Nina furaha sana sana sana! Elder Zocca has been teaching me Swahili this week whenever we have a few free minutes and that's just my favorite (hence my subject line). I love language so much. I think about Chase a lot when I get so excited about language and its cultural implications (also because Swahili is very different from French but it's similar to Arabic). I can bear my testimony in Swahili and say who I am and what my purpose is, along with making some VERY basic conversation. Turns out that, yes, "Jambo" means "Hi", but "Jamba" means "Fart"....so let's think about that in terms of Jamba Juice. I've been laughing about it for days. So that's a fun side project.
I've had a bit of an epiphany since being here concerning the differences between love and trust. Everyone in this world deserves my love, that is part of striving to be like Christ. No one has to "earn" my love. However, it is not commanded that I trust others with myself. I trust God wholeheartedly and beyond that, I choose whom to trust based off righteous judgement. Makes me think of 2 Nephi 4:34 (and the JST of Matt 7:1). Fouts and I talked about this a lot and realized that if I have the spirit with me, the Lord will aid me in guiding me away from people who would do me harm--this is not because he does not love them, or because he loves me more than them, it is because he does not trust them with me. Therefore, it follows that it would not make sense for me to trust just anyone with myself. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but it's been a big deal to me. I think it is liberating to think of loving everyone as different from trusting everyone. It frees me to love unconditionally the way the Savior does.
Epiphany number two is shorter.
We had a man come in and ask our district how the MTC could be less
stressful without losing its effectiveness and we talked to him for a
while about which things stress us out most and honestly it was really
helpful just talking about it and realizing that we really have mostly
the same concerns (no alone time, language difficulty, feeling less
spiritual than everyone else, the food gives you diarrhea, etc.) and
then when he was leaving he said something that I just loved-- "Putting
unrealistic expectations on yourself is a form of arrogance" - Cecil
Clark. I don't think he was trying to blow minds but if he was, he
succeeded. And I'm pretty sure I've even heard similar things before,
but it's never seemed as applicable as it does now. It's like every
Taylor Swift song, you don't really love it until it applies to your
life and then suddenly it's your favorite song and you realize that
Taylor Swift is the smartest human ever. :)
I've
talked a little bit about my teachers and how much I love them (they're
really the best), but I also wanted to tell y'all about Sister Waldron.
She isn't actually my teacher, but she helps out in our class a lot.
She reminds me so much of my sisters, it is such a tender mercy. She is
a living angel in my life.
I know that one
reason people don't come on missions is because they tell themselves "a
mission just isn't for me". I'm trying to think of how to say this the
way I want it to come out...I believe that missions are truly not right
for some people. If you talk to your bishop and he says, yeah, you
should probably stay home, then you should probably do that. However, I
also think that every single person in this world has reason to think
"a mission just isn't for me." Everything about this is against the
natural man, having those thoughts just makes you a person. Being here
requires you to trust the Lord more than yourself, and that's so much of
what makes it amazing. A mission isn't for anyone--without the Lord.
With Him by your side, all things are possible and being on a mission is
such an incredible blessing. I am so happy, it's crazy.
Last Tuesday, Marcus B Nash of the seventy gave the devotional and a motif of his talk was "Don't hold anything back from the Lord." I've thought about that a lot. I think there is divinity in being called somewhere far from where I live. I know I will face rejection every day, but I need not fear because I am doing the Lord's work--and because I'll most likely never see those people again! It's awesome! I have no reason to hold anything back. I know that everyone on Earth now chose God's plan, once. I will give everything I have to give them the opportunity to choose it again.
To anyone reading this of a
different faith: If you have any desire at all to know more about
God's loving plan for you, contact the missionaries. In Carlsbad, their number is 760-613-9148. My focus is on the people in
Montréal, but there are missionaries near you who would love nothing
more than to teach you what we know. This gospel makes me happy every
day, and God wants so much for you to have that same happiness.
I
am so so so happy, and I love you all so much! Please keep writing me,
and if you've been thinking about writing me but haven't yet, do it
now! dearelder.com
The church is true, God loves us more than we can comprehend. Souvenez-vous qui vous êtes.
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Soeur Lonas
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