How are you all? I hope that all is well over there in the states and that everyone is enjoying the Christmas season to the fullest!
As for all of us here in Piura, we're getting in to the Christmas Spirit with lots of dirt, heat, and hard work ;) This week has been another week full of blessings for my companion and I. She's really amazing. She has such a big heart and is super willing to work. I love it too because she's so willing to be obedient (which sometimes gets a little harder with the missionaries that have been in the field for a while...) and we get along super well.
The other night we had a really special experience. We went to visit a member that's apparently been a member for quite some time (he and all of his siblings are members, but his parents still haven't gotten married so they aren't members) We were just getting to know him because it was the first time we had talked to him, and we started talking about missions. He told us that when he turned 18 he had almost gone on a mission...he had his papers ready and everything, but decided not to go because he realized that he was only going because everyone told him that he should do it and not because it was something that he really felt like he should do. My companion and I had the opportunity to shard with him our experiences of how we decided to come on the mission, and it was really amazing. The Spirit was so powerful and I think that he really felt the difference. It was neat for me too, because as I was testifying of the mission and all that it's come to mean to me in the last 10 months, I was able to really reflect and I just had this moment where I felt "Wow. This is just SO TRUE." This gospel is the most amazing thing that has happened to my life, and I'm so grateful for the influence that it's had on me and the influence I've been able to see it have on the lives of the people here in the mission field.
Something that's really been weighing on my mind a lot lately is repentance. We have a few families that we're visiting right now that are having a hard time progressing simply because they aren't married. It's so hard for me to see that they're missing out on so many blessings because they aren't willing to be different from the world and accept the commandments of God. I was thinking a lot about Isaiah 55:8-9 where it talks about how God's thoughts are higher than ours, and His ways higher than our ways. It's SO true. It will always be harder for us to do the right thing, to do what God wants than to do whatever we want to do, because we're human, and our natural man will always tell us to do things opposite of how God would have us do them. But, like it says in D&C 130:20-21, the first law of heaven is that we only receive the blessings for the laws that we are willing to obey. So, if we want the blessings, we have to develop the faith that God will bless us as we keep His commandments, in His way and not in our way.
The ward keeps taking super good care of us. The member family that we live with invited us to celebrate Christmas with them and their family, so we're getting excited for that. Also, it's been kind of funny because people keep offering to feed us every time we go to their houses (the members) so we keep coming home and not even being hungry...so we've basically not eaten any of the food we bought for this week! I guess that's what happens when it gets close to Christmas time and everyone starts thinking about how to share the spirit of the season ;)
Anyways, I sure love all of you! I hope that you can all keep in mind this Christmas season the true meaning of Christmas. I'd invite all of you to visit the churches Christmas site that they've made specifically to share the meaning of Christmas with the world: Christmas.mormon.org (I think that's what it is in English! haha)
Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Hermana Garner
P.S. Sorry, no pictures this week, I forgot to bring my adaptor....oops!
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