Date: Mon, Jul 29, 2019, at 2:17 PM
Happy Monday everyone!
I hit my 1-month mark last week and I cant believe it! It went by so fast!!
This week has been pretty busy and full of service.
With the help of a few members, the elders in a different area managed to get a Family Search Booth at the Cecil County Fair in Maryland. Super big deal around here. For those who don’t know what Family Search is, it is a genealogy website you can do online or in the app to make your family tree. Family Search has the largest database of records where you can find relatives and add them to your tree. It’s super cool and completely free. Anyways, the fair was all week long and Sister Monson and I volunteered to be at the booth for some of those days. It was great to talk to people who are super into genealogy or know of a family member who loves doing it. We got to hear some cool stories and meet some weird people who wanted to talk to us and invited us to watch the Derby with them. Interesting times. There was a man with a booth close to ours all week long that came to us on Wednesday and asked if we were “Mormons”. We gladly responded yes and talked to him for a few minutes. His name is Kevin and had lessons with other missionaries before but since he travels a lot he stopped meeting with them. He is from Connecticut and had the Book of Mormon downloaded on his phone. We told him he could download the chapters and listen to them in the car and he was pretty excited about it. We answered a few of his questions and gave him a Plan of Salvation Pamphlet that I happened to find in my purse right before he ran to his booth where some people were looking at the army shirts he had. Small miracles. Love it.
I learned how to sew a quilt! Saturday was a day of service in the stake and we put some supplies to be shipped to people in need through the church program “Helping Hands”. There weren’t many people there so the one lady who organized the whole activity was left with about 40 bags of quilts to sew by the end of the activity. The activity ended at 1 but Sister Monson and I stayed for another 3 hours sewing as many quilts as we could before we had to leave for the Family History Booth. Later the sister told us she only had 2 hours of sleep the night before to be able to get everything done for Saturday. Serving people is great and sometimes you don’t need an extravagant way to help someone. Sometimes you just need to stay a little longer at an activity to help a little bit more. You never know the impact of your actions in someone’s life until you put yourself out there to help.
Another service we did this week: There’s a sister who’s moving to Arkansas with her husband and they have this huge and beautiful house full of things they gathered in the past 10 years. The ward has been pretty good helping her pack everything in boxes but it has been two weeks and we are still not done. We did take about 4 days to clear the kitchen and clean the cabinets. We might be done with the whole house by Saturday, who knows.
Fun fact: I finally met a Brazilian member in my ward and his family. He told me that unfortunately there are no Brazilian stores in the area but he did say they would make a Churrasco for us. I thought it would be a one-time thing but they signed up for the meal calendar to feed us dinner twice a month for the next 3 months! I’m so excited haha.
Heavenly Father knows his children and most of the time we don’t know his plan for us and all we can do is trust in Him. I love this gospel and how God knows His children and loves them individually. He knows our struggles, that’s why the Holy Ghost walks with us. sometimes we have prayers answered and other times we are the answers to prayers. I love this gospel, my Savior, and my God. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Enjoy the pictures!
