Week 43

Hey I just got transferred!! my new address is

13550 Heathcote BLvd. #121

Gainsville, va 20155

 

My new companions name is sister Williams!

Man I have been having such a fantabulous week. Seriously. It's been great. My new companion is wonderful and this area is awesome. In the past 3 or 4 days we have seen so many miracles, I cant even describe how amazing it has been. 

To start off. My new companions name is sister Erica Williams. She lives in Idaho and has been out for about 3 months, but you wouldnt know it. She's such a rock star missionary and I've already learned a lot from her. You know what's really funny? We're pretty sure that we've seen each other before our missions, but as of yet we havent been able to figure out where. We were both at BYUI at the same time and we think we mightve been in a class together, or something, but again, we still havent figured out which one. We've been having some great fun and definitely having miraculous experiences. 

One of the really cool experiences we had was with a less active member named Lei. We had a lesson on my second night here and we were talking about sacrificing things in our lives that pull us away from God. I've come to realize that when we leave our commitments pretty general and let them pick something to work on for themselves, it is almost always more powerful, and they push themselves harder than we ever could and they also are more likely to do it. So we had asked Lei to pick one thing to cut out of his life and we would follow up with him the next day to see if he picked something. So the next day comes and we text him asking if he picked something. The text he sent back was AWESOME. He said, "Does smoking count??". So lei picked for himself to give up smoking and he said that its been going well for the past several days and that he isnt really having problems with it. Amazing, right??

Also, another miracle that happened was in the apartment complex that we live in. Well actually there are several cool things that have happened. A lot of the people who live in the complex are old people. We've just started teaching probably 4 people this week who live near us. There's been a ton of misisonaries that have lived here and yet in the past couple of days we've picked up at LEAST four. Theres been a ton of other people that we've talked to as well. And they are all really solid people who have a sincere desire to learn about Christ's true church. With one of them we started talking about the Book of Mormon and he goes, "you know, i've never read that! But I've always had a really strong desire to learn about religion" so of course we hooked him up with a book. 

Someone also told me something really profound the other day. As human beings we all sometimes have those thoughts about ourselves like "Oh you're not good enough" or "man, you're really awful" but....why would we be thinking about ourselves in the terms of "you or you're"? if we would be thinking about ourselves then we would think, "I" or "I'm". Yet, why do we have the thoughts about ourselves that start with"you're"? that's because it's satan. He's the one that is saying, "you're not good enough". Whenever we think thoughts like that, we can know that satan is trying to tear us down and that he's the one putting those thoughts there. THey arent coming from our own mind, theyre coming from him and we can push them out of our minds because theyre not our own thoughts. I thought that that was really interesting and it definitely makes a ton of sense. Although hopefully I've explained it in a way that makes sense. 

Anywho....What a wonderful week!! Love you all!! have a good week!! :)