The Vision

Hello my dear ones,

We have had a blessed and wonderful week here in Bordeaux. Miracles occur and prayers are answered constantly around us, to my convincing more and more that God lives and He loves me. We can see these things every day if we will tune ourselves with our spiritual senses.

Last week we had our second disctrict meeting of the transfer. The 'super trainers' came and did a training to help us prepare for 'E-DAY' the 'E' standing for 'Endear.' Ever since President Roney got here, we have been changing the focus of the mission to really just love people more. We studied the story of Ammon from the Book of Mormon, and his interactions with King Lamoni, and just as he 'endeared' the king, we are doing the same thing with the members, serving and loving them. Yesterday was the big day where we all as an entire mission were to go out and love the ward with every possible effort we could make, and you could just feel how different it was. One of the things we did was something we like to call 'Post-lude!' where you find out what hymn will be sung last during Sacrament meeting and put a nice post-it note on that page for the person to find. It was so fun to see everyone find their little notes! We felt so sneaky! At church I felt like everyone was just an extention of my family, and I am just so happy and excited to continue to get to know the members here.

This week I did an exchange with the Soeurs in Lormont, which is just outside of Bordeaux, and I learned so much from Sr. Taylor, my companion for the day. We lived so many miracles together! At the end of the day we went and ate at a members home, and we discussed many delightful things together over a lovely meal of tomatoes, cheese, bread, couscous and chicken. Somewhere in our discussion, we discussed the great writers J.R.R Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, two incredibly enlightened men who loved Jesus Christ. One of the ideas I loved that Sister Fortina brought up was 'Il y a du bon dans ce monde, et on doit se battre pour ca' which means, 'there is good in this world, and we need to fight for it.' That is our calling. We live in a world of a lot of corruption and confusion, but as disciples of Christ, when we have His light with us, we will continue to shine brighter and brighter against this backdrop of filth. As President Monson said in his recent conference address, 'May we continue to oppose evil wherever it is found.'

Sister Kohler and I have spent a lot of time this transfer talking about the word 'Vision' and how important it is to have one. There is another conference talk about it that I read this morning http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/04/having-the-vision-to-do?lang=eng that I find quite incredible.

Another great talk is one called 'the forth missionary' Icant remember who wrote it, but a lot of my thoughts of late come from there.

I have learned that the only way to true happiness is by leaving behind all of our visions of what we think is best, and fully submitting our view and our desires and our everything to the Lord. He can't help what He doesn't have, and our talents, time, energy, and all of those sorts of things are things He gave us in the first place. The only thing we can really give Him is our will, and that is a little more complicated. I love the Lord, I want to serve Him my whole live. I love my family, and I want to serve you my whole life. I am blessed beyond measure, and beyond all things that I could possibly deserve.

I love you. Have a super week!

Sarah