Donald Kinslow, this ones for you
HEYYYY!!! Happy General Conference weekend!! I truly hope each one of you had the chance to watch conference. I dont care if youre a member of The Church of Jesus Christ or not, General Conference is for you! If you are looking for how to be a better person, a better disciple of Christ, or just need some happiness, maybe take a peek at some of the messages directly from The Creator of all happiness. If you didn't watch it, watch one talk! if you watched one talk, watch two! If you watched it all, watch it again! God has a message exactly for you, so find it! This is the link to watch it if you'd like tehe.
MILAGRITOS:
- This week, we had a miracle tuesday (milagro martes, if you will), and we had NINE lessons scheduled in one day, and not a single one of them fell through. We ran across Canelones like 6 times to make it to every lesson and it was phenomenal. Yay for people wanting to do better and be better and yay for God letting me have a small part in helping them do that!
- We then had a miracle wednesday (milagro miercoles, if you will) where we had 7 lessons planned, and only 2 of them happened ahahah. BUT the miracle was in all of those lessons not happening, because it put us in a position to be in the right place at the right time to help so many strangers who are now not strangers to me hehe. We stopped to get a tiny puppy out of the street and give it back to its owner, and when we started talking to the owner, she literally started spilling out her whole life story. She even paused halfway through and said "uhhh I have no idea why im telling you two all this, but okay. you both have good energy so im just gonna keep going" and we were able to help her understand that God loves her. and wants to talk to her, even and ESPECIALLY through her trials. Now Id say were best friends cause we helped her realize again that God exists, and also I helped her remember how to count to ten in english. So lots of remembering happened in just a few minutes. Not two seconds later, we passed another lady, and she was a cute lil old lady carrying some really heavy bags and we asked if we could help and she said no and then all of a sudden I felt my hand grabbing the bag from her ahaha. She said "ope okay if you insist" and then we got to carry her bags and talk with her. She has 20 cows and wants to learn more about Jesus. THEN a few minutes later we started knocking doors at this random neighborhood, and the first door we just about left cause no one answered, but then as we were turning around, a girl came out and we started talking to her and she was like "wait, what do i have to do to keep in contact with you guys, i wanna learn more about Jesus" and me and my comp kinda just stared at each other like, uhhhh well this never happens. Then the next door the lady said yes too! It was insane, in about an hour we only talked to four people and all four of them said yes. Thats never happened in my mission ever. We would have kept it going but we had to go to one of our two lessons. But it was a pretty good hour while it lasted.
- GENERAL CONFERENCE!! I love the prophet. We made a goal to meet with every single member of the ward we possibly could this week, to talk about Joseph Smith, and then prophets, and then invite them to watch conference. So I read the same few verses in Joseph Smith History about 40 times this week, and I loved every second. Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. And I am so dang blessed to be able to share that every day. If you dont feel like you know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, go read Joseph Smith History. Its life and eternity changing stuff.
JAJAJAJAJAJAJAs of the week:
- We are teaching a lady, who we are probably going to have to stop teaching, because she has problems with her memory, and quite literally cannot remember anything. We have told her about 27 times we are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and just about every two seconds she asks us if were Muslim. She told us about 42 times that when she was a professor, she compared the entire bible with the Kuran, and that there are so many similarities. Also, every time she found out that I was from the USA, she let me know that she has a friend named Donald Kinslow who is from the US but lived with her family for a while with a foreign exchange program. Donald, if youre out there, Rosa is looking for you, but she probably wont remember you if you show up. The best part of her memory problems is that she knows she has problems with her memory, and she looks at her watch every two seconds to let us know she has yoga at 4pm and to let her know before that that she needs to leave, because she is going to forget. So we reminded her, but honestly if she made it to yoga without forgetting where she was going, i would be shocked. It was quite literally like meeting Dory the fish in person, it was so entertaining. She did tell us every two seconds that she knows were good people cause we have light in our eyes so that was seriously super tender.
- We went to Montevideo and I got to go to Subway. Moments like that where I really just miss the United States. I tried to order a Chicken Bacon Ranch (which was on their menu in english, instead of Pollos Panceta Ranch (idk what ranch is in spanish)) but they couldnt understand what I was saying, even when I tried to mimic the spanish accent saying all those words. So I settled for a Pollo Teriyaki which apparently they could understand.
