A Blessed Week! Novermber 29, 2016

Hi you all!

Hermana Tucker is awesome! We are seeing SO many miracles together and it is so nice being able to work so much in our area together! I love it! 

So this past Sunday I was just having one of those days that I thought might lead to another round of just really hard days and I was worried. I didn't want that to happen yet again. After a long day of meetings and church and just feeling down on myself because of errors that I had made this past week, my Spanish was doing awful and I was struggling to understand, and then realizing that my self confidence was in the pits too, so I finally opened up to Hermana Tucker who had already noticed I was struggling and she had already let me play piano after church for a moment to de-stress even though she was probably starving for lunch. And guess what? After I had opened up to Hermana Tucker and explained what I was struggling with, everything else went well! I began feeling so much better and that evening I realized that although that evening didn't go as expected and a lot had fell through, I was happy! 

So I reflected about that day after we got home and over these past couple of days as well and I realized some great things. During church we saw HUGE miracles- which I did notice during the day, but I didn't realized the greater blessing associated with them- 2 random girls attending OSU looked up the church and came to our English sacrament meeting and I talked with them after and got their information for the OSU sisters to teach them later, our investigator San Juana came to church with her two sweet kids for all of church but sacrament which is an hour more than usual, a whole less-active family came! (the parents are usually the only one's who come), a family brought their friend to church who used to meet with the Hermanas and we were able to set up a return appointment to start teaching her again, AND a sister came up to us and gave us 3 referrals and set a time to come out to one of them with us! 

Now the greater blessing associated with all of these miracles were the lessons they taught me. I was wondering why in the world God was blessing us with such great miracles today when I had messed up so many times and feeling down today- was it really because "I had qualified myself for the blessings" like I've heard President Mansell say a few times? I wasn't buying it to be honest until right after I thought that question the scripture Doctrine and Covenants 130:20-21 came to mind, which says "20 There is a law... upon which all blessings are predicated— 21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated". I must have done something right for God to have blessed me to have the eyes to see those miracles. And greater than that I realized that God saved his greatest blessings for me for when I was in greatest need of a spiritual boost because He loves me! I needed to be more humble to appreciate His blessings more graciously as well. God is so good to us!

God knows what He's doing when He does Him. He's molding us every moment to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of each of us! I'm incredibly grateful that He saw in his infinite mercy and goodness to help me this past Sunday learn those lessons and to take the time to teach me how I need to be taught.

As for our area, we have more appointments and more members coming out with us than I have seen since being here in Stillwater. Our area is on fire! And Hermana Tucker and I are having a ton of fun while working hard out here! And we are striving to be obedient (and I'm getting better at not being so trunky, I think)! (:

So yesterday for p-day (by the way, sorry for not emailing yesterday- we went to OSU to email and since it is dead week before finals next week, it was packed and when we tried to get on the computers we weren't able to log-on, so we tried the library, but the other missionaries were all leaving because the internet crashed at the library... so here we are to today!), I took a Spanish placement test and I don't know as much Spanish as I thought I did, but I still can jump 3 semesters of classes which is awesome!, and then that afternoon President and Sister Mansell with the Assistants came up to our zone and we all played flag football which was a ton of fun! We had done a Turkey bowl for Thanksgiving and President and Sister Mansell and their two boys came up for that which gave the zone leaders the idea to do another day of flag football for zone p-day! So it's been a ton of fun this past week!

Okay, one last experience from yesterday- all of our appointments fell through (it happens a lot here in Stillwater) so we thought to go try a referral from the zone leaders of a hispanic home. Well, they live in a slightly unsafe area (aka it's not safe at night), but I had tried them in the day a week ago and I didn't feel like it was too bad, so when Hermana Tucker suggested it, I thought "great idea!". So we pull up and the lights were all off in the home and outside but one, but I had been here in the daylight so we both thought, "it'll be fine, right? Yeah, no problem". Well we were about to pray when I happened to glance outside the car window to my left behind us. Out of a dark alley appears a man in all black with his hood on riding a bike with his hand inside his coat like he's holding a gun or a knife. Thinking out loud I say "Oh. Sketch." and I stepped on the gas and sped away. Hermana Tucker and I were so spooked that we decided to go share one of the miracles from church with a member in a lightning visit (sharing miracles with members in about 2 minutes when your in their area- it's part of our mission culture here in Oklahoma) since it was only 8:30, but they were decorating their tree and invited us to help, so we stayed and helped them put up their tree the rest of the night. It turned out to be a great night! (:

I love you all- I hope your week is amazing! Chao!