Sacrifice is not giving something up, it is giving your best

Love the analogy about God and prayer, believe it or not I use the same analogy with obedience. I say "Me gusta pensar en Dios sentado en su trono esperando por nostros a guardar sus mandamientos y el tiene muchas regalos alrededor de Él y cuando guardamos los mandamientos recibimos los regalos que Dios quiere que tengamos"

 

Funny story about Elders. The Elders out here are way too funny. We have Elder S de Wyoming, Elder B de Italia, Elder C de California y Elder R de Mexico. Elder R is so funny.  The other day we were all together and he asked me how many scarves I had because apparently I am always wearing a different one. Not so. But all the Elders were teasing him and asking why he was paying so much attention to the "Hermana". But funnier yet, Elder B asked me for my Lego tag that I had on my suitcase and I was like sure go for it man. So he changed all the information to his own, EXCEPT for my phone number hahha. Way too funny, think he was embarassed when I saw it. Made me laugh though.

The most amazing thing happened on Saturday. I got this call from the Assistants the the President and they told me that L. AND S. WERE GETTING BAPTIZED IN MY LAST SECTOR!! WHATTT. I was way too excited. They told me I had permission to leave and attend the baptism. But The Elfa and I had this dope plan for Saturday to get people to the church. We had made little bags of candy and planned this lesson about giving our body and spirit the nutrition it needs to move forward. The only way to get that is from the church. I looked at the calendar and in my mind I thought, maybe none of these people will be here. The citas fall all the time. But I wasn't sure. SO we prayed to see if we could really spend all Saturday at a baptism and after the prayer, I read in Alma 53. I have no idea what it says in English so you will have to read your English scriptures, but anyway, basically I knew I needed to stay in my sector. I was dying.... I wanted to go so bad but yeah we stayed. And boy were we blessed. We had 9 lessons in one day. The average here is like 2. When I was working in Maipu I had an average of about 4 or 5 daily. But 9 is unheard of.

 

I remember a quote from a dear friend out here named Hermana S, the quote goes, "Sacrifice is not giving something up, it is giving your best" That is so true, if we are measuring our success by what we are giving up as a "sacrifice" that is not enough. If we think that wow we are so special because we gave up playing a sport on Sunday to go to church or gave up drinking coffee to obey the Word of Wisdom yeah that is not enough. If you did those things out of the idea that it was a sacrifice but aren't doing anyting while you are in church, if you aren't teaching others the things you have learned from keeping the Word of Wisdom you aren't giving your best. If I had thought, wow I am here in my sector when I could have been in the baptism "what a sacrifice" and I didn't get my head in the game, that wasn't a sacrifice. I gave up something and then worked my butt off with my comp to do the will of the Lord. That is what we all should be doing in these final days. Move on from what has happened in the past and get moving.

 

Love you all so much and think of you often!

Hermana Farner