weekly thoughts

Another transfer starts today! Sister Hortal and I are still here (no big surprise), and the only other things of note are that there's a new AP (since Elder Johnson is going home), so that'll be an adventure. Other than that, not too many interesting changes! There's a lot of new STLs and companionships, so we're excited to start working with them. Oh, something exciting is that Sister Moore (who I trained in Hidalgo) is an STL now, so I get to work with her again! Happy day.

This week's theme to study has been  losing yourself. It's a weird thing to thing about, because it's a big focus on the mission, but then you focus on it and it feels weird to focus on it because you're supposed to focus outward and not inward to lose yourself. Anyway, in trying to help other sisters and learn about it for myself, I learned a lot about changes of heart. I realized that in order to have a change of heart, you have to get your heart outside of yourself, and THEN Christ can change it. And we get it outside of ourselves by focusing completely on others. I don't know that I have any life-changing comments, but I found a really good talk called "the thoughts of our heart, or why do we do what we do" on speeches.byu.edu and I highly recommend reading it. It opened my eyes and helped me see a little bit more of how we as humans and members of the church work. 

Ultimately, I realized that losing yourself happens when you don't try to. When you just love others, it will come. That's it. Simple. :)

Anyway, I love you all!

Love,

m

One Year Older and Wiser, Too... In the mission

I can't even believe that it's already been a year! Time flies.

Spiritual thought: We had a number of exchanges in the "great white north" this week, and weren't in our area from Monday until Friday night. Upon arriving home, we had a little discussion with the APs about not being scared to admit weaknesses. ha ha. Definitely something I still struggle with. They suggested that we read Ether 12 that night and discuss what we learned the next day with them. In doing so I learned some really interesting things. 1) if we're seeing our weaknesses, that's a sign that we're coming unto Christ! He says "and if men will come unto me, I will show unto them their weakness." So, if you're feeling exposed to your weaknesses, it's a good thing. 2) In one of the verses, Christ says to Moroni something like "because you've seen your weaknesses, you will sit down in the place which I have prepared for you." And I realized that we HAVE to consistently acknowledge, the key is that we can't be immobilized by them. It's this beautiful, painful process of letting Him show us where we REALLY need to improve, and then using His grace to get there. Anyway, that helped me a lot this week :) Step by step we're getting there!

Missionary moment: Listening to the Spirit.

At the beginning of my mission, I thought I knew what it meant to listen to the Spirit, but then quickly realized that I had no idea. The things I had experienced beforehand were not even close to sufficient to really "rely on the spirit." It's one thing to feel like I shouldn't do something, but it's another to recognize complex promptings and act on them. It's been a consistent progress, but looking back I realized how much it's changed. A quick experience to illustrate - last night we had an hour left to work, and we didn't feel peaceful about our plans. It just felt like something was off. There was a group of apartments that kept coming into my hear, for no real reason. We had driven by them a few different times, but we didn't have any referrals or members or anything there. The image just kept coming to my hear, so we I finally voiced that and we went. After knocking a door that nobody answered, and then talking to a very uninterested woman who was smoking outside of her door, a woman rushed out of her house with her two kids. I stopped her and asked if we could give her a card, and she asked who we were and where we were from and when I told her she said "oh that big beautiful church over on Jackson with the palm trees? I went there a couple of times with my cousin and I really liked it!" She was running out, but we have an appointment to go back today. After she left, both my companion and I got this biggest sense of affirmation that that was what we had needed to do and that we could leave. It was a very humbling moment, to see how God helps us to become more receptive to be able to become better instruments in His hands. 

Well, that's it for today! Have a wonderful week 

--

Hermana Reynolds

thought of the week

This week, I thought I'd send what I learned yesterday in Sacrament meeting. 

It was ward conference, and the Stake President talked about the role of the Savior. He told a story about how he was on a beach that had these beautiful angel wing-shaped shells. He held them up for us to see, and they really were beautiful! He said they looked for the perfect ones, and picked them up until their hands were full. He then had a thought come to his mind of "what would the Savior be looking for if he were there on the beach?" and the answer came that the savior would be looking for the broken ones and then would use his power to heal them. I think a lot of times I do the same thing - I look for the perfect opportunities, friendships, etc, instead of looking for the opportunities to heal and help and improve. 

Also, today I was studying the Gospel of Christ, and I came across some cool thoughts. 1 - Christ came to set the example. We can know it's HIS church when they do what he did. 

2 - Christ came to save the sinners, and his Atonement covers those who don't ever get the chance to hear, and that's what grace really is, not just being "saved" by saying so..

3 - faith without works is dead. (James 2. It's a great chapter.) Christ came, but we have to believe and act on that, or nothing happens.

Anyway, that's all for this week :)

Love you all!

--

Hermana Reynolds

First Missionary Moments of 2016!

New Years: 

We had to be in early again (to avoid any hazardous situations due to intoxication and the like), so ended up having a kind of different day. We had gone up to Calallen (by Corpus Christie) for an exchange and got back in the afternoon, and then had a zone meeting with the other missionaries and then we got to watch the Polar Express together (every year on New Year's the missionaries get to watch a movie). I had anticipated that watching a movie would be strange, but it wasn't as different as I had anticipated. I guess a year isn't quite long enough to make movie-watching weird. :) There were lots of fireworks that night - none that we saw, but definitely a lot that we could hear. It was super loud. There's a town near Laredo called Zapata (that has a pretty  

Working in our area:

We have a "standard of excellence" for the mission (what a companionship should be able to accomplish in a week if they're working correctly) for the key indicators - lessons taught with a member present, new investigators found, etc. PMG explains it pretty well. As leadership, we're supposed to accomplish all of the goals for that Standard of Excellence to set the example, and this transfer we've learned a LOT about how merciful the Lord is when it comes to sacrifice. When I was in Laredo, we could accomplish all of our goals every week, even if we weren't there for a day. But now, we often aren't in our area for about half of the week (because of exchanges, etc), so we've had to re-learn how to plan and how to ask God for miracles so that we can work in other sisters' areas and still get everything done that we need to. There have been many miraculous days where we haven't been in our area all week, and then we'll find 5 new investigators in one day. I think more and more I'm just realizing that God can do anything he wants to do - we just have to be on the same page with Him :) 

That's it for this week! Love you all

--

Hermana Reynolds