In the Head of Hannie: September 14, 2015

New Haircut!!

This week has been great. I'm reading in the Book of Mormon in Nephi, the first book. I started it over and I love it even more this time. I am in 1 Nephi 19 and I read verse 9 which I don't think has ever caught my attention before. It is a beautiful verse talking about Jesus Christ. It reads 9) And the world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught; wherefore they scourge him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him, and he suffereth it. Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it, because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men.

Isn't that just beautiful? Christ did it all for us because He loves us. I think that might be my new favorite scripture. Maybe. Alma 7:11-13 might still take the number one spot.

I was also studying a spiritual thought that my dad had sent me a while back. It was about the "as if" principle. If we would like to become something then we should live as if we already have it. That is something I have been reminded of this week and something I am going to apply in my life. The aspects of my life I want to apply it to are cleanliness and diligence. I feel like I get motivated to be clean or diligent and it last for a day maybe two. But if I try to remind myself that I am a clean and diligent person, then I will act as if I already have that as part of my life. Then it will become habit and then part of me. Me and Sister Maukeni were listening to a talk this week about change and about how most people let doubt keep them from changing because they see change as this huge long process that takes years and years. Elder Holland, very firmly, said that we shouldn't let that fool us. Change only takes as long as it does for us to get to our knees and tell Heavenly Father that we earnestly want to change. I LOVE that. Isn't that so true? That is something I am going to try to start to implement in my life.

This week I got to go on exchanges with Sister Neeley again. Can I just tell you I love that sister? She is so motivated and has such a desire to work hard a be exactly obedient. It rubs off on me every single time I am with her. She is a new missionary but she seems like shes been out for years. She already has all the ropes down but she still has that new missionary fire! I wish I could be her companions so bad. We had a hilarious dinner with a few of our member. Jacob was feeding us be we couldn't go there alone because he lives by himself. He got LIz and Ellyn to come eat with us and they brought their friend William who is from Hong Kong. William just got to the states that day and he was cracking us up. He said "The first semester of college I ate 40 pounds of potatoes because I didn't know Wal-Mart sold rice." He was so serious too. Then he told me "You have the perfect complexion. You are so fare." Just imagine all of this in a Chinese accent and you would be laughing too.

After our dinner Jacob came with us to an appointment with to a guy named Kevin. Kevin has investigated the church a lot before and he is really sick so Jacob and Brett came with us to give him a blessing. It was a really good experience for all of us. I hope Kevin felt the spirit strongly. WE haven't been able to meet with him since so we hope to talk with him about it the next time we see him.

We met a promising guy named Marcus last night. He said he was going to come to FHE tonight at the church and to our huge "party" (thats what we tell the investigators it's called. haha) this next weekend. He said he would come. WE are pretty stoked about it.

I didn't hear back from any of you if you wanted to read the Book of Mormon with me. Does anyone even read my blog? Hope to maybe here some things this week!

Love,

Hermana PORter