Sacrifice Does Indeed Bring Forth The Blessings of Heaven

IT'S TRANSFER WEEK! And Sister Goldrup and I are both staying in Bloomington. But we are trading apartments with the Elders, so we gots a new address.

We're grateful to stay. We've gotten permission (and encouragement) from President Cleveland to spend some time on campus to use Sister Goldrup's sweet Mandarin skills, so we've found some new, young, Asian people to teach. We're excited to see where that goes.

It was kinda funny yesterday. We had an appointment with a guy named Z. We were doing it at the church building right before conference started. Right before the we were scheduled to meet, he called us because he couldn't find us. He was at a different church building right before ours. He handed the phone to the pastor who gave us directions on how to find him. So here we go into the Evangelical church with lots of loud music. We head in to find our friends, and then let them know they were in the wrong place. We felt weird taking people out of one church and into another, especially while they were toting around their new member gift bags. Too funny.

On another note, conference was fantastic. There's nothing better than listening to those who receive direction from God for the world. There were quite a few talks I REALLY liked, but my favorite was probably Elder Bednar's: often times our trials and challenges are not removed from us, even if we are praying for it and keeping our covenants. But better, our capacity to handle these things is increased.

Heavenly Father really does love us, doesn't he? He loves being merciful, but he sacrifices His own desires that we might be able to grow, learn, and become more like him.

And I also really appreciate President Uchtdorf's simple statement, "Doubt your doubts before you doubt your fears." There were soo many great things said this weekend.

And here I will bear testimony that sacrifice does indeed bring forth the blessings of heaven. Yesterday, we had an invitation to eat between sessions of conference at a members house which we really like going to. However, we had a previous commitment/invitation to go to another members house as well (we also love going there too) We realized that we had the ability to go to both if we wanted to (which we did want do). But also realized that there were other things to do which better served our purpose. So we decided to visit the less active we'd planned to, to encourage him to watch the last session of general conference. But he wasn't home. Then we turned to our back-up plans, which were to check back with some potentials we'd met a few weeks before. We didn't think they were particularly promising, but we'd felt inspired to plan them in.

We knocked on S's door. She opened and invited us in. She's super friendly, asked us a lot about ourselves, and about mission stuff (which she had also done when we'd first met). She let us tell her about the Restoration, about the Book of Mormon, and about how our message blesses family. She was really interested in the Book of Mormon and the Restoration. She also cares a lot about her teen-age boys, and really hopes they'll make good choices in their lives. We set an appointment to come back. Which is significant, because she's super busy, and didn't want to the first time we'd met.

It's always a big deal when people who are well-off and have decent lives want to meet with missionaries. A lot of times they don't think that they need God, or that he doesn't have anything new to offer them. I'm glad that our sacrifice of a good time with people we love may have a life-changing effect for somebody else. (At least we hope it does) Decisions really do determine destiny...often times more than just our own.

And here's more pictures!

This was supposed to be our week without a car, but then Tuesday morning they brought us a brand new car. It's a Chevy Cruze that had only 148 miles on it. Kinda crazy that they'd trust me with a new car. But I guess He trusts me with saving souls. (but he trusts a lot of us with that.)

And our Micronesian friends gave us gigantic apples.

 

And this creature was a major distraction in our planning session.

And the missionaries of the Clear Creek ward: Elder Lawrence, Elder Brown, me, and Sister Goldrup

And my super awkard picture of our district: Sister Astle, Sister Fullmer, me, Sister Goldrup, Elder Esplin, Elder Fields, Elder Brown, and Elder Lawrence. Unfortunately, we are as awkward as we look. But we have a good time. Elders Lawrence and Fields are getting transferred, but the rest of us are stickin' around for 6 more weeks, or so. 

 

And the view from the Highland Sisters' apartment