Sunday, June 23, 2013

May 20, 2013

Mom!!!! I love you so much!
And Dad!
And Jeremy! and Hannah! and Paul! and Katy! and Tom! and Will!!!

You guys are all so amazing and I don't know what I would do with out you all!
and, Thank you for all the birthday wishes!

As for my plaque, I don't know. You can choose the picture; I trust your judgment, plus, I won't be the one looking at it :) As for the scripture, its never been a very nice thing to ask me what my favorite anything is, and as a missionary, picking a favorite scripture is especially hard. But I hope you won't mind my stealing the family theme: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 1) because I have had to learn every single day of my mission that He is and has to be the source of our strength, focus and desire to be happy and to do anything worth doing here, and 2) because its our family theme and second to our Lord and Savior my greatest source of strength is the love and support of family. So yeah, use that one.

I am in Viseu and it is beautiful. We split an area here with the elders and they have been so wonderful in helping us with everything, where everything is, who everyone is, what they need and what they have already been taught, not to mention going to lessons with us to pass off investigators. I feel like I have learned so much in the few lessons that we have had with them and that the Lord is really answering my prayers to make up the difference in so many different things. My new companion is amazing too, she is so happy and so willing to just do what needs to be done even though she can't speak the language yet and has only been here four days, she is already teaching me so many things by her willingness to just do what needs to be done, just worrying about the task in front of her and not getting caught up in all of the other things that have to be done later. One of the greatest blessings here has been the investigators that the elders have been working with that they left to us. Things were a little confusing for a little bit about who was going to teach who, but finally we worked it out. But before that, we got to teach this guy with them who is going through a really rough time and his dad who is a branch president near Lisbon called and gave a reference to the elders. Well we got to go teach him and talk to him about the power of the Atonement to help us overcome difficulties and that God loves us enough to let hard things happen but help us become so much more by overcoming them, and my new companion got to invite him to be baptized on her 3rd day in Portugal. He will be baptized with his sister on the 1st and their dad will get to come baptize them.
I feel so incredibly blessed to walk into the middle of this miracle and see how the Lord prepares people and families to be happy forever and how he can in the middle of all this orchestrate a way for me and my companion to learn the things we need to and just give us the little reminders of His love for us.

Well sorry this is a little bit scattered, but I love you all so very much and pray for the people in our area to be open to two lost little girls to teach them the gospel, just the most important things they could come to know and live in this life.

I know the gospel's true and I'm working to live it and trust in it more and more every day.

Love you so much,

Steph

P.S. fight the good fight. It's worth it.

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