Happy St. Patrick's Day!

- March 18, 2019

Good morning everyone!

I hope everyone is having a fine and sunny day. It suddenly got hot here, gosh dang it. ; ) After a couple months of rain, we are back to sunny California. ; )

Scripture/Spiritual Thought:

Alma 48:10 Moroni had been preparing his people so that they could "live unto the Lord their God." I looked up other instances of people doing something "unto the Lord," and it was mostly people crying unto the Lord or sacrificing unto the Lord. In my head, I translated that to two different kinds of doing things "unto the Lord:" "to the Lord" and "for the Lord." Living "to the Lord" could refer to living in a way that will help us return to live with Him again. Living "for the Lord" could mean dedicating ones life to the service of the Lord, so that everything one does is the cause of that person's love for God. It would be living in such a way to help others come to know Him through you. What can you do this week to better live unto the Lord your God?

One of the people we're teaching, Brother Buss, is writing a book, and he sent me a few chapters to read through. It was definitely a lot different than everything else I've read on my mission. The cool thing about it though was that Brother Buss had started writing this after beginning to meet with missionaries, and even though it's a teen-fantasy novel, I totally saw restored truths woven all throughout the narrative and dialogue. Some of my favorite quotes talked about how God believes in us even if we don't believe in Him, and how the ability to choose is a great gift from God. Maybe it's just because I'm a missionary that I was noticing these things, but it just goes to show that the Gospel can be found in everything!

Favorite Spiritual moment:

We had a lesson with the Busses on family history last week, and we had made this little tree with hearts as leaves for the kids to put together, with things like "grandma" and "great-grandpa" written on the leaves so that the kids could understand how a family tree works. As Sister Buss helped them, it was so cool to see a visual change in her when we brought up family history. She said she had never done it before, but she wanted to find out more about those ancestors and who they were. Even just putting the tree together, the family had such determination to find everyone and connect their family. It was so great. I can't wait until we do it for real with these guys and can take them to the temple!

Favorite miracle:

We saw the Hollywood Sisters last week, and it was so cool to talk to them about how the area is going. They brought up so many names that Sister Howard and I tried so hard with, that were turning into mini miracles in that very last week together. Melissa, a less active we were working with, is working on going to do temple baptisms for the very first time. Darlene, who was working on going through the temple but kept falling back to smoking cigarettes, prayed for a miracle to help her stop, and now every time she picks up a cigarette, her lungs burn and she can't smoke, so she's completely off them! They've finally been able to meet with a referral we got, Alexis, who wants to get baptized to join her family in the gospel (they all got baptized in December) Alexei and Yurii, two Russian Speakers we ran into that last two weeks, are both doing super well and will probably get baptized in the near future. Even though I'm not there anymore, I am so happy for all of these people! It's so incredible to see the Lord put all these little pieces together.

Favorite funny thing:

We were having a lesson on the priesthood with the Buss family and were talking about how, after Brother Buss is baptized, he will have an interview with the bishop so he can receive the priesthood. Before we had finished explaining the process of being interviewed and ordained, Brother Buss innocently asked how you get the priesthood from Bishop: "do you just talk to him and work something out?" Before we could answer, his wife jumped in sarcastically, saying, "Well, Bishop has it. So you go into his office for the interview, mug him, and have to find out where he's hiding it." And that, people, is how the apostasy happened. ; )

There was a relief society party on Friday, and our ward combined with the Tongan ward. In preparation, the Tongan relief society was putting together a couple of dance numbers, and the Sisters who live with us had volunteered to be part of it. We walked in one night with Sister Tonga busting a gut on the floor, watching Hermana Despain try to figure out the right signs for the Tongan hand dance. Then Sister Semenyuk jumped in to try to practice it too, and we had Sisters from three different cultures laughing at each other, trying to learn this thing. It was interesting, to say the least. ; )

Stay happy. : )

Love,

Sister Garfield