October 14, 2013
Sa-waa-diiiiiiiikha.
All is well. All is well. Sis Phavadee and I are always singing 'come come ye Saints' in Thai as we ride our bikes. it's our theme song. 'tuk yaang dii, tuk yaang dii.' Pung was baptized this week! She's so happy, and she came to watch general conference at the church yesterday, and she has a 'Preach my Gospel' now, and is going to start studying it. wow. this week has also been awesome because it hasn't rained. haha yayyyyyy! the sunshine makes me happy. also a random thought: salt is actually kind of good for you in a way. i just learned that iodine helps your thyroid function properly. they don't use much salt here...which explains a lot about the rate i'm burning fat haha. if one of you could google-how to burn fat without exercising, that would be great. let me know what you find.
This week has been great, especially General Conference. I don't think I've ever loved General Conference so much. I thought of a few questions beforehand, and every one of them was answered. I loved David M. McConkie's talk, because it told me exactly what I need to do to be a better missionary and teacher. I loved that he said the message of the Restoration could be summed up in two words: 'GOD SPEAKS'. Of the four points he talked about, I want to work on having the spirit, and studying and treasuring up the word. I love that he said the most important part of our service is our own personal study and preparation. We always make language study plans, but I realized I've been kind of bad at making a personal study plan for my personal study every morning. That's going to be one of my goals, and as part of that I want to study the Atonement EVERY day. One of my other questions was, 'Is this the true church of Jesus Christ?' I've known the answer to that question my whole life. But I know God will answer EVERY time we ask, and this week I found that I hit a point where I was really wondering where God was. I prayed really hard this week just to know He was there, even though the whole time I battled with myself...'I should know this already, I've known it all along, why am I even feeling this way, I don't need to ask, just have more faith...'. I feel like I received lots of answers to my prayers, and to this question. On Friday I kept feeling like we should go find one of our investigators houses, even though she cancelled our appointment, and didn't really want us to go to her house. She really wants to be baptized, but her mom doesn't support her (she's only 16). Anyway, I prayed really hard that I would know where God wanted us to go that day, and not where I wanted to go. And I kept feeling like we should just go find her house, even though I was sure I wouldn't be able to find it. We probably circled her neighborhood 20 times, and then stopped to pray. We started up again, and things started to look familiar to me. By some miracle, we found her house, and she was actually happy that we came. Her mom was there, and even though we knew she didn't support her daughter in being baptized, I kept feeling like we should talk to her again. We all sat down and talked about it, and I pulled out the permission form. Her mom told her daughter to go get a pen, and she told us that she has seen the teachings of this church change her daughter for the better. We were all shocked as she signed the paper, and even invited us to stay for dinner. This small and simple thing was such a tender mercy to me, and it confirmed to me once again that God is there. He hears me. He is working WITH us. And He works miracles. And Elder Uchtdorf's talk flat out answered my question word for word: "This IS the Church of Jesus Christ." I know that's true.
love you all so much,
Sis. Steele
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