Life
carries on and there is sunshine in the work we do, despite what the
weather
may say. I am happy. I am increasing my knowledge. I am setting new
goals. I love the people. I appreciate the gospel. I am grateful for the
Savior.
And mission life is brilliant.
One word I
would use to describe this last week is busy. We have been focusing our
work on
AUFs these past few weeks. [AUFs stands for Address Unknown File. It is
people that have been to church sometime in the past, but people haven't
seen in a while. Our responsibility is to go to their homes and find
out if they still live there or not by speaking to them and the
neighbors.] There has been some good progress made. In
particular, I want to share one miracle. We were waiting at the bus stop
to
travel to the AUF and started speaking to the young man there. His first
comment was, “Who are you anyway? You tried to stop me the other day.” I
thought that comment was fairly funny because I honestly didn't
remember trying to stop him the other day, but it goes to show you can't
hide from missionaries :) We were
then able to explain how we are missionaries. His name is Rory, and he
is from
Ireland. Since we were both traveling on the same bus, we sat together
and
were able to continue our conversation. Much to my surprise, when I
invited him
to meet with us, he said yes. He lives with more than six other people,
so he
thought his house would be hectic. We arranged to meet at the library,
but he
didn’t have a phone. [From my experience, more often than not when you
don't have an address or a phone number, people are just not very
reliable.] As a result, we went to the appointment with faith, and he
came! It goes to show that I really need to have greater faith in people
and what they say. It increased my faith that some people are sincere
and want to know that truth. We had a good lesson,
and he was pro-active about inviting himself to do things such as read The Book of Mormon. What a miracle!
Furthermore,
I have been having more inspiring personal studies. In particular, I have been
focusing on truly learning from my reading of The Book of Mormon.
Just the
other week ago, I asked myself: what is the difference between studying
and learning?
Learning is the actual application and long-term knowledge of what you
study.
As you learn, you take what you study and apply it. I have been trying
more and
more to apply what I learn and truly learn rather than just study. I can
remember the difference between university classes when I studied and when I
learned. Studying or learning didn't always have instant results like
better grades, but it did make a difference in the long term. I remember
Economics 110 freshman year with Professor Kearl. I learned in that
class. There are still things that I can recall today like sunk costs,
demand, etc. However, there are classes like my proofs of calculus that I
absolutely dreaded. It didn't seem to matter how hard I studied, my
mind couldn't learn. In the end, I actually got a higher grade in the
latter, but I barely remember the things we studied. There are short- and
long-term effects on what we study and learn.
Hope all is well for you. Enjoy the new year!
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