Mission Letter 11 "God Spoils Me"

(This week I got to go on exchanges with Hermana Kerr and she is so fun, and a powerful teacher. And I have eaten better this week than I have my whole mission :) 

We were eating with a member and talking about things we were grateful for, and she said, "I must be God's favorite because he knows I love oranges and so he put them on the earth.

Well, God must have many favorites :), because I, too have been spoiled. 

He gave me Christmas Carols to make the cold bearable, and he gave me Thanksgiving traditions to remind me of home when home is so far away.

(My family has the tradition of eating pies for breakfast - because who has room after the Turkey? So my companion and I got a triple berry pie and we just might have eaten over half of it before lunch on Thanksgiving day :)

 And as if it was not enough to spoil me rotten, he has given us miracles, many of which we had the privilege to witness this past week. Thanksgiving rolled around and we still had no one we could go see. We had planned to do weekly planning, but we did not know who. We prayed about it and felt like we had to call it an older sister in the branch. We told her that we would love to help her with any tasks she'd have ready for us. Christmas presents, ironing clothes, and doing a couple other fun crafts and chores with her. There was such a sweet spirit there and I grew to love this sweet lady so much! There were a lot of people in the room. She was very helpful and friendly. It made me eager to go serve and teach the rest of the week. This week, I had been fasting and praying for a progressing investigator. Friday we had lined up over twenty potentials to try. One of the addresses for one of the potentials did not seem to exist. Assuming that it was just written down, we decided to try the closest possibilities, which lead us to two apartment complexes. We saw in the potential of the code. We tried a couple times and were about to pull away when a lady came up, entered the code for us, and let us in. While looking for building two we found ourselves between buildings ten and 11 and paused there for a moment. After having the opportunity to come back to the car. Halfway back, we stopped. My companion and I had both just read the section on Finding in preach my gospel that morning in which it talks about knocking the houses around referrals and talking to everyone. I told her I felt like there was someone else we should see in the complex. Just then a man walked past and made between two buildings. Wanting to talk to him, we followed him and found ourselves in the same spot between buildings ten and eleven. We both felt like there was someone there we needed to see. We prayed to know which building to start and at the end of the prayer, I said, 'On the count of three we' Ll say the answer we got for that building to knock. " " One. Two. Three. TEN, "we said, in perfect unison." Alejandra, who was eager and excited to talk to us when we gave her a Book of Mormon. She asked. And then, "Really? For me?" "Only if you read it," Hermana Hernandez said. Two days later she said she could not wait to talk to us about it. God is preparing people and I am so grateful to him. We had similar experiences finding two other people this week. I had been praying about the knock and the answer very clearly, "Knock around the Vejars." Both Hermana Hernandez and I felt drawn to a door where Samantha, The young mother who answered, said she had just barely been talking to her mother about finding a youth program and better outlet for her daughter. We told her about the women and shared the restoration and she was eager to participate and to hear more. This area is a challenge, but I am really grateful for that because it has motivated me to exercise more faith. And though my faith is far from perfect, we have seen miracles. I love El Rio. I love this work and this gospel. But I am really motivated to practice more faith. And though my faith is far from perfect, we have seen miracles. I love El Rio. I love this work and this gospel. But I am really motivated to practice more faith. And though my faith is far from perfect, we have seen miracles. I love El Rio. I love this work and this gospel. 

On Friday we talked with a man named Michael, who after the death of his mom had turned agnostic. He said that he felt more confident in himself than he was doing things for the sake of being good, and not to receive some great reward in heaven. He said he had made it work harder because he did not give the credit to some higher being. But he was not happy. When i told him he would live with his mother again in heaven a light came to his eyes for just a moment, and he said himself he wanted to believe it. But he was too afraid to believe something that could not be true - too afraid to believe without proof, missing all along that the truth was there and speaking to Him and he would not feel it. Seeing him so confused and unhappy,

I know that there is a God, that He is my Heavenly Father, that he loves me, this tiny speck in the universe. He knows me and is aware of me, and if I am true and faithful to the words and commandments of his son, then will come the day that I will dwell with God, and there live with my family and loved ones forever. 

I am so grateful for a living prophet to guide us, and for the Book of Mormon that have answered and clarified for me so much and has given me the strength of testimony I have today.

With love,
Hermana Anderson