Strive For Progress, Not Perfection
Week 75--Dec. 26, 2016
I can’t believe I am winding down here. What is this? It was so wonderful to talk to you fam bam yesterday!! Sister A. Smithie said, “Wow, your family looks exactly how they do in the pictures! They are all so pretty!!” .....Well what can I say? But I agree that my family is just so beautiful, but most importantly beautiful on the inside(: Hehe! So grateful for you all!! xoxoxo
All the members spoiled us and we have like 5 plastic containers from 5 different families that gave us dinner and ice cream and cake and cookies. The Members rock. They are my families here while I’m away from mine. I will never forget the love all that the members have shown me on my mission. I truly believe that when you help missionaries, you are helping God´s servants and the blessings are BIG!
This week was a week full of tender mercies! We left our area and went on splits with some sisters and I learned so much! It’s cool because I think I am learning more from going on splits. I get to help other sisters and learn more than what they learn from me! For example, I learn new ways of teaching and new working techniques. I get to share the things I learn with them and things that could help them. Every time we teach or preach we are strengthened and learn more. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve and to teach because it strengthens my testimony and helps me think more of our savior. So we didn’t have a lot of time to work in our area. The time we did have, the Lord worked some miracles. We marked dates for baptisms; we visited lots of people, less active people, and had lots of investigators at church. Taliesin (the one who got baptized last week) he left on vacation for a month and his dad stayed in his house for Christmas. We tried passing by to invite him to church but no one answered. Yesterday we walked into church and he was sitting on the row he always sits on with Taliesin...my heart was so happy. He was alone on Christmas and came to church all by himself (: I was so proud of him and it gave me hope that one day he will want to get baptized (:
Yesterday in Sacrament, a lovely talk was given that left sister and I crying. It was about the miracles of our sweet Savior. Remember the miracle of the leper in Luke 5? The leper saw Christ enter and he fell on his face at his feet and practically said, (if I am translating from Portuguese) “If you want to heal me Lord, you can.” When do we do this in our lives? Think about it. We should do this more. Kneel down and ask the Lord if he wants to, he could take away our burdens, our loads, our habits, and our difficulties and then have faith enough to believe that he will do it. If we ask the Lord with faith and believe we can be free, God will heal us. He may not take away the burden or situation right away, but he will help us find happiness and peace. I love the other story of the 10 lepers and how only one turned around to thank God. They were all cleansed physically but only one was cleansed both physically and spiritually. I think its crazy 10 people were cured and only one of them said thank you. It made me think, “how many times in my life have I had a victory and forgotten to thank the Lord? How many times has a miracle happened and I forgot to thank the man who gave me the miracle?”
You know those talks that change your life? Well I read one of those this week. (I forgot the name of it but I will let you know later, so you can all read it.) It talked about how we all have this ideal dream. This perfect future in our head of how we want things to go and how sometimes things don’t go the way we want them to. Then we get discouraged because we think we did something wrong, but we didn’t. Nothing is perfect. We aren’t perfect. Only Christ was perfect. We are working to be perfect, but it won’t happen in this life. I love the quote my mom gave to me that says, “Strive for progress, not perfection.” We can’t be perfect, it’s impossible right now. But we can try to be a little better with Christ in our lives. We can try to follow his example everyday. We can think, “With Christ I can love a little more, with Christ I can forgive, Christ will give me more faith, Christ will make up for my weakness and shortcomings.” We must always remember that weakness and shortcomings are there to humble us, to help us turn more toward God. Ether 12:27 If we didn’t have weaknesses we wouldn’t need Christ’s help, if we were perfect we wouldn’t need Christ and if we didn’t need Christ WE WOULDN’T BE ALIVE RIGHT NOW. Christ is the center of it all. Christ is why we are alive. I love Jesus Christ he´s done a everything for me. He is my happiness and joy (:
Joshua 1:9
“Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest....” I have a testimony that he is by us where ever we go. He has been there for me these last almost 18 months. HE LIVES!!!!
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