Salut! This week was really interesting. A lot of times in life your placed with a lot of good decisions before you, and you don't know exactly which to choose. Or you're placed in positions where you're needed, but you're not always sure how to go about this responsibilty to best fulfill it. But what I've learned is that God expects us to do our part, to make our efforts, to make a plan, and then come to Him and present our plan. Then we act. And after we act, we'll find out why He had us go down a certain path or do a certain thing. Because the witness comes after the trial of our faith! I'll give you some examples. So the biggest one probably came with the fact that we wanted to reach the standards of excellence this week, particularly for the number of lessons we taught. Well, we had told God on Monday of that week that we were going for the standard this week, and we were going to work hard, but we would need His help in accomplishing it. We would need Him to soften the hearts of the people here, and to place the prepared people in our path. Our part would be being obedient, and opening our mouth with everyone. So we did that. We worked hard teaching and teaching all week, but come Sunday, we were still 4 lessons short. Well, we knew that He could help us since we came to Him with our plan. And so after church, we hit the pavement. Right off the bat, we met one prepared person after another. All 4 accepted to listen to us, and 2 even agreed to seeing us again this week. This isn't exactly normal here... And might I also mention that the people we talked to weren't by the sheer looks of them, who we would think of as being prepared. But turns out, they were those searching the most earnestly. We got a big lesson in learning that God knows who is prepared, we don't, that's why it's our job to talk to everyone. Well, we accomplished our goal for the week, and it was a huge testament to me that God provides a way. And once we commit to doing our part, He always does His. Another thing, we had planned at the beginning of the transfer to have a specific less-active that we wanted to focus on by the end of the 3rd week of the transfer (yesterday). Well, by the end of Saturday, we still didn't have one that we felt like should be the focus. We had made dozens of calls to less-actives, with no success in any being willing to see us. Well, Saturday night, we get an unexpected call from a less-active who asked if we could accompany her to church the next day and then even see her this week. We knew once again right away that this was God helping us accomplishing our goals. Since we had done our part, He did His. I've been joking with my comp this week that we've finally realized that we've actually been in a trio all along on our mission. You and your comp, and then God. He is the perfect companion too, let me tell ya. Haha. I'm really grateful for His help! Lastly, we did 2 exchanges this past week with our sisters. The night before each of their exchanges, my comp and I still didn't know who should go with who. We had been praying about it, but we didn't feel a strong pull either way. We decided it was God telling us either way would be fine. So, we picked and went with it. Well, on my first exchange, I quickly realized that it was so vital that she and I were together that day. We both are struggling with many of the same things, and we both really just needed someone to talk it out with. We were able to come up with plans together of how to make our weaknesses strengths. On the other exchange, I took a sister with me who speaks Spanish. We went to our ami's house to teach her, and little did we know, but their cousin is there, who speaks nothing but Spanish. She sat down and wanted in on the lesson. So the sister I was with was able to translate the whole lesson into Spanish, and the cousin loved it and wants to learn more! It was really cool to me that God let us make the decision, and then it was after we took the leap of faith and went with it, that we saw why it had to be the way it was. So that's all for now! I hope you all have a wonderful week. Love always,Soeur Shields
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November 2015
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