bonjour mes cheris!
The past few weeks had been harder than normal, leaving me feeling a little heavy and weary. But I'm delighted to say that this week I've felt much more filled with the all so good and uplifting JOY of the gospel. Like that talk, "the joyful burden of discipleship", the two feelings often come together in the service of the Lord.
This week has been filled with incredible blessings. About a month ago we had no progressing amis. No one who was consistently reading the Book of Mormon or praying. Hahah hardly anyone who was inviting us back to be honest. It certainly felt that way some days. Well we focused the month on getting our amis to progress. To keep their commitments to draw closer to the Lord. Faith is a principle of action and no matter how much we teach or talk, it won't do anything to increase the faith of our amis if they don't do something with the teachings we share. Apply them in their lives. Reflect on them. Study them between visits. No one else can build your foundation for you. It's just you working side by side with the Lord building and molding.
But anyways, so so much digression. We prayed for our amis to progress. We fast together. And guess what happened. Our amis begin to progress. First it got up to 3 amis reading the Book of Mormon. The next week it was 4. Then to our incredible joy it was 5. And then this week. SEVEN. We have seven amis reading the Book of Mormon! Oh my it is the most incredible blessing. And it was all the Lord. The light and joy in these seven people's eyes is like a fuel for my soul. It fills me up and douses me with joy and gratitude. How grateful I am that sometimes the Lord allows us to see some seeds that we plant sprout up and begin to GROW.
We have one ami that we just found last week. She is a Melanesian and has 3 foot hair that she wears wrapped in a scarf on her head. We did our first lesson with her about the Book of Mormon, and she said we could come back this weekend. We hadn't been able to fix a set day. Well on Saturday night we show up at her house and it looked like someone was home. And we call and after the third time she comes running from the back of her house holding a machete. Hahahaha she was grinning and was so happy to see us that she hadn't even stopped to put her machete down!!
Sweet PRAISES!!!
She then told us all about how she'd been studying the Book of Mormon with the Bible all week. Cross referencing about different subjects from the index. And that she LOVED IT. How all of her family left that morning but she stayed home and purposefully left the window open because she was sure we would pass and she wanted to be sure to hear us (context to better understand our joy: usually on return appts people purposefully shut their entire house and hide and pretend to be gone when we call hahahaha). At this point my face is about to break into a million pieces along with my heart cause I'm smiling so big and am so happy.
We had the most wonderful lesson on the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and at the end, with teary eyes she said, "I was just reading about that today. About all the churches in the world. And I was wondering why that was. And now, you've answered and spoken about that with me. God is so good. Merci. Merci beaucoup!" We walked out of there and literally for the next hour and half were dancing and laughing and replaying parts of the lesson and singing sweet praises of joy. So happy.
Then yesterday we stop by to give her a Family :Proclamation to the World, cause oh by the way she has a family and a husband yessssss, and she runs out to us and then runs back inside only to run back out holding a giant bag full of bananas for us. I love her.
So that was just a little highlight of the week. So happy. God is so good. Being able to share this message brings the deepest joy. How true it is, "How great shall be your joy if ye bring but one soul unto me". The first soul we bring unto Him is our own. We give ourselves to Him. And then we invite others to join us on this pathway to eternal, everlasting joy.
Love you all.
When the going gets tough, say a prayer, turn to the Lord and keep going. He doesn't give up on us, why should we give up on Him?
love youses!
soeur evans
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