This Little Ride of Mine: Obscure 80's talks are actually really good

email 12 May 2015

Man this week was awesome. (As most of them are.) But this one was especially awesome because WE GOT TO SKYPE HOME!!! It was so good to see all my family and baby Madelyn??

So First things first, TRANSFERS!!! So I'm staying here in West Weber and my companion is Sister Magsayo!!! She's from the Philippines and she's just the cutest thing! She sang "Come Unto Christ" in the musical fireside. And we're both STL's this transfer. I'm super excited:) Sister Betzold is just moving right next door to Hooper (pronounced hupper). We'll be in the same zone so I'll still get to see her:) Another exciting tidbit is that Sister Smith is on a special assignment to pink wash (replace Elders with Sisters - Ed) Omicron. Which is the most ghetto area in the mission and is also the highest baptizing. They've never had sisters there. So she's been sent there to try it out! It'll be really interesting to hear from her how it's going down!

I had one of the funniest dinners this past week!!! We were walking up to the house and we saw that there was a little boy looking out the window for us coming. He was probably 5-6. Once we came in though, he was really upset. Almost crying! And his mom later told us that he was upset because he thought LORENZO SNOW (Church President, 1898-1901, Ed.) was coming to dinner. HAHAHAHAH I was cracking up!!! Then his mom asked him who his favorite missionary was and he said "Lorenzo Snow". Hahaha how does he even know who that is at that age?! And the fact that he really wanted Lorenzo Snow to come to dinner just cracked me up. So cute!

This last p-day our zone got to get together at the Hier's and had Family Home Evening! It was so fun to hang out and have a spiritual night with my mission family! At the end, Sister Hiers made us all pazookies!!! You put cookie dough in a little bowl and half bake it in the oven and then when it comes out you put ice cream on top. Soooo good!

So we had a MIRACLE this week!!!!! I talked this last week about a 10 year old named Destri who was getting baptized. Well it turns out that it was her dad's weekend to have her. So he was being a little stubborn with letting her come be baptized. But he finally allowed her! BUT then he didn't want her to be there on Sunday. And on Sunday is when converts are confirmed a member and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. And we couldn't get permission to do it on Saturday with her baptism. So we were just PRAYING and PRAYING that this sweet girl would be able to be confirmed on Sunday. Well 2 days passed and the dad was still saying no to letting her come Sunday. Finally it was the day of the baptism. We kept praying that things would work out according to God's will. We needed to know some information so we called Destri's mom and right when we called she said, "I was about to call you and let you know that her dad is letting her be confirmed tomorrow!" OH MY GOSH!!!!!! We just knelt down and said a prayer of thanks right then and there. Heavenly Father is so aware of his children. He will always provide a way for us to keep the commandments and to follow the example of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I had a confirmation yesterday of the Holy Ghost being able to bring things to your memory. Yesterday we were teaching an 8 year old girl the Restoration and we were talking about prophets. Right when I started talking about prophets, I got a thought in my mind of how I needed to teach it. It was a little object lesson to explain prophets that I hadn't used since the very very beginning of my mission!!! I completely forgot about it!!! But the Holy Ghost knew that she needed to hear it that way to understand the role of prophets. It was such a cool and special experience!

When I went to MLT (Mission Leadership Training), President and Sister Hiers gave us a training on pride that was sooooo good! They shared a quote from C.S. Lewis:

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”

THIS QUOTE HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!!! Every sin or mistake or character default we have is from pride. And pride is all about making ourselves better than others. Afterwards they sent us the talk "Beware of Pride" by Ezra Taft Benson from the April 1989 conference. There are so many good things in here. One of them that I loved is that it says: "Pride says, 'If you succeed; I'm a failure.'" Wow, do I have this problem. It's so easy to put ourselves down because of others success or to feel bitter toward them because they're successful! Which is so dumb!!!!!! But the promise given right after this sentence Benson says, "If we love God, do His will, and fear His judgment more than men’s, we will have self-esteem." WOW! What a promise! But it makes so much sense. Because since I've been on my mission, my will has been more aligned with God's than ever before. And I've become more confident! Before my mission I used to be known as having low self-esteem and being un-confident. But as I've been turning my will to His, I've become more confident in my abilities and who I am as a daughter of God. I still have a lot of work to do on pride. But I know I can do it!

I read another obscure 80's talk this week, haha, this one was by President Monson in 1988 titled "You Make a Difference". He shared a story about how ships get barnacles on them as they ship things back and forth. To get the barnacles off is a super long and hard and costly process. Unless they go to a port in freshwater. Barnacles can't live in freshwater so they die and eventually fall off. Relating this to the gospel, we each have barnacles on our ship. And it's a lot harder to get rid of our habits and sins and imperfections while we're still in saltwater, while we're still surrounding ourselves with things that keep them stuck to us. But when we go to freshwater and we are going to church, reading our scriptures, saying our prayers, and getting that spiritual help and nourishment, our imperfections and habits will die. They will fall off. We all have our favorite barnacle - our favorite sin that maybe we don't want to give up. But Jesus Christ is our freshwater to help us overcome that. He not only provided a way for us to be forgiven of our sins, but he provided a way for us to have the strength to scrape those barnacles off. To make them die, so that they can never return. I want to invite all of you to find a "barnacle" in your life that you can get rid of. I'm so grateful for the strength that I receive from my Savior to change and become more like him. :)

I love you all!!!
Sister like-Charles-with-an-S

(Missionaries can call, Skype, or Face Time with their family twice a year, on Christmas Day and Mother's Day. Here are some pictures from the mission and from home of Sister Sarlls' Mother's Day call. - Ed)