Last week, my companion and I saw miracles. We led the mission in lessons with 31 lessons for the week, but it was incredible how little of that miracle was us or our work. I cannot begin to explain how gratifying this work is. It is the most exhausting, emotionally-challenging thing I have ever done, but I have learned more about life, about people, about myself and about the plan that God has for us in these eight months that I have been in the mission than I would have learned in eight years of life. I have never realized so fully how much each and every one of us matters, and how much even our little actions affect the eternal destinies of many.
This week I was doing my personal study for the day and during my prayer to end my study, I thought of a family that we´re teaching who are members but have been inactive since they moved here six months ago and they just got baptized about nine months ago. Reactivating people here is about half, if not more of the work, and it has taught me more about testimony and conversion than I presently have time to explain. Anyway, I thought about them, and I was thinking about how their family has started to have a lot of problems since they stopped going to church and then I thought about the Proclamation to the World about The Family. It was a thought that I had and then I continued on with my prayer and my day. But later that day, we finally found them in their home after weeks of not being able to find them at home. They didn´t have much time, so I asked them if we could read part of the Proclamation really quickly. They said yes, so we started reading as their kids continued to scream and run around the room. After we read some paragraphs and the part about the fact that the mother and father are equal partners and need to base their relationship on forgiveness and love and faith and help each other, they stopped reading and the mom turned to me and said ´This is too big of a coincidence... we´re passing through a really difficult time. How did you know we needed this? Do you teach the same thing to everyone each day?´ I told her that we prayed every day to know what we should teach everyone we teach and that what their family needed was to read the scriptures and pray every night together, come to church and have their family home evenings together and their family could become the family that they have always wanted. It wasn´t a vain promise, I have seen it happen and have felt the difference in the homes. They agreed, we set up a day to do a family home evening and yesterday they came to church for the first time in six months yesterday. Before we left with them, the kids knelt down and prayed and said that they were so grateful that we had come because they loved to go to church but that they didn´t know why their parents hadn´t gone in so long. Ugh why can´t we all just be like little kids.
Also, the husband who had left his wife (who we are teaching) right after Christmas, came back and now we are teaching both of them and they are both very receptive and recognize that every time we come, we leave their house with a different spirit.
Well my time is officially up and I haven´t even gotten in half of what I want to say, but I love you all and I want you all to know that the way to true happiness and peace in this life and eternal life in the life to come, is possible through the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints is His church here on the earth. And one of these days I´m going to be able to fit in everything that I want to say.
BUT LAST AND NOT LEAST CONGRATULATIONS TO MY BEAUTIFUL SISTER KATE WHO JUST GOT HER MISSION CALL TO BUENOS AIRES SOUTH ARGENTINA I´M SO EXCITED I CAN´T EVEN DESCRIBE IT.
Anyway, the pictures are from a day when my companion and I went hiking with a couple in the countryside which technically still is in our sector. He´s not a member but is some sort of Buddhist kung fu master but says that one day he´s going to be baptized. We´re working on it. They are awesome. The other one is of us picking wild raspberries that grow in the grass. We are so cool.
Chao!!!
Con mucho amor, Hermana Nielsen
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