I CAN'T WAIT TO GO TEACH!

Hey Mom and Dad and everyone else!

Another sad Sunday as the last district in our zone left. Elder N and Elder I and their district left. Me and my companion went and had a sleepover at Herman G and Hermana L's casa. It was super, super fun. I loved it. They are both heading back to the states.

 

Tell Sister Hardy congrats about her new calling. I know she will be phenomenal. Tell her to teach the kids to liken the scriptures to their life! It is really essential in the mission field. So many people don't know how to make the stories apply to their lives and then to the lives of the investigators. It is so special when you can get that to happen though. That’s what me and my companion have been trying to do. We wanted to make it so our fake investigator could really apply the Book of Mormon of Mormon to their lives because if there is no Book of Mormon there is no iglesia.

Dad if you can, get the missionaries to find AP and teach him Alma 32. I was pretending to be him as an investigator and I just got this feeling that he really needed to hear about faith. So please be my hands in Washington and find him!

On one of my days in the special book I got a really, really helpful scripture, each day they always bring me up, but Grandma Farner, thank you for putting in 2 Nephi 25:26. It really helped me that day and made me miss you! Love you loads!

Sunday we had some bomb lessons about the Atonement and Prayer. Tad R. Callister's book about the Atonement is one that I really, really want to read. It made me realize how all-encompassing the Atonement is. I loved it. Then Elder S gave a devotional on prayer and my testimony was just that much more strengthened on the topic of prayer.

I was able to go to the temple today too and sit in the celestial room and just think about stuff. I have been crying a lot. The mission is hard. But I realized that there is no way this couldn´t be true because even though I am super frustrated and let down and sometimes even mad that I can´t seem to measure up, at my core, I am still happy. Just purely simply joyful at my core. All these things that are hard for me on the outside don´t even matter because deep down I am smiling and I know that all my trials are making me into the person that I am supposed to be and that my Heavenly Father wants me to be.

I have thought a ton about how important a change of heart is in life. I think that is why in the Book of Mormon it talks so much about getting your heart softened. It is like clay, when your heart is soft, it can change and you can make it into something better. A softening of the heart is the precursor to a change of heart ALWAYS. I mean just look at Alma the Younger. He is one of those that I want to meet in the afterlife. I want to sit and just stare at him and ask him how he did it. I LOVE Alma 36. Especialmente versiculo 24. The beginning just gets me every time.

However, I learned mostly this week that if you have a change of heart once, it doesn´t mean that it is never going to happen again, in fact it should be constantly changing for the better. That is something that I want desperately in my life. I don't want to go home as the same person.  I personally need to change my heart and change myself if I ever hope to be an effective tool in the hand of the Lord like the sons of Mosiah were (Alma 17). I just have been blown away at how stubborn I am. I pray daily to have the ability to soften my heart. I don't want to waste this time out in the field.

I really, really don't ever want to come home. If I could stay with the people of Chile for 14 years, I would. If that is what God called me to do, I would gladly do it. There is no greater work, there is no greater call than to be a missionary in these the last days. The more I hear it from my maestros, los apostoles, el profeta, los lideres tambien the more I believe it and know it to be true. I love it out here.

For Nairne! My pal Elder B, he totally wears PF Flyers.

We had a special Christmas Nativity dancing program Mexican style. It was so great I loved it. We were all yelling and screaming because they were doing all these cultural dances. Elder C kept leaning over and asking me what was going on. He was so lost. But it was soooooo good! All the girls were wearing these super cool Spanish dresses. I loved it. I needed to yell some, people here are way too quiet.

I am beginning to love Spanish a lot more. But I am so white. When we leave the CCM people just STARE at me. It’s like I am the plague. It will be an adjustment in the field that is for sure. I CAN¨T WAIT TO GO TEACH!

 

Love and miss you all!

Love,

Hermana Farner