January 16, 2012

NOTE: Jamie's letter got cut off because she had to change libraries halfway through writing. This is the half that we got.

a copy of what I sent to President! -

Review: We are having so many challenges with the miracles we found last week, but I'm not giving up hope!

Ok, we found another spot, so where were we? Oh right. Margarita. So she fasted with us and I felt like an awesome instrument in the Lord's hands for being inspired to help her use a challenge to teach a principle of faith, but we've called her every day since then and her son is in the hospital and when she's not there with him she's working and she said that she's probably going to have to keep up the same schedule even when her son gets out of the hospital. We went by to see if there was anything we could do for her and her landlady came out and told us she never wanted us on her property again. We offered to have someone from the church give her son a blessing, but she didn't answer any of our calls yesterday. We are just having a lot of challenges!

Even with Cristian things have taken a small turn for the worse. I know that they really need to feel the Spirit, so I fasted again to know what they needed and to have as much of the Spirit as possible for our lesson. We even coordinated to have our branch mission leader and his family come with us, and then he didn't even let us in because he said he had to leave! I fasted twice this week! Nelson and Yenifer finally said they would consider coming to church and that he was going to read the Book of Mormon, but then his dad got in a car accident and they couldn't. That's the bad news part.

The good news part is that I have a loving Heavenly Father who guided me to Doctrine and Covenants 35. The part where the Lord talks about how he prepares his servants for great things and that often they are preparing his way without knowing it has been a huge comfort for me. Perhaps I won't see any baptisms, but I'm going to keep trusting that my service in this year and a half has been preparing the way of the Lord. I also read in Alma 24 when it talks about the strength of the faith of the anti-nefi-lehi's. Perhaps it's going to be more of a challenge for these people to be converted, but the important thing is the strength of that conversion when it happens. I would way rather prepare the way of the Lord in truly converting them than see the baptism now and find out later that they went inactive.

Other than a bit of insomnia in thinking about our investigators, I've been doing alright. It's a good thing, though. This is what being a missionary is all about. I love that I'm so attached to these people that I worry about them so much, I love them! That's the most important part about being a missionary, right?

We have been finding a ton of new people, which I'm happy about.

The good thing about these challenges is that I've had the opportunity to feel a closeness and support from my Heavenly Father in a way I had never felt before. I feel so supported by Him! Again, I know I am SOOO far from perfect, and I know He knows that too, but I feel so grateful that He lets me know that He's in my corner anyway!

Anyway, thanks for all you do, I feel like I'm on a spiritual high and I really just don't want it to come crashing down so I'm trying my best to stay positive.