The Music of the Gospel

- December 11, 2018

Hey everybody!

First, for a quick transfer update: nothing has changed. I am staying in Hollywood with Sister Howard. We are so excited to get to be companions again!

We are still kind of struggling to find, but we've been able to work with a lot of less actives lately as a result. It's super interesting to see how these people who want to progress have noticed that something is missing in their lives, and that they recognize that it's the gospel. We are working with a bunch of people to try to help them come back to church right now.

Favorite spiritual moment:

I had the opportunity to sing at the Beverly Hills hotel this week with a choir of missionaries for a party for the Swiss consulate. Someone who was part of setting it up was a member of the Church, a man named Raju, and he contacted the mission to ask if we could sing. We were singing pretty simple stuff, straight out of the hymn book for all but one song, and mostly unaccompanied. We were supposed to sing as the guests were coming in, for about 15 minutes, so we started when the doors opened and went through all of our songs. People came in, found their seats, and some of them started immediately ordering alcohol, which was kind of sad to see. Not very many people were listening to us, which was totally fine and what we expected, but the thing that was actually really cool about it was watching those that actually were listening. There were a select few who started to notice that we were singing, who slowly turned more and more toward us, to listen. Most of those were actually in sitting in chairs facing away from us, so they had to actively turn toward us to hear us better. One of those actually turned out to be a pretty prominent Swiss priest, and I looked at his expression a couple of times while we were singing. He was actually paying a lot of attention, and I could tell that it was because he was feeling the Spirit. He and the others who turned similarly kind of reminded me of how the gospel is out there for each of us to hear, but that sometimes with all the craziness and noise of the world, it can be kind of hard to find. In order to hear it, we have to turn away from the things that distract us, so that we can hear the message God has for us and have the Spirit in our lives.

Another cool spiritual moment was at a different musical event. On Monday, there was an American Sign Language Christmas concert, and the ASL missionaries had asked a couple of people to sing along while they were signing. They asked a hearing family who goes to their branch to sign to "Peace in Christ" while a Sister sang. This family was so sweet about it. They had a bunch of kids, and the signing wasn't perfect, but it was so special because you could tell with everything they did that they knew the words of the song were true. They seriously got everybody crying because the Spirit and the love of God was in the air so much.

Favorite funny thing:

At that same fancy event at the hotel, they thanked us for singing for them with an introduction of "we would like to thank the Tabernacle Mormon choir." We weren't really in a position to correct them, and we don't know who messed up there, but I guess we must be better singers than we thought! Looks like I beat you to it, Mom. ; )

I hope everyone is having a good December so far and that you always remember what Christmas is really about!

Love,

Sister Garfield

Pictures of her singing at a fireside at the L.A. Temple visitors center...