January 11, 2016

Well, I've definitely made some rash choices this week that have helped me learn and become better. I probably shouldn't have done some of the things that I did but ya know, we live and we learn. Here is a scripture that I feel describes what happened really well.t 

It comes from the war chapters of Alma and Amalickiah is extremely angry with Captian Moroni and he make a rash decision...here are the verses...

 9 But behold, this was a critical time for such contentions to be among the people

 of Nephi; for behold, Amalickiahhad again ^astirred up the hearts of the people of 

the Lamanites against the people of the Nephites, and he was gathering together 

soldiers from all parts of his land, and arming them, and preparing for war with 

all diligence; for he had ^bsworn to drink the blood of Moroni.

 10 But behold, we shall see that his promise which he made was ^arash; 

nevertheless, he did prepare himself and his armies to come to battle against the

 Nephites.

 

 

 So how does this apply to me? Well, for the last few weeks in the mission we have been talking about distractions and pride and President Palmer pretty much gave us all a call to repentance. It was a harsh blow to a lot of missionaries although I got something spiritual out of it. I had a similar training probably 5 or 6 times and every time I received it I just felt so down and depressed about it, but you want to know what I learned. If we want people to not be distracted or prideful we should probably talk about the opposite of those things. If i want to not be prideful, focusing on pride is not what I should do, I should focus on charity or humility. If I want to be more focused on the work I should study diligence and what not. Something I realized is that sisters think the opposite way, elder do not. Men just say it how it is and they roll with it and aren't offended. Sisters have a little more sensitive souls. So they came to me and were fairly upset. Well, my rash choices lead me to call the Assistants and ask them for help which then caused them to call President who then called me who was upset. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking and didn't just solve the problem myself. I got a few chastisements and I was in a whirlwind of craziness. Luckily I have an awesome district leader, Elder Torres, who helped me through it and helped me see that I could just fix this problem on my own. I've had to do a lot of apologizing to the zone leaders and President but I learned the lesson on my own.

So to fix the sisters and their feelings we had a sister meeting this morning with my stewardship and Elder Torres. It was a really good meeting and we talked a lot about when we receive correction, in whatever way it was presented, we have to take it back to our heavenly Father and see how he would like us to apply it. I think it all goes back to the conference talk "What Lack I Yet." Heavenly Father know us perfectly and he loves us so much that if we ask him what he thinks he will tell us what is going to make us the better person. Elder Torres gave a great training on not only do we not know how much good we do but we also don't need to beat ourselves up about the things that are going on in the mission. We just have to include Heavenly Father and if we have sincere desires to serve him all will work out well. The spirit was so strong and I honestly love my stewardship so much. 

Investigator wise we didn't have a lot of progress this week. We didn't get the chance to see Jessica because she was in San Jose all week but we are starting to meet with her again this week. We are seeing a lot of progress and there are somethings that have been pumping us up to get motivated. I really think being an STL has helped me keep motivated until the end. I'm scared that I wont be one next transfers and I really hope I can keep the feeling of loving everyone that I am meeting and helping them come unto Christ. That drives me to do so much. 

As I was studying pride I read the talk by President Ezra Taft Benson "Beware of Pride" something that I learned and am trying to implement in my life is "what does God want me to do with my life?" Isn't that such a great question to ask yourself? That is going to be my motto from now on. I think as we base that at the center of our life, we will never go wrong and we will always be improving. I'm so thankful for this time that I have to serve my mission and the things that I've learned here. Even the mistakes that I've made have helped me become a better person. 

Thanks for all the love and support from home. I love you. 

Love, 

Hermana Porter.