Week 78: Repentance

Sister Missionaries!

This last week was very humbling for me.. I feel like I am always being humbled but that is a good thing because it means I see when Heavenly Father is trying to teach me something! I guess that is not a good thing but a pretty cool thing! 

We found this really cool girl named Jazmin. We were trying to go out and meet new people that we haven't met before or didn't know who they were. There is a lady named Jane that the missionaries have talked to in the past and neither of us have been able to meet her. So we had put her in our schedule for the morning but ended up not being able to stop by her house. Later we were kind of in the same area and decided that we should just stop by. It was more like the spirit had decided that we were going to stop by and so he had to tell the both of us so that we would listen to the prompting. Sister Lindsay suggested it and I laughed because the thought had just popped into my head. Coincidence... I think not!! Have learned that there is no such thing as a coincidence, God had a plan and it is not going to be frustrated. So we drove to her house and there was this girl outside of it. So we hurry and parked the car and went to talk to her as fast as we could. We met Jazmin, she is Jane's daughter, so we talked to her a little bit and she said her family had talked to missionaries before but the she herself had never listened. So we talked with her about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and she said, "That is interesting because science says......But I think I would like to know more." Umm what!!! What just happened! She wants to learn more and she asked if she could!! Blessing! 

Trying to jump start the car.

On Wednesday we got a call from our less active member and she said that her car was dead and so that she needed help moving it. When we got to where she was we tried jumping her car, that didn't work and we didn't know what we should do. So what do we do? Well we can't call our dads so we call our District Leader. He answered and said that he would be there in a minute and when he got to us he looked at her car. He was a mechanic before his mission and so he knew a little more than we did...but only a little bit ;)  After a while of trying to figure out the decision was made that we were going to push it to her apartment and that it was on even ground. So the four of us got behind the car and pushed it toward the hill. The four of us pushed the car down the road to the stop sign. We didn't realize that it had a flat tire until we were pushing and it was a little harder than it should’ve been with four of us. We waited until traffic was cleared and we pushed it down the hill. The car went faster than we did and so were running after it all the way to the bottom to the next stop sign. Waited for traffic to clear again so we could get in the middle lane and we just were pushing it. When we finally got to her apartment an officer drove by and asked if he could help, we were already there. So that was crazy and unexpected. 

Flooding in Elle's apartment.

But then the next day we were out working close to Deception Pass and we got a call from our District Leader. He was dropping something off for us at our apartment and so we didn't know why he was calling us. We answered and he said when he got to our apartment there were some fire fighters knocking at our door. So he gave them our number and was calling to tell us to get back to our apartment ASAP. We were 20 min. away so we hurried as fast as Tiwi would allow us to. When we got to our apartment there was an ax outside the door. The firefighters had to break in because our apartment was flooding and we are on the second floor. So we walked in to an apartment full of fire fighters and we were the only girls...there was no third female... Needless to say we felt a little uncomfortable. The craziest part was when there was only one guy and us (uncomfortable!). This is when all the alarms in my brain were going off. But what do I say, "Oh sorry officer, we are missionaries and we have a set of rules. So because of these rules you cannot come into our apartment because there is not a third female." Um no, I can't do that, he still is going to have to do his job. Doesn't mean I wasn't uncomfortable....because I was!

 Interviews are this week and President said he was going to asks us about things that we have learned about repentance. So for the last week I have been studying Elder Renlunds talk titled "Repentance: a Joyful Choice". I learned a lot of amazing things as I have studied his talk along with a couple of other ones. President Hinckley said, "Growth comes with correction. Strength comes with repentance." Which I think is so true because when we repent we feel indescribable joy, and this joy is a result from repentance. Elder Renlund talks about how real repentance involves faith. Faith in Jesus Christ, faith that we can change, faith that through Him we can avoid our mistakes. He said that this kind of faith makes His Atonement effective in our lives. In Alma 53 we read about the Ammonites, this is right before the 2,000 stripling warriors. In it these fathers had been converted and decided that they were going to bury their weapons of war because of how much blood they had shed. Well now they have family's to "provide, preside and protect". So for a second they consider digging up their weapons of war do defend their families. Luckily they had a wise priesthood leader, Helaman, who knew that breaking a covenant with the Lord is never justified. So he is able to round up all of their sons to protect their families. Satan knew that it would be so hard for these fathers to have to sit back because of the past choices that they made. How vulnerable they must have been. Satan tries to use previous guilt to lure us back in. But we have to remember that he has no power over a righteous individual. But President Packer said, "The Atonement, which can reclaim each one of us, bears no scars. That means that no matter what we have done or where we have been or how something happened, if we truly repent, [the Savior] has promised that He would atone. And when He atoned, that settled that.... The Atonement....can wash clean every stain no matter how difficult or how long or how many times repeated." We learn in 2 Nephi 2 that "men are that they might have joy", repentance is a choice. In other words we can choose to live a joyful life! Repentance is not a punishment. It's the hope filled path to a more glorious future. Elder Scott said, "The joyful news for anyone who desires to be rid of the consequences of past poor choices is that the Lord sees weaknesses differently than he does rebellion. Whereas the Lord warns that unrepented rebellion will bring punishment, when the Lord speaks of weakness it is always with mercy." Weakness brings us closer to god whereas sin drives us away.

I love you all so much and hope that you have an amazing week! 

Elle's District Leader under the car trying to fix it