Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Little Miracles Every Day

Well, hello again!
Let’s see… this week was great, as always. A member of the quorum of the 70 is doing a mission tour this week, and our zone will get to meet with him for some special training on Friday. And apparently I will be playing the piano for it! I’m a little nervous, but I’m sure it will be fine, and definitely worth it. I don’t like playing in front of people, but if it means we get to hear from a member of the 70, I’ll do it. :)
Well, this week has been full of miracles, as every week seems to be in the work of the Lord. I was having a really hard time on Sundays… every Sunday I felt so exhausted and dreaded going out to teach, even though I love teaching these people. I think it was made worse, too, because I LOVED Sundays before my mission, and now they were just the days before P-day and I felt SO ready for a bit of a rest… or a different type of work, as P-days always are. I didn’t want to dislike Sundays, so I felt bad about feeling that way, too, so I was basically just miserable Sunday afternoons until we actually left the house to teach. So, I asked for a blessing, because I wanted to love Sundays and not feel so stinkin’ exhausted and unmotivated to go out teaching. That blessing was such a tender mercy. It actually addressed a lot of other stuff, and I think it will help me a lot in the future, too. But one thing he told me was that the Lord will help me to keep going, to have the motivation and energy to do what He needs me to do.
Knowing that if I wasn’t careful I would have a bad attitude about teaching Sunday afternoon, I prayed for help and I just told Heavenly Father how much I really just wanted to love Sundays like I used to before the mission, when it really was a day of rest for me. Obviously it wouldn’t be the same, but I wanted to love it the same way I loved it before.
Let me tell you, even with small things, God really does answer prayers. He helped me control my thoughts so I didn’t think about P-day being tomorrow, or how tired I was, and He just helped me focus on the moment, on teaching and loving these people and following the Spirit. It was something so small, and a challenge that I could have lived with for the next 15 months, and that made it even more amazing to me, because it was an attitude change that probably didn’t affect the work very much (since I only felt that way for the two hours of lunch before we went out), but it was important to me. God really does care for us, even in the small things. He really is our Father, and He really loves us and will bless us with so many things… sometimes He is just waiting for us to ask for those blessings. When we ask Him, we are showing our faith in Him and we are showing humility and trust in Him. Then He can bless us with what we need… but a lot of times He can’t do it until we ask.
Also, this week is probably going to be one of the hardest in my mission. We have a lot of people that we visit, but they just aren’t progressing… especially with going to church. And some will only go if we pass by and pick them up for church… so they go more for us than for the Lord or because they have a testimony, which isn’t good. I’m hoping we could get some members to help our investigators, too, but that will probably have to wait a week because our focus this week will be to decide who to drop and who to keep visiting. And we’re going to try to get more references from members to help us find the people that are ready to accept the Gospel. It’s going to be hard, but both Sister Garcia and I feel like that’s what we need to do to help Sal progress and to find the people the Lord has prepared for us to teach.
This week we have really focused on helping out less actives here… partly because our investigators just aren’t really progressing. But there have been some serious miracles as a result.
Do you remember Arlindo? We visited him again this week, and instead of saying he has faith that someday he will be active again, he said that he will go to church! He told us he prays a lot for help getting to church, but something would always come up. They way he said it, we could tell that he was thinking that Satan is stronger than he is. But we had a great lesson with him about how if we trust in the Lord, Satan will have no power over us, and how we all have our agency and that God will ALWAYS provide a way for us to do the things He asks us to do. It was really good, and he came to church on his own, dressed in a white shirt and tie, and stayed for all three hours. It was incredible!
I don’t think I told you about Santos last week. He is a returned missionary who served in Cabo Verde in 1995-1997 or so, but he hasn’t been to church in YEARS. We had heard of him (an RM who now was less active, had dreads, and drank sometimes), and my first Sunday here we had tried to find him, but we couldn’t find him. Then, last week, we were having a pretty rough day. I was having that allergy-enduced asthma that I would get in the fall in America, so I was super tired and just feeling off, and Sister Garcia was really struggling too. We were on our way to our last lesson of the day, and we stopped to talk to Andrea (Bia’s less active daughter), and we had this guy come up to us. He was a little drunk, but he had a Bob Marley hat hiding his dreads, and he told us he was an x-missionary and then walked away. Sister Garcia got super excited and we stopped him and ended up talking to him for an hour or more.  He told us that he saw a lot of missionaries pass by him on the street, but that we had something different, which is why he showed himself to us. Anyway, we’ve been teaching him. He still has such a strong testimony of the church… he could be such a strong leader in the church once he gets active again! But he has been working to stop drinking and smoking, and he came to church with us on Sunday. It was so amazing. He wants us to help him become active. Wow.
Anyway, that’s about it for this week. I love you all! I have really been learning how much God loves each of us, and how much He will help us and bless us if we will just trust in Him and continually try to be better. But He has so many blessings in store for each of us. It’s just so incredible. And a lot of times all we have to do is ask.
Love you all!
Love,

Sister Zimbelman

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