Hey everyone!
Its been another week, and it has flown by. I have been in Tally for 12 days already. That means I am more than a 1/4 way through this transfer...how did that happen!?! I am loving it here, but I continually am trying to figure out what Heavenly Father wants me to learn from the different things I am experiencing. Certainly one of the biggest things I am learning is to gain a testimony of EVERY aspect of the gospel. I have a story to share, I was going to tell yall it last week, but my email was already rather lengthy and so I decided to save it. In the context that everything that happens here is strengthening my testimony, this experience strengthened my knowledge of Gods timing and him giving us the things we pray for in his own time.
About 3 months ago I was in Troy and I lost my camera. My companions and I were leaving a store and trying to get to get home before curfew, so we ran from the store doors to the car and drove home at the fastest the car would go while following mission rules... meaning like 25 MPH. I woke up the next day and went looking for my camera and couldnt find it. So i did what missionaries do best, I prayed about it. I prayed and prayed and prayed. I thought for sure If I kept praying I would find it somewhere I had already looked, God does that sometimes. We went to the store the police station the campus lost and found etc. I never let my hope die... Every time I said a personal prayer I asked Heavenly Father to return my camera to me (Because it has ALL my pictures from my mission so far on it, I was getting ready to save them to a flash drive that week) The transfer was getting close to ending and I still hadnt gotten my camera back. I began asking heavenly father why I hadnt gotten it back, why he wasnt listening why he wasnt answering my prayer. I read the conference talk where the man is looking for the quarter to get some chicken and he didnt find one until RIGHT before he got the the restaurant. I still felt like I was going to get it back, but maybe it would be right before transfers. Two days before the transfer ended and I shipped off to Lynn Haven, the police station called. Detective Ohera had just called to tell me that he had checked the stuff that has been turned in and..... they didnt have my camera. I thought for sure my prayer was going to be answered and i would get it back. Transfers came and went and i still didnt get it back. I thought maybe my will and gods will were not aligned so he couldnt answer that prayer, But I knew that I had gotten the answer that I would get it back. So I bought a new camera and only kind of forgot about my old one. Every once and a while though, I would still pray that if he wanted to give it back to me somehow I would like it back. I didnt care about the camera itself, I had a new one, but I wanted the pictures. Transfers came around again and i was packing to move out of lynn haven and i was cleaning out my 'random junk that I dont know where to put it' box and I had my old battery charger in it and I thought, well I dont have that camera anymore... So I can throw this away. but then a little part of me said "nope, I think i will still get it back" so I put it back in the box and packed it away. We got to transfer spots the next day and I went to see all my missionary friends from troy and the sisters handed me a bag of random stuff they had collected for me while I was gone and then sister Christian pointed at something in the bottom of the bag.... there was my camera. Some lady had stopped Elder Raso on campus one day and asked if He knew the Sister Missionaries because they had the camera at the campus police station. He went and got it and brought it to me.
Its a funny little story and I sometimes felt a little ridiculous for praying for the thousandth time for a camera that really didnt mean anything, but because i cared so much god gave it back to me. However he didnt give it back to me right away he allowed me to wait a while and when he felt like it was time I got it back. I can tell you once again (like ive said many times before) God ALWAYS hears our prayers, and he ALWAYS answers them. Even when it is something as minor as wanting a camera back so I can have my memories. As President Uchdorf said in his 'you matter to him' talk this last conference "This is a paradox of man: compared to God, man is nothing; Yet we are everything to god" Because we care, god cares.
This week has been a good one, They always are in their own way. The last of our investigators stopped responding to our phone calls and knocks on the door, so we have zero investigators right now, but we will find some soon. There is something Heavenly father is trying to teach us and in Hind sight we will probably figure it out. Our ward mission leader chastised the ward counsel for not giving us referrals and doing their part (the elders here only have 1 investigator right now as well), Hopefully we will get some soon. We did get to go plant a garden with one of the members for service. we also go to the homeless shelter once a week for service here, that's really cool. We have been trying really hard to figure out how to listen to the spirit when it tells us where to go. Sister Seifurt and I are on the same level as far as that goes and i think that is something we are suppose to learn together, because for the first time we dont have a companion that is better at it than us. Im really excited for that, because its something I have thought about and studied and prayed and prayed and prayed about and thought about some more. I love this gospel and i am so grateful for it. I know that everything we do in the gospel is for a reason and it is 'simply beautiful and beautifully simple'
Love you all!
Sister Webb
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