Never be afraid to ask for success in life and help in trials

Loved you more than… Sheffield home-style potatoes! Guess who ate an authentic thanksgiving meal, we did!!:) We bought some small golden russet potatoes and made half chunky, half creamy mashed potatoes with gravy. Not to mention eight pounds of chicken (couldn’t find turkey) between the four of us.

Well this week was one of those weeks, full of ups and downs, goods and less goods...

Thanksgiving on Thursday was great with jello, potatoes, pumpkin cake, chicken, rolls, juice and corn. We were all stuffed, so I saved the leftovers for Sheffield restaurant on Friday. 

Homemade Thanksgiving dinner

Our mission leader came to our meeting this week, which was good, but we didn’t have a lot to discuss and we are still working on getting outcomes from the meeting. I started a trend of waffle irons and we got our zone leader Elder Holbrook one, Elder Rojas wants to buy one as well. 

Uno with Elders Holbrook, Dickson, Rojos and Orellena

We played a big fun game of Uno with the zone leaders after district meeting. We had a kind of slow start to the week, but our Christmas music lifted our spirits. We are hoping Yamile can get baptized soon, and as a branch baptism, not a missionary one. We gave a fourth blessing of health to a sick and blind lady in the branch, who is an amazing lady and a real trooper. Church was kind of long and only one investigator came. This kind of sparked our “trial of faith” week. Our ex-district counselor, Marero canceled our dinner appointment, but we had a waffle family night with our star family Chachi and Marisols. We had a quick district meeting Monday and started going home when we got a surprise call from the zone leaders, who showed up to the church but we had left. THEY BROUGHT CHRISTMAS PACKAGES! I received a package labeled number three and Rojas got his packages, a few for Christmas and one for his birthday which is the same day. Then we got interviewed, and that was alright. We went home and then went to the grocery store, but when we got back we realized we had gotten robbed. They got one of our washing machines, that we had outside and also got a window open and grabbed Elder Dickson’s bag, camera and watch. We tried to get police help, but it didn’t result in anything. We think it was the neighbors because either somebody went out in the street and the whole world saw them or they lifted the washer over our ten foot tall cement wall/fence. On the bright side the robbers left my companions scriptures and hymn book. It was a long rest of the day and ended on a bad note. We visited Yeffri for a nice short and sweet lesson, when he asked us a question. He asked what we would do if he went to another church. He explained that out of curiosity he had prayed about the evangelical church as well and then went with his parents to one of their services. He said he felt really cool there and went two more times in a row. He said that the answer to his prayers was that the evangelical church is true. He said he still wants us to pass by a lot, but we left his house feeling crushed. My five-month mark day was the next day and it was a little sad after all that had happened. I ate a snickers, we made some brownies and played uno to end the night. Today we went to the "mountain" Moro in Monte Cristi and had a nice hike. 

Hike to Moro with our little zone minus the Hermana's

My spiritual thought is about being happy and having fun. Mission and life are hard, yet they are meant to be fun as well. We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can ALWAYS control how we react. Pouting or complaining never helps, so we sometimes just need to toughen up and soften our hearts, surrendering ourselves to the Lord. I am always awed how reading the scriptures, often correlates to our lives. I am reading the book of Alma right now and how he prayed to God for help with his weaknesses and grief over sin, and asked for success. This is such a great example for us. We should never be afraid to ask for success in life and help in trials. Ask for the best but be willing to continue in the worst, I guess is my point. 

Love you Elder Sheffield

 

Christmas Lights

p.s. I opened the Christmas package I got because with a probable transfer the week before Christmas, I won’t have room to pack a package around with me. I opened some of the stuff and ate some of the food, but the gift of purpose I’m saving for later. :)  

Our delicious Thanksgiving dinner (before)

(After)