Jan. 18, 2011

Hello everyone! I hope that you all had a great holiday weekend! Mine was no different from any other weekend since I've been here. LOL. I wouldn't have even known it was a holiday except that the library was closed. hahahaha.

This week has been a good one. We were able to meet with Kim and her family again, and they came to church on Sunday too. It was great. They're really excited about the church and the gospel. And I can't wait to keep teaching them. All the kids are amazing and very smart. We're trying to set a baptism date with them for February 12th, and we'll still keep working towards that goal. It would be awesome because that would mean that they get to be baptized on my birthday! That would be the best birthday present I could ever get!

Alisha also managed to come to church on Sunday, which was awesome! She was late though, and only made it to Relief Society. We'll keep working with her, and teaching her as often as possible to help her see the truth of what we're teaching.

Chris and his daughter won't be able to be baptized on Saturday, but only because he shares custody of Maleah with his ex-wife, and he doesn't have Maleah that weekend. So we rescheduled for the 5th of February, which works out because it gives us a little more time to teach them. :)

We started teaching a couple new people this week too. Ofelia is hispanic and catholic, but as we met with her, I could really feel her sincerity in searching for what Heavenly Father wants of her in her life, and His will for her. She gratefully took a Book of Mormon and committed to read 3 Nephi 11 and pray about it. We'll teach her about the Restoration on Friday. We've also started teaching a woman named Lena. She's an interesting case. She is very active in her Non-Denominational Christian church. Missionaries in this area have been trying to meet with her for several years, but she always puts them off. I know that she's been give some anti-mormon lit from some of her preachers in the past. As we've been able to teach her, she's told us that she simply wants to find out from us what the truth of what we believe is. At first, I believed she was more interested in making sure we were saved than in hearing what we had to teach, but as we've met with her, I believe that the spirit has taught her a little bit about the truth of our message, and she's softening her heart to us. It'll probably be a long road with her, and I probably won't be here to see the end of it, but I was here to start it! And that's cool.

This week I've had a lot of growth, I think. For the last seven months (that's right, I hit my seven month mark on Sunday! Can you believe it?) I've had the blessed opportunity to sit back and kind of ignore the real world. No job, no bills, no money, no news, no problems, really. It's been really nice. I almost forgot that real life was happening all around me. That kind of changed this week. "Real life" smacked me in the face. Several of our recent converts and investigators are going through some really hard things. I'd bet a lot of money that it has to do with their conversions -- refiner's fire and all of that. I had kind of been turning a blind eye to it, thinking that they were saved in the kingdom now, and I had done my part. But I've found out that that isn't so. My role as their spiritual guide doesn't end when they get baptized. I'm going to be part of these peoples lives for a long long long time, and I'm so happy about that. But at the same time, my heart has broken a little as I've watched some of the struggles that they face. And I've felt inadequate to help them or to know what to say. Feeling this anguish for them has really helped to me re-attach to the real world. It's helped me to recognize that life is still happening and that sorrow is real and still around. I've come to understand a tiny bit, what it must be like for the savior. He loves me, just as I love my investigators, and he watches me stumble with my trials and sorrows, just as I've been watching my friends go through theirs. My feelings couldn't possibly compare with those of the Savior's but I've come to see, in a small degree, what it feels like to wish that I could trade places with them, to spare them from the things that they have to go through, knowing that my testimony could withstand those things, while I'm sometimes not sure that theirs could. I've begun to understand the atonement a little better this week. And it's been hard. But worth it. I love Jesus Christ for standing in my place for me. Because he could stand it, and he knew that I couldn't. And that's the great message of the Gospel. And I love that I understand that better today than I did last week. Even though it's been - and will still be - a painful lesson to learn.

I love my mission, and I'm glad I'm here. I hope and pray that all of you are safe and healthy, and that you are always watchful of the things you say and do. Keep your testimonies safe... they can fail too easily. I love you all and I miss you a ton.

Love, Sister Reid