Letter From 9/22/2014

Oi gente!!

This week was great, and full of lessons to learn. My companion and I have been studying more about Christlike attributes, and we´ve been seeing tests every day about the attribute we study. One that really hit me this week was hope. 

Hope is AWESOME, and actually really hard to have sometimes. We had a member make visits with us after lunch...and we walked and walked and for 5 hours, ALL of our appointments fell through. Every single one. That´s just not normal...and I was kinda freaking out, because it was getting late and we were in a bad part of town. So we decided to head back, and we were super stressed out. The member decided to leave because nothing was happening...tchau, lessons with a member...and we were alone, with 0 lessons and the day almost ending. It wasn´t very good. But then I´d remembered that we´d studied about hope...and hope includes that you know that trials are for your good, and you stay optimistic in every situation. So, we did that. Right as we remembered that, we saw someone in the road that we had taught 2 months ago and wanted absolutely nothing. She said that our message hadn´t left her head, and she wanted to talk to us again. She said she wouldn´t be able to go to church because she was travelling somewhere, but we marked for this week. THEN we saw a Less active person that I talked about a few months ago...and she invited us in and said she´d be going to church the next day. Then we knocked on doors (or clapped, really) (which is really super ineffective) and made the new investigators that we needed.

Church was awesome, we had 3 investigators there and they all loved it. Sacrament meeting was absolutely inspired for the less active person...her and her husband absolutely loved it, and we´re started to teach them and helping them get a testimony of the Book of Mormon. 

We can´t ever lose hope! We can´t forget that God has an eternal perspective and knows exactly where we need to be, when we need to be, and why! We gotta trust in Him and just really be instruments in His hands. I´m so thankful for the lessons I´m learning here, and for the work and miracles that are happening. 

I love you all, have a fantastic week!

Sister Neal