Cudahy: Translado 4: Semana 4 / July 6, 2010

Hola Familia!
 
Things have really been looking up this week. Mostly because I realized that its natural to have highs and lows in the mission and it doesn't mean that I'm a failure as a missionary, that's just life. We fall down but we have to get up and keep going. I think what was frustrated me the most was the feeling of being stuck in a rut and doing things just because I'm supposed to do them, without the purpose and the passion behind it, but things have turned around and I'm feeling pumped again to be a missionary. It is especially hard in those dry spells where we're not having success and trying so hard to find people to teach, and feeling like failures, but I know that sometimes God gives us those challenges and experiences to help us learn patience and to help us grow stronger, and also to appreciate all of the blessings that he gives us.
 
We had a couple of really incredible experiences this past week that opened my eyes and changed my perspective again about my mission and about life in general. We had a lesson with a family where the grandma is going through chemotherapy treatments for cancer, but miraculously says that she feels no pain and is doing really great. She had a full mammectomy, but she says that she knows the Lord has blessed her to not have pain and to deal with her struggle. She has incredible faith. He has her and her family, and part of it has to do with her grandson. She takes care of her adorable little grandson that is about eight years old but was born both deaf and blind. His dad helps take care of him but has to work. It was incredible to see the love that this father has for his son as he patiently sat and held him, and the sweet little grandma as well. The spirit was so strong in their home. I can't imagine the selfless sacrifice and service it takes to care for children that are handicapped, but I know that those parents are blessed by being able to feel the love and presence of Heavenly Father extremely close. It made me think a lot about all of the hundreds and thousands of things in my life that i take for granted, and how a lot of ways we are like blind and deaf children that can't see or hear our Heavenly Father, we just have to feel his presence and trust him enough to let him guide us.
 
We also met a woman named Darinka who is the mother of a three year old girl and a new born baby boy. We helped her carry her things in to her apartment one day and she let us come back and teach her. She told us that she was having some problems with her husband, and so she really liked what we had been telling her about families and wanted to prepare to be baptized. The lesson was kind of scattered as her terror of a three year old girl kept trying to beat up her baby brother, and this very tired, patient mom kept telling her to stop. The next time we came back so had the look of just being completely empty and devastated, past the stage of crying and almost to the point os hopelessness as she told us how her husband had come to grab all of his stuff and left her with saying "good luck trying to pay the rent" which was due that afternoon. It was so heartbreaking seeing her and her situation. She had no way to pay the rent, no way to buy food for her children, and  no place to go. We didn't know what to do, so we sang her a hymn and told her to pray and that we would try to find a way to help her out. I have never seen anything so heartbreaking. We talked to the branch president and he was able to help her out with the rent and she was so grateful. I can't imagine a father and husband walking out on his family like that. I know that Heavenly Father was watching over her and heard her faithful prayers and that we were meant to cross her path and be there for her to help.
 
I think that i needed that experience to realize that really it is that way with everyone we meet- even though they might not have such drastic temporal needs, their spirits are suffering and aching to find the gospel and have that peace and assurance in their hearts that comes from following Jesus Christ. Some people try to fill that with other things, and become numb and hardened and unreceptive to the gospel, but to those that are open and faithful, God goes before and prepares them to recognize the gospel. It is just our job to invite them to accept it, and invite them to come unto Christ.
 
I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior, that he was the son of God, and that he suffered and died for us and was resurrected. My testimony of him has been strengthened so much as I've had to defend it from all sorts of theories and explanations of men that deny his existence and divinity. I love how Joseph F. Smith says it in his testimony of Jesus Christ:
“The Holy Spirit of God has spoken to me—not through the ear, not through the eye, but to my spirit, to my living and eternal part,—and has revealed unto me that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. I testify to you that I know that my Redeemer lives. Furthermore, I know that I shall see Him on this earth, and that I shall see Him as He is. … The Lord has revealed this to me. He has filled my whole spirit with this testimony, until there is no room for doubt.”
 
I encourage you all to pray and continue to renew your testimony of Jesus Christ. I don't know why it is that we can't just learn and feel something once and be good, but for some reasons as humans we have to keep learning and remembering over and over again how important Jesus Christ is in our lives. That's why we have to take the sacrament every week- to always remember him. He helps us overcome our forgetful and ungrateful human nature and continue to prove ourselves, to pick ourselves back up and to keep repenting and changing.
 
I love you all so much! Cuidense mucho!
 
Hermana Dansie