Hope everyone is doing well! Thanks for your prayers and emails and support.
The exciting thing this week was exchanges! Exchanges are pretty much when you switch companions for 24 hours. There are two sisters that are called to be Sister Training Leaders and those are the people we exchange with once every six weeks. I got to be with Sister Reiman! She is from Idaho and has been out on her mission for 14 months! My brain can't even fathom that amount of time since I have only been in the field for 4 weeks hahaha. I learned a lot from her though. We worked super hard and laughed a lot.
Pretty much every night we eat dinner at a member of the church's house. They sign up to feed us and it is so awesome! We get to share a brief spiritual message while we are there and get to know people in the area more. If you know me, you know I absolutely hate seafood. And guess what we ate for dinner on exchanges? Tuna fish sandwiches... I ate 3/4 of mine though and luckily it didn't taste too fishy, but I can assure you, you will not see me eating seafood willing in the future hahaha.
Once a month, my mission has something called a "Why I Believe" fireside. A fireside is just a special meeting that usually has some sort of theme or purpose. These monthly meetings are dedicated to conversion stories. Recent converts of the church tell their stories and bear their testimonies. It was so powerful!! Sharing a testimony allows the spirit to dwell there and witness to others that what you are saying is true. We are encouraged to invite the people we are teaching to these firesides so they can hear from other people but unfortunately no one that we are teaching came. I got to be in the missionary choir though which I loved of course:)
Something that I took away from the fireside last night was that just because someone chooses to be baptized and follows Jesus Christ, doesn't mean things are going to be easy from then on. We are on their earth to struggle and have our faith challenged. If you think about it, we grow the most as a person during the difficult times more than the good times. But if we continue to press forward as much as we can, we will be blessed for our faith and our efforts. Sometimes those blessings are small and easy to miss, but they are there. God NEVER abandons His children, He is just waiting for us to reach out and grab His hand. I love this simple and pure gospel and the chance I have to be a representative of my Savior for 18 months. Look for those small and simple blessings in your life and as you do that, you will come to know your Heavenly Father and see that He does love you.
Love,
Sister Chilson
Sister Reiman and Sister Chilson
No comments:
Post a Comment