On Sunday yesterday we had an investigator come to church for her first time! Hermana Gerratt first found her back in October, and she was never able to come to the chapel because she was always out of town working Sundays-Fridays. Luckily she is off work this week, so we are taking the advantage of teaching her more than just on Saturday mornings! I was not able to hear this personally because I was sitting with our other investigators (it´s always a wonderful victorious feeling for a companionship when we have to split up and sit with different people during sacrament meeting!!) but Hermana Gerratt told me that this lady said ¨I woke up with a stomach ache this morning and almost didn´t come, but then I remembered you missionaries and knew I had to come! And now that I am sitting here I can feel that sick feeling going away! I feel better already!¨ Look how the Lord works and blesses us when we follow the commandments! I have a testimony of my own experiences from having a lot of work during college that when you put the Lord first he will make your day and your week so much better.
Sidenote- we also had TWICE as many people in our chapel today than we usually do. It felt so wonderful to see almost all of the benches occupied. It´s been interesting to see the different things that make me feel joyful now which would have given me a little bit of gladness if I had noticed them before being a missionary. My perspective is growing and it never ceases to amaze me. It´s a HUGE feeling of joy when I see baby steps closer to our goals for this branch!
I also am coming to understand why missionary work is hard. I´m not referring to the sweaty achy days with humidity and bug bites with no contacts or no Book of Mormons passed out or no lessons taught. I´m referring to the hard days when we see people make wrong choices, the days when people can´t see the love God has for them, the days when they don´t understand why this gospel is not only important but is so incredibly worth it. Sometimes people want life to be all roses and no thorns, some don´t want to endure to the end because they don´t think they will make it to the happiness at the end of the finish line, or they don´t think the happiness exists at all. I learned this from reading an amazing talk by Elder Holland, the title of which I cannot think of at the moment, but he says something along the lines of ¨a mission is not easy because salvation is not easy either.¨ All the disappointment and heartache is part of life. Every life holds challenges, ugly surprises, trials, disappointments, and sadness. I´ve realized that being a missionary you get a lot of looks into other people´s ¨stuff¨ in life, so it´s highly saturated for us... but the amazing thing about it all is that at the end of a hard day I can still end up feeling love from my Heavenly Father that he has for me, for my companion, and for our investigators, whether it be in a beautiful sunset over the campo, a silly joke from my awesome companion, or a little miracle in a investigator´s life that reminds me that everything we do here in Cañada de Gomez is so incredibly worth it.
I hope you all have a wonderful week! As of yesterday I have been here for two whole months. I can´t believe it! It feels like it has been one month. Is the time flying for you? Are you taking up every moment to make 2012 the best year yet? I hope you are. I hope you are enduring to the end and not giving up and remembering to keep looking toward that happiness that lies ahead if the thorns of life scratch you up every once in a while. The roses are still there. I promise you.
con gran amor, hermana miller : )
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