Skyping, Christmas and New Years

- January 02, 2018

Hey everybody!

It's been a while! Sorry, holidays are weird on a mission.

Favorite Quote/Scripture:

During my personal study a couple of days ago, I was reading in Mosiah 27 when Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah are visited by an angel. I thought it was really interesting that, after falling to the ground, Alma is commanded to arise and stand as the angel rebukes him for the things he's been doing. It made me think of the verse in Alma 5 when Alma asks how any of us will feel when we have to stand before the bar of God stained with our sins. He is warning us about it in Alma 5 because he has experienced it, and it was awful. No wonder he had a change of heart! It's cool to think that not only does God care about us, but His prophets do too. Alma knows what that feels like and doesn't want any of us to have to go through it.

We were on an exchange last week and the Sister I was with had a really cool song that I wish I knew the title of. It was by Nashville Tribute, from their Redeemer CD. It was about the Roman soldier who wins the Savior's robe. In the song, he realizes the extent of what he did and asks for forgiveness. It was really cool to think about how, no matter what it is that we do, the Lord will forgive us when we repent.

Favorite Spiritual Moment:

We felt like we needed to stop by Maria's house on a day we didn't have a set appointment with her, so we did. When she let us in, we then felt like we should ask her to just flip to a random page in the book of mormon and we would read it together. She did so, and flipped to Alma 46. That was crazy, because we both looked at each other like, "oh crap, it's a war chapter," but what was even crazier was that Sister Reynolds had read it that morning in her personal study. We decided to trust the Spirit, so we went for it. Holy crap, that was seriously one of the most spiritual lessons I've been in. We explained to Maria a little bit of what the people were going through just as an introduction, and then we read. It was so amazing. She is facing a lot of really difficult trials right now, and almost completely on her own, she related so many verses to her life and her current experiences! She loved Captain Moroni's example (I think it's him; I don't have my scriptures in front of me). It was amazing to see how the Book of Mormon really was written for our day. We think it helped her to realize how much the book really can help her too. Wow. It was so cool. I can't even do it justice in these couple of sentences.

Favorite Funny Moment:

Sister Reynolds is the assigned driver for our companionship, and almost daily she tells me that she knows why she was put in an all bike area for a little bit. In other words, she has a really hard time being a "Christlike" driver. She tries so hard, but it's honestly pretty funny. We were behind this person who was seriously driving like ten under, who happened to have a Church of Christ bumper sticker. Sister Reynolds got frustrated and just said "Jesus would drive the speed limit!" I about died. Missionary humor is awesome. ; )

Other Stuff:

Our ward mission leader in the YSA ward seriously looks so much like my awesome cousin Scott Cooper. It's insane. Every time I see him I forget that it's the ward mission leader for like half a second. Doppelgangers exist - it's a fact.

JUST AN FYI FOR EVERYONE SO THAT NO ONE PANICS ON JANUARY 15TH: Because of Martin Luther King Junior Day, my mission will be having P-day on Tuesday, January 16th. Just a heads up because apparently I forgot to tell some people this time.

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Garfield

Some of these pictures are of our AMAZING Skype call that we got to have on Christmas day. I am SO thankful for modern technology that allows us to both see and hear our sweet daughter!

YAY!! There she is!! Doesn't she look great!!!

So great to see her smile!

Our Cute Kids!

The sweet family , the Miles' that let her use their internet to skype us, also fed them and apparently they made graham cracker houses too. So fun since that is a tradition that we have as well!!