Yesterday marked 2 months since I left! It feels like yesterday and 100 years ago all at the same time! This week was pretty relaxed, not much happened, but I do want to share one experience I had earlier this week!
This was the first week I actually witnessed and recognized the spirit working through me and God using me as one of his tools, and it was seriously the coolest thing ever. So, normally, every Tuesday night we attend addiction recovery. It's taught by a couple in the ward and anyone (member or nonmember) can attend and get help overcoming and recovering from any kind of addiction. It's really similar to AA but the lessons are centered around Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father instead of "some higher power" as it is said in the AA program. Anyway, the last 2 weeks no one has shown up :/ So we figured we would just plan for something else instead that night, so we had planned to meet with Mona, she's a less active member that we visit with pretty often. She has some pretty negative feelings about the church and it's members, and so normally we just go over, talk with her, be her friend, and leave her with a prayer. However, we were finally feeling like it would be the right time to have a gospel lesson and discussion with her. So, we prayed about it and felt like we should talk with her about the first principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ- Faith in Jesus Christ. We prepared a good lesson and had it all planned out. Later that day though, Mona cancelled on us :( We were kinda disappointed but people literally cancel on us every 2 seconds so we just rearranged our schedule and decided that we would go to addiction recovery anyway and hope that people would come. And someone did! Yay!
We had a really nice lesson with him, and the program was just starting over so we were on lesson 1 which is all about hope. This was the first way I realized the spirit had been guiding and directing me because, every morning we have personal study for an hour to read the scriptures, study from preach my gospel, etc. Before I study, I always pray for the spirit to guide my studies that I might be inspired to read and learn what is needed of me that day. ANYWAY, that morning I had studied all about hope!! Same topic of our lesson that night!! Brother Dylan, who teaches the class, asked in the middle "Sister Rawlins do you have any thoughts about hope?" Heck yeah I did and I was able to share some awesome scriptures I had found about hope and share what I had studied. I was so happy to be able to do that. AND THEN, at the end of the lesson, Brother Dylan had asked the man that had shown up if he had any questions or comments about anything we talked about. He had a question regarding what we had said about hope coming from faith. He asked, "How can I gain faith? How can I know that I have faith?" And me and my companion just looked at each other because that was literally the lesson that we had planned and prepared to teach Mona that night!!! We were so ready to teach him and help answer his question with everything we had studied that morning!
My companion shares this quote from an Apostle with me all the time, "Planning is everything, plans are nothing" And that really was true for us that day! Our plans for what we thought we would do that day totally fell through, but because of our prayerful planning, we were ready and prepared to share with this other man the message he was needing! It was such an amazing moment for me as a missionary, realizing that everything I do matters and that God is using me where he needs me!
I hope you are all getting excited for Christmas and continuing to participate in the Light The World program this season! I shared this message on Facebook earlier this week, but for those of you who didn't see it, I will share it again :)
The day Christ was born, the world became a whole lot brighter. It's up to us to keep that light shining. Watch this video (https://youtu.be/yXWoKi5x3lw)
Sending alllllllll my love from Idaho
Hermana Rawlins
808 South Samson Trail
P.O. Box 192
McCall, ID 83638
Sorry I am the worst and didn't take one single picture this week! I totally failed. I promise next week I will have some for you :)