- Okay so like several months ago me and hermana gentry went to the feria, which is like a street marke they have here every wednesday and saturday, and they have a million little tables and tents and people selling the most random things, from fruits to toys to plants to cups to bike parts to clothes to rings, to whatever thing you could want, and also several things you would never want (used underwear and raw cow tongue, for example). Anyway, we saw a dude there and he was playing the guitar and singing and I remember saying to Hna Gentry that he was the vibeyest dude ive ever seen and I wanted to be his friend. Then, last week we were looking for an address of a member id never met before, and we were asking around and his neighbors told us that he was at the feria playing his guitar and i was like NO WAY so i looked him up on facebook and it was the vibey dude. So we didnt have time to go all the way to the feria, so we decided wed stop by another day. Then this week at sports night, we invited some other dude who hasnt come to church in a while, and not only did he come, but he brought a friend, WHO JUST HAPPENED TO BE VIBEY GUITAR FERIA DUDE! So that was fun. And now its safe to say me and Hugo are best of friends. He gave me his lil guitar tuning gadget thing to tune my ukulele so anyway Id say were pretty tight.
- We had a "lesson" with one of our friends the other day, but apparently when we said "hey would you have some time this week to walk around the park and talk to us about Jesus" he understood that as "hey would you buy some tickets for a museum tour for the museum that just happens to be in the park next to your house so that you can surprise us and instead of talking about Jesus we can talk about the ancient indigenous population of Uruguay and some white guy from Italy who discovered a lot about them?" so.... yeah, that was super awkward, but super fascinating. Luckily, the tour was only half an hour (it could have been an hour but when they asked us to go upstairs I not so subtly said no oops) and we enjoyed learning about old rocks and then invited our friend to come to general conference. He did not come. Gahahaha.
SHPIRITUAL SHPEEL:
General Conference was absolutely fantastic. Like I said earlier, we spent the whole week inviting members and friends and random people on the street to come to the conference. And we (aka the Lord) promised a whole lot of people that NO MATTER WHAT question you have, you can ask the Lord and it will be answered in General Conference. We made that promise with a WHOLE LOT of people this week. So I too was thinking this week about the questions I had and I wrote down three very specific questions I wanted answers to. With one of those questions, I felt like I got the answer in just about every session at least 3 times, and I was super grateful. By the end of the conference, I thought back and I realized I had only felt like I received an answer to that one question, not my other two. And I thought "well this is super awkward, I just spent a whole week telling people they were gonna get answers and here I am without answers to my own". But then I was looking back at my notes after and I realized that the answer to my second question was there too, I just had not pieced it together until right then. As I read, several of my notes stuck out to me that were definite answers to my very specific question. But here I was with my third question, still not answered. And so kinda just deciding maybe it wasnt the time for me to get an answer to that question, I moved on. Although I kept thinking about it a lot. Then, this morning, for my personal study, I wanted to listen to a few of the talks in english, because while I feel like I can understand spanish pretty well, a lot of the apostles *cough cough* Elder Holland* use big words, so I rewatched 5 or 6 talks again in English. And in just about every one of those talks, was the answer to my third question.
And
it made me think. How often are you recognizing the promptings of the
spirit? The firm ones, the loud ones, the obvious ones, the still and
small ones? His answers to your questions? His comfort in times of
trials? Because He is always feeding you with spiritual nourishment and
answers and comfort and guidance, but how often do you recognize it?
Sure, you'll recognize the big grand revelations and the yellings of the
spirit, when the Lord is quite literally waving His hands saying
"HEYYY!! IM HERE! PLEASE LISTEN!!"
But are you
recognizing the times when it's a little less obvious? When you have to
wait till after to realize that His voice was speaking to you all along?
When you have to sort through the details of your life, maybe do a
little remembering of the miracles, a little studying of His word, or a
little talking to Him to receive some extra revelation? Are you putting
in the effort to remember, to study, and to pray in order to recognize
those a little less than obvious whisperings?
And
THEN? Have you studied the language of the spirit? In order to be able
to recognize its whisperings, and what He's trying to tell you? Because
me and my comp were listening to the same conference, in the same
language, and at the same time. And because she has studied the Spanish
language for 20 years now, practiced it, used it every day, and listened
to it, she was able to understand exactly what was going on, most
every, if not every single word. And while I'd consider myself able to
speak a decent amount of Spanish, I am so very far from fluent. I have
had only eight months speaking, listening, and studying the language, so
my ability to understand was far more limited than hers. It is just the
same with matters of the Spirit. When you work every single day to
listen to the Spirit, talk with God, and understand His will for YOU,
your ability to understand and heed His promptings will skyrocket. So
keep studying. If I hadn't been speaking and living in this country for
eight months, I would have been able to listen to the same conference
and not have been able to understand more than two words, let alone an
answer to any given question. So dont get discouraged on your
spiritual journey, if youre not quite where you want to be, but also
dont you quit. You got it! So keep studying, even if you have to start
this week.
God has miracles for you to see.
Lives for you to change, and miracles for you to MAKE, right alongside
with Him. If you can just recognize His voice and His miracles that He
has already given you. So thank God for the obvious ones. And remember,
study, and pray to find the less obvious ones.
GOD LOVES EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!! SO DO I!! HAVE A GREAT WEEK FILLED WITH MIRACLES!!
- hermana allen
