May 6, 2013

Hi family!

Happy almost mother's day, Mom! and Happy almost birthday Paul!! I can not believe how old our family is getting.

This week we have had several investigators reading things about the history of the church, and so I have been talking about that. and I have been so grateful for all the amazing people that have sacrificed so much so that I could have the life that I have. All the pioneers who sacrificed so much, but even more than that all of my ancestors that I know have been so involved in my gaining a personal testimony of the gospel. Sometimes it doesn't seem fair how much help and support and how many chances I have been given to learn about and stay strong in the gospel. Pretty much anything semi-good that I have accomplished has so much more to do with the sacrifices of the people who went before me, of church leaders and friends, to say nothing of you guys, Mom, Dad, Hannah, Jeremy, Paul, Tom and Will and Katy. All the way back to Willard Richards, Paul and Anders, Grandma Nonie. So many amazing people. I want to one day be able to sit down with all of them and you and feel good that I didn't let their legacy die and that I honored the sacrifices they made for me.

Most of all, thanks Mom for giving so much of yourself to us every single day and for loving us inspite of all the mistakes and silly things we do.

I will hopefully be skyping you Sunday at about 3 our time which should be about 8 your time. I hope that's ok. I'm sorry I didn't plan ahead better...just email me yours and dad's skype names and I will try to talk to both of you at the same time.

So I didn't really say much last week, but I wanted to tell you a little more about our most recent convert. He works at a golf course. well sort of. He finds all the balls that people lose in the water and on the street and stuff, cleans them up, repackages them and then sells them on the side of the golf course. But all the unusual ones he gives to us. So we have about 50 golf balls in our house. I counted the other night and we had 48. He is really great and hopefully will be receiving the Aaronic priesthood sunday and bringing 2 friends to church!

And I'm about out of time so I'm just copying and posting this from what I wrote to Katy, so I hope it still makes sense.

Mostly I am struggling with and working on every day being humble enough to DO what the Lord needs me to do and to be humble enough to work to do many things of my own free will. Sometimes faith is hard. Its so simple and I am going to have to keep working at it for a lifetime. To have enough faith and trust the Lord to do whatever He says and to really want what He wants, and to believe that He can do His work with me. I am so forgetful, and lazy, and imperfect and unloving and I let all those things rob me of my faith sometimes, and that's not the person or missionary that I want to be, but its HARD, really really hard to change, to take that step to do things in a different way and to face the possibility of failing, but that's just a lack of trust too because if I really know that the Lord wants the best for me and will help me and strengthen me, then why would failing even be a problem. There's only two options, success or not, whether that comes by failing and learning or by not trying...

And I was reading in 2 Ne3 today when the lord is speaking about moses and that He knows that He didn't make him mighty in speaking and then still told him to go talk to Pharoah. He doesn't just say, well Moses was a little bit weak in this, but I can do anything anyways. He says purposefully that He DIDN'T make Moses mighty in speaking. like it was a conscious decision to make him weak in that area and then give him this seemingly impossible job so He could learn how to trust. Well, I would like to be as cool as Moses, so maybe I can try to accept my weaknesses and pray and strive to be humble enough for the Lord to part the "Red Seas" that I face.

I love you all so much!

Fight the good fight!

And let me know what's going on with the move and stuff! (Jeremy, I haven't heard from you in ages!)

Steph