle of the page and then find scriptures that apply to that one; find some quotes that apply; definitions of words in the scripture; doctrines and principles that they can learn from it and how they can apply it to their lives.  It was a very good worksheet.  I got the idea on the web. 
Another activity was reading a conference talk. I copied the talk on half the sheet of paper so that they would have a large margin.   Each person got a copy and put their name at the top.  Then they passed the paper to the person to the right.  They were to read the talk for about three minutes and make comments or testimony about what they were reading in the margin.  In about 3 minutes they passed it again.  They would continue reading the talk and comment.  If they wanted to comment on what they read before they went back and added it to the new copy.  We did this for about 15 minutes.  When we were done I had them pass it back to the owner.  It was fun watching them read and comment about what was on their papers.  Another web discovery.   Friday we played dodge ball.  When they were hit by the ball they were out and they had to come to me and I gave them a scripture to find or a question regarding a scripture.  Then we played spoons which was fun with the scriptures.  It was a kind of scripture chase. Everyone had a good time and I think learned something along the way.

 These are the faithful attenders..getting up to be at Seminary at 5:30 am

Dodge Ball

Playing Spoons

Sera, who basically new all of the scriptures won the game.  Paul started to hand out dollar bills and the kids really perked up.  Jackson on the left and Sera each scored with the $.

 

 Last Monday we went to the Florida State Fair for P-Day.  I can't believe that a year has passed since we were there.  Seems like yesterday.  We had a nice day and had our picture taken with the alligators! :)

A few minutes relaxing in a message chair.  Wouldn't buy it!  $6000

Walking through the fair.  

Sand Castle

 Wrestling with the gator

Aren't they cute little critters?  Paul is holding the Albino alligator which is one of a litter of about 7.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines Day.  Learn from the experiences of your life and enjoy the journey along the way.  
Have a great day. 

Love you all...