December 13,2012
Hey fam!
Thanks for all the little lines you´ve dropped me in the last little while. They are wonderful. I´m especially grateful for what you said about love casting out fear. That´s exactly what I needed to hear. I have had a rough week adjusting to everything, but I have definitely felt the strength of the Lord beside me. I am also really glad that you put those verses of Nephi´s psalm that I love in an email to everyone, because then I got to look over them again. and sometimes we just need to be reminded of the things that we already know. That the Lord loves us. That He is always watching out for us and that His arms are outstretched towards us still. He will never give up on us if we don´t give up on Him; if we keep returning to Him and really do all we can to give Him all of ourselves, He will be the source of our joy and the source of our hope, the source of our rejoicing and this is what we want because His strength never fails. I love how the Lord says in the scriptures so many times that He is faithful. He is constant and unwavering in His support of us even when we are not always willing to look to Him. He is full of faith in us because He knows exactly what He wants us to become. He is our creator and who are we to say what He can and can´t accomplish with us.
I am so glad that the Lord loves me enough to ask me to do hard things, to expect more of me and to always give me the opportunity be more, to always give me the opportunity to feel His love. And for the promise we have from Elder Holland, from his talk a few conferences ago, that because the Savior walk that lonely path from the Garden to the cross and suffered for us alone we don´t have to. We will have sorrow and tribulation, but we don´t ever need to feel a lack of His love if we will constantly turn our hearts to Him through constant prayer and just try to take one more step ahead, trusting in His power to guide us.
I don´t know what else to really say besides that I love you all, and I know the Lord is with you.
Good luck with the driving Hannah, and I´m so happy that Jeremy is coming home for Christmas with you all.
Also, today is a little weird because we were supposed to have an hour for email 2 days ago, even though we didn´t have p-day because of the christmas conference with our mission on Tuesday. But our leaders forgot to tell us until the next day, when we already had plans.. so we have an hour of email today. but generally it will be on Mondays.
My companion is awesome. Before I got here I had several experiences where I felt certain that Heavenly Father was mindful of both of us and the work He had/has for us to do, and I am more certain of that now than ever.
Thank you for your prayers! Keep em comin. We need all the faith we can get on our side.
I love you!
The gospel´s true!
Love, Steph/Sister Lofgreen
P.S. I don´t really know what´s up with the whole mom being dead thing. Sister Fluckiger is from Provo so... it wasn´t a translation thing... haha. Who knows. I still know she loves me. haha