Called to Serve: Week 39: HALFWAY!

Wow, it is crazy to think that I have been out here for 9 months already! Time flies when you're having fun and serving the Lord :)

It has been a great week; lots of laughs and lots of great spiritual experiences. Elder Bednar came to talk to us on iPads because we will be receiving them sometime soon. I thought it was interesting about how little he actually talked about using the actual iPads. But, something that he did say that got me thinking was staying "in the light" with our technology, and I thought of the analogy of going into a dark room ... if you go right in, you won't be able to see. It will be uncomfortable and you will want out (at least that is how I am). That is how sin is. If you jump right into the darkest and scariest sin, you will want to get out of there and Satan knows that. So, he works on you little by little, slowly dimming the light and before you know it, you're used to that dark room, when you could have just turned on the light and had a bright and happy room. We have a choice to stay in the light. We have technology these days that can be used for SO MUCH GOOD! We have family history and Facebook to keep up with friends across the world. We have so much good, and just as much bad. I can't remember where I studied this, but it talked about how doing nothing is almost as bad as actually doing bad things. Wasting our time on endless hours of computer games, and such, is not what we are supposed to be doing. We should be expanding our minds and talents. I thought that was really neat, and it makes me want to work harder to use all of my time as wisely as possible.

Funny story for the week ... I almost baptized myself (haha). We had an 8 year old baptism in the ward on Saturday, and Sister Peterson and I went three hours early to fill the font because it takes forever! (haha) But, we didn't check it for a while and came back and it was almost full, and the water was very hot. So, we decided we had enough time to drain just a little and add more cold water. So, I unplugged the drain for like 5 minutes, and we left and came back to check, and literally like 3 feet of water had disappeared!!!! So, I ran in to plug the drain again and totally slipped down the stairs and caught myself. Luckily, our new Bishop and family got to see me fall (haha). Just perfect ... Luckily I didn't actually go into the water, so all is well. We had to hurry to and fill the font back up in time for the baptism, and made a lot of water bucket runs from the bathroom sinks to the font and back to get extra water in faster. But, we did it :) Lesson learned for next time, I guess (haha).

We have had a really great week ... We have had so many eating appointments that we basically never need to buy food for our apartment, so that is awesome! We got the elders' apartment cleaned up to liveable standards now, so that is great. In case I forgot to say, we moved into the old elders' apartment because they got transferred out and it was in the middle of town, close to everything :)

I hope that all of you had a great week! Also, I wanted to bear testimony how important family history work is, and how much of a difference it can be to someone who doesn't know about the church. We have so many resources and it is way cool; it is a great way to do missionary work at home, if you need ideas ;) Well, I hope you all have a great week!

Liebe Große!

Sister Brown