Dear
Mom and everyone else,
Sorry for not writing
last week, I was really sick on our preparation day and couldn't get out of the
apartment. No worries though, I'm fine now. I can't even remember what has
happened since the last time I wrote, so I'll just tell y'all about how everything
is going here in Woodland.
There are a lot of
wonderful people here and my heart is overflowing with a desire to serve them
and help them. There are many struggles with this area and the things that
people are going through, but I can't help but see the opportunity for progress
and growth! On a side note, I wonder if that's how Heavenly Father sees us? You
know what they say, the greater the adversity, the greater the triumph. It
wouldn't mean much to climb Mount Everest if it were just a puny little stump
on the ground.
One of the people we
are teaching is going through some intensely stressful situations in her life
that make it hard for her to think about the Gospel when in reality she doesn't
even want to think at all. It's heartbreaking because the Gospel of Jesus
Christ is literally the thing that she needs the most and would help her get
through this hard time, but people have a way of putting on blinders in their
hard times that makes them focus only on the negative and what they can see right
in front of them. Nothing that a little good old-fashioned faith (you know,
believing in things you can't see) couldn't help, but it has to be a choice
that the person makes and I can't give this woman my faith. She has to develop
it on her own, and it's so hard to have the answer and want to do so much but
have to patiently wait as she finds out for herself. That's okay though,
because I know that things will work out. <----- I think that
statement is probably one of the things I have truly come to believe and know
throughout various experiences I've had in my life. As dark and dreary as some
days seem, things will eventually work out. Yesterday I was able to share with
this woman something I have realized as I've reflected on hard times I passed
through in my life: the one thing every one of them has in common is that they
eventually ended are are over. In the past. Finished. And even though in the
moment I may have thought it would never end, it did. And then things got
better, and then worse, and then better again, and then worse, etc, and the
roller-coaster we call "experience" goes on. The Book of Mormon
prophet Lehi had a better way of explaining that (see 2 Nephi 2 for more
details).
I just had a brilliant
idea. Someone should design a roller coaster and name it
"Opposition." Do I get royalties for coming up with a great name?
On that distracted
train of thought (or should I say roller-coaster of thought?) I don't remember
what else I was going to mention. Well, have a happy week!
Hermana Burton
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