With the new year, I hope everyone is exercising a little
hard, eating a little healthier, and nourishing their spirits a little more!
What a great week this has been....and so much fun! Sister
Christensen and I have been trying to be the living embodiment of the song
"Scatter Sunshine". In case you are not familiar, here are some of
the lyrics:
Slightest actions often
Meet the sorest needs,
For the world wants daily
Little kindly deeds.
Oh, what care and sorrow
You may help remove,
With your songs and courage,
Sympathy and love.
Scatter sunshine all along your way.
Cheer and bless and brighten
Ev'ry passing day.
Isn't that just so simple and profound?
I love the part that
talks about songs and courage, because as missionaries, something that we do
all of the time is sing to people! We sing a little duet of I am a child of God
or something else simple and spiritual. The other day, we actually met a woman
who just cried and cried when we sang to her. She was so overcome with emotion
because of the simple words of the song. We are children of a Heavenly Father
who loves us. So he sent his son and he sent us to our families and our
circumstances so that we could learn exactly what we are MEANT to be learning
here.
Something that I learned from the spirit this week was that
daily repentance is so important. Zone Conference this coming up week is going
to be focused on teaching repentance, and I am so excited to have an excuse to
spend some time studying repentance. Every time I think that I understand it, I
learn something new. A way that I have been using the atonement is just to
overcome the little things where I don't feel 100% in that small moment. I can
pray (such a privilege) and I can ask God to get me through this one moment
when I feel 82% of how I should be feeling. Then about 10 seconds later, I
overcome it. And I feel better. When I can acknowledge that I am not 100%, then
I can move past it. But, if I give myself a reason and justification for
feeling the way that I feel, the feeling will be perpetuated. Then I'll feel
bad later. It's just all about recognizing that I'm not feeling Christ-like
right now and so I need to change. It's just recognizing a weakness and asking
Heavenly Father for strength to overcome it. It works every time. It's pretty
cool. Like if the atonement was a hypothesis, it would be a theory by now for
me because I've experimented with it so many times, and it works every single
time! Except it's not just a theory, it's an eternal truth.
We went to Cafe Rio! And ate entire entrees by ourselves! it
was ridiculous, but it was so amazing. Another food adventure this week was
eating cold cereal in the car. We packed cereal, bowls, milk, and spoons and
then had to be very careful, trying not to spill anything. And somehow my
clumsy self didn't spill! That was truly a miracle.
One thing that I have noticed this transfer is how much my
and Sister C's russian has skyrocketed. Nooo we aren't fluent. In fact, we are
far from it and probably won't become fluent on our missions. However, we are
improving. In Sunday school yesterday, we actually understood every thing that
was being said and actually noticed that the vocab words that we have been
working on the past few days were used in the lesson. It's been a big
re-commitment to the language this transfer, and I am beginning to actually
love Russian so much more than before. It's not an obstacle anymore, I can
actually understand and participate in deep conversations about many things!
(mostly just church things, but still...Russians like to tell a BUNCH of
stories and so we learn a bunch of random words).
That's about all for this week! I love all of you! I hope
that 2017 is a wonderful year for each and every one of you. Stay strong.
Love,
Cectpa Jenne"
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