Hello world!

So did you hear about the comet that fell from the sky!!??   haha I'm sure you did, but we almost didn't hear about it.  Sister R. and I passed by the house of one couple in the ward who were leaving to teach a lesson with us and they told us about it.  haha  If it hadn´t been for them, we´d still be clueless.  But it's funny to think sometimes how cut off we are.  That's also the really cool thing sometimes how our focus is the Gospel and our total purpose here.

This week was really good and we were blessed to encounter some really special families in our area. One thing that I love seeing is sometimes you encounter people for reasons different than you think. We made a contact with two people one day on the same road.  One a woman and the other a man, whose mom recently passed away. We marked a lesson with him and we had marked with a sister in the ward to teach with us.  But when she couldn't make it, we were trying to think of someone who could go there with us, when we thought of the woman who lives close to him.  It was really neat to see how the Spirit leads us to people and can give us the ideas we need to do this work.  Because it was the woman we met through this experience, who ended up being the one to progress and have interest.

We had one really neat lesson actually with this same woman.  Her friend is a member who has been inactive in the church for more then 10 years.  It was really neat to talk to her as she explained it was never an issue of testimony, but of personality, and (in her words) she has a strong personality so for little reasons she stopped going, and then it was never easy to return.  But this woman bore her testimony how the gospel makes such a difference in your life and how there´s nothing else like it. How true that is.  As the Gospel of Christ, this is what we need in our life.  God, as our Heavenly Father loves us.  And because of this has provided us with everything that we need, we have the knowledge and the map to get through this life and have more happiness and blessings.  We can see the blessings that come through the Gospel when we practice faith and obedience.

One other thing I heard this week that I really liked, someone said in church, that people go to Christ for three motives:  because of love, because of pain, or because of need.  I really liked that, because it's normally true.  We have free agency in this life to chose what we will do, etc.  We have to chose to follow Christ, but the motive for people is different.  When we chose to follow Christ because of our love and faith for him, this is where our true conversion starts.  Every person has to have true conversion to endure to the end.  One thing that I'm starting to understand a tiny little bit better is what our mission president talked about in his last letter about the natural man (well really he talked about the natural elder & natural sister :) ). and how often times we think of the natural man as what leads us to sin.  But really it's when we give in to those little desires of the flesh or when we don't live up to the person we should be.  For example, in Joseph Smith History he talks of having repented for giving in to the youthful desires, etc.  This was a standard below someone having been called of God. And so, us too, can give in to the natural man when we choose to do things or behave in ways that are not pleasing for our Heavenly Father.  He knows our potential and who we can become.  But we can only become our true potential through the atonement and practicing the Gospel in our lives.

Love you all, and hope you have a great week!