Toooorrrrrrrrtiiiiiiiiiiillllaaaaaas!

- January 29, 2019

Hey everyone!

This week was so good! This area is super great - there are a lot more neighborhoods and open complexes, and the people here are soooo much friendlier than in Hollywood. We've had a lot of success just trying to contact formers and people with interest from the past, because we've been going by, talking to them or whoever answers the door, maybe knocking a few doors nearby, and talking to everyone we possibly can on the street. And Sister Flinders is so great! This is her first week, but she already has a really good idea of what she's doing. She works really hard and has an incredible ability to follow the Spirit. I'm super impressed with her.

Favorite Spiritual Thought:

2 Nephi 10:24 "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved." I read through this just in my regular Book of Mormon study and then decided to look up the word "reconcile." This is what the definition said: "1 To reestablish friendship with. 2 To settle, as a dispute. 3 To be or make resigned to. 4 To make compatible." I loved how it talked about friendship. God loves us and is our Father; we will always have that relationship with Him. But how much better and more comfortable is communication between two family members who are also friends than between two family members who don't spend time with each other? And how much more willing are we to take the advice of a family member when they are also a friend? As we spend time with our Heavenly Father through prayer, scripture study, and regular church attendance, He becomes someone that we trust. We learn to accept His will because we truly know that all He wants is to help us come home.

Favorite Miracle:

We met this super cool guy named Duke when walking out of a member's apartment. He is from Sierra Leone and fought in the Civil War there. We were able to talk to him about the Book of Mormon, taught him about how it is another Testament of Jesus Christ, and gave him one. Before we left, he took us inside to meet his sister, who is apparently a prophetess in her church. She made some comment about the Book of Mormon, and he defended the Book or Mormon for us, teaching her exactly what we'd just taught him. It was really cool to see how the Spirit had testified of the truthfulness of the things we'd said so quickly.

Favorite Funny Thing:

Sister Flinders has asked me to teach her some Spanish, haha, so the other night, we did a crash course when we got home a couple of days ago. She was having a hard time with pronunciation, so I was trying to say the words as American as possible so she could at least get what the word was and then work on the accent better. She'd get the word and then I'd say it the way it's like actually pronounced. Sooner than later, we were like, shouting random Spanish words at each other as dramatically as possible. It was like a really weird soap opera about tortillas. It was great. ; )

Sorry this one was so late!

-Sister Garfield