Extra Terrestrial

email 21 July 2015

This last week went super fast! Wow! It was great though. We had a zone conference and it was so spiritual and very needed. For zone conference they had us make posters to help President and Sister Jaggi get to know us a little better. Kind of like a class project, which you know I love! haha And Sister Magsayo is super artistic as well so we had fun! They asked us to make a poster about who we are, how we are a Preach My Gospel missionary, and what our vision is for the rest of our mission. In the zone conference they had all of us choose a parable to study by ourselves and as a companionship. I chose to read Luke 17:11-19. And it was about the lepers and in verse 14 they were all cleansed. And in verse 19 the one that went back was made whole by his faith. And when I read that I though about how all of them were cleansed. When we repent all of us are forgiven like the ones who were cleansed. But the one with enough faith was made whole. And I want to be made whole. I think being made whole is when we have enough faith to forgive ourselves and everyone involved as well. And I don't have quite that faith yet. I've decided to work on that. Work on becoming whole and not only cleansed. 

I went on exchanges this last week and I went to A BIKING AREA!!!!!! OH. MY. GOSH. IT. WAS. SO. HARD. But it was actually a lot of fun! And I survived! You feel really successful while you're doing it. But we had the FUNNIEST lesson!!! We were teaching an old man and we were talking about doing his wife's work in the temple. And he told us, "I'm pretty sure I'm going to the extra terrestrial kingdom." We just looked at each other and we were trying SO HARD not to crack up. We tried explaining to him that it was the TERRESTRIAL kingdom and not EXTRA TERRESTRIAL. But he wouldn't believe us! He said it's where all the aliens go because they're creatures of God but not the best creatures like us humans so they go there. It was so interesting. He was pretty much telling us he was an alien. I have too many lessons about the plan of salvation and aliens. 

As I've been thinking about using the atonement to become whole, I've realized that it's something we're going to learn for our entire life. We aren't meant to understand it completely. It's like when we learned addition and subtraction. When we're older, we already understand it so we don't have to keep learning about it. But that's the whole purpose of our life is to learn. So we aren't supposed to understand the atonement fully, otherwise we wouldn't want to learn and change. I believe Heavenly Father keeps us in the dark about a lot of things so we will learn to rely on him more fully. 

I've been working on making the sabbath day more important to me. In North Ogden they have a church that has "drive through prayer". And when I think of drive through, it makes me think of something fast and not really lasting. Just for the moment. Thinking of that compared to Thanksgiving is completely opposite! Thanksgiving is an all day event where we go back for seconds and thirds all day long. I asked myself, "Is my sabbath day observance like a drive through and just for those 3 hours? Or is it like Thanksgiving where I make it last all day and go back for more?"  It's helped me be more aware of my spirituality on Sunday. 

As a lot of my friends are getting ready to leave the mission, I've realized that we aren't called to serve in a certain place. We're called to serve in place of our savior Jesus Christ. Even when we go home, we can all still be his example. We can help people around us feel His love. We can ALWAYS be His hands. I'm loving my time being a Full-Time representative of The Lord. All 11 months so far. 

Love you all! 
Sister Sarlls