Hello Everyone!! :)
Today was another excellent week in the mission field! :) I LOVE it!! :) Serving a mission is the best blessing ever! :) It's sO amazing ALL of the things you learn and have the opportunity and privilege to do and become! :) What a blessing! A mission is truly a miracle! :) I wish EVERYONE could serve a mission! :) We all can in the way the Lord needs us to! :) Sometimes that's a single full-time missionary, sometimes it's a senior couple mission, sometimes it's being a member missionary to the fullest! :) and I LOVE how Elder Hales says it, "The
being a parent and raising your children in righteousness is DEFINITELY being a missionary!! :) Your children become your "investigators" and you become the teachers and we all learn and grow in the process to accomplish the Lord's work and glory (Moses 1:39) "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man!" :) We are all striving to live that we may be blessed with eternal life and help others reach and achieve the same ultimate goal and receive that greatest gift of all!! (D&C 14:7) :) The gospel and missionary work are SO exciting!! :) I feel like I say that to Sister Ewell almost every day!! :) I love the gospel!! It is so fun and exciting!! and you can never stop learning about it and can always dig deeper and deeper and apply more and more and become better and better!! :) WOW! Heavenly Father loves us sO much He has given us His PERFECT plan out of PERFECT love so WE can become PERFECT! :) And it is ALL motivated by and possible because of LOVE (The Atonement of Christ) and the purpose of His plan is for us to have JOY! (2 Nephi 2:25) HOW. AMAZING!! :) I am SOOO grateful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ!! :) .. of Latter-day Saints!! :) It IS the TRUE Church!! :) It has the FULLNESS Of Christ's teachings and is the only and TRUE way to be happy, have peace and joy in this life and in the life to come. Christ IS the WAY and by following Him and living His teachings we will FOLLOW the way!! :) (2 Nephi 31:21) What an amazing gospel full of tender mercies, peace, comfort, guidance, direction, and PURPOSE!! :) I love it!! :) What a blessing!! :)
So this week we were blessed to have a great church tour with one of our amazing investigators!! :) (he is one of my favorites! I always say, "He's happy like a Mormon!!" :) He is always smiling and happy and lives a good life! He even keeps the Word of Wisdom on his own!! :) Even tea and coffee!! (usually people will get hung up on those saying they 'aren't bad for you' or 'i thought green tea was good for you?" etc. but he doesn't have any of those issues or concerns! :) the Lord has DEFINITELY been preparing Him for this moment to receive HIS restored gospel so He can bless Him with all the blessings of heaven and more! :) What a kind and loving Heavenly Father! :) Also, speaking of the Word of Wisdom.. a cool analogy came to me from the Spirit (that y'all have probably heard before but it's still good! :) ha ) about why it's important to obey the Word of Wisdom and why it makes sense. :) So if you think about if someone gave you a SUPER nice and expensive, beautifulcar that you LOVE and would never want ANYTHING bad to happen to it. And they said you can have it and gave you a manual of how to take optimum care of it so it would always be in great condition and the least amount of bad would happen to it.. wouldn't you follow it?? What if it was hard or took some work?? Would it be worth it to have it all your life and always have it be in great condition and also show respect for the person who gave it to you?? I would think so! :) .. Well this is kind of like us and our bodies.. We have been given our bodies as an INCREDIBLE gift from our loving Heavenly Father. And through one of his called and chosen prophets, Joseph Smith, He has revealed to us "the manual" (aka "The Word of Wisdom") of how to take the best and optimum care of ourselves and bodies. He has given us this great 'law of health' (found in.. https://www.lds.org/bc/content/ldsorg/content/english/manual/missionary/pdf/36953_the-word-of-wisdom-eng.pdf?lang=eng )
so we can have the best and healthiest bodies possible! :) If ANYONE knows how to take care of the "beautiful car" you were given it would be the maker of it! :) And so it is with our loving Heavenly Father! :) He created our bodies and knows what is good and BEST for our bodies and what is bad for us and our bodies -despite what the world may think (especially including the Word of Wisdom.) The world has been wrong far too many times with things! But the Lord has NEVER and will NEVER lead us astray! :) With ANY commandment He gives us. :) I testify that this is true! :) Heavenly Father truly gives us commandments so we can be happy and happier! :) I've seen how keeping His commandments has blessed my life SO much and how when I'm not keeping them as much as a should I am not happy and not very blessed. I promise that living His commandments (including the Word of Wisdom) is worth every 'sacrifice' we might have to make! :) Changing for the better is a process, but through the Savior Jesus Christ, it is a completely POSSIBLE and WORTH IT process! :) I testify that that is true! :) I've seen it in my own life and it works! :)
Another great experience we were blessed with this week is having one of our investigators, Lena (16), come to the young women activity! :) She had a lot of fun and became good friends with one of the girls in our ward! :) It was so fun and great to see! :) The Church is TRUE! :) Heavenly Father is SO mindful of each one of us as His children and I am TRULY SO grateful for that!! :)
Speaking of that, last night was a miracle! :) So we had heard that Pres. Uchtdorf was giving a CES Fireside Sunday night and we were way excited! So we started inviting our investigators and others to come to it! :) We had an investigator who accepted and our amazing recent convert agreed to pick her up to give her a ride to it! :) So everything was working out really well and we were able to have some great people htat wanted to go and so we were on our way at about 6:50pm (since it started at 7pm) and found out that it was NOT going to be broadcasted at the church! :S So Sister Ewell and I were scrambling to come up with all these alternate ideas and of course said a lot of prayers! :) And eventually we were able to find an amazing Sister in our ward that said we could come and watch it online at her house! :) So by the time we got there it was about 7:30pm and the broadcast wouldn't let us go back to the beginning so we decided to wait until it was over and start it from the beginning. :) We had a prayer and shared a spiritual thought and when we went back online to start it from the beginning .. it DIDN'T WORK! We kept praying inside and actually invited our Investigator to pray (she claims she is an Atheist but has been praying more :) :) ) for us to be able to watch it! :) And so she DID! :) And guess what?! Her prayer was answered!! :) Not in the way that any of us really expected it to be but it was answered! :) Because the broadcast that night by Pres. Uchtdorf wasn't working , the member ended up coming across one from the past by him called, "The Reflection in the Water" from 2009. And so we decided to watch that one instead! :) And let me tell you.. the Lord TRULY does work in mysterious ways! :) Because EVERYTHING he addressed in that past CES Fireside talk was EXACTLY what EACH person in that room (including Sister Ewell and I) needed to hear!! :) People were crying and it was SO amazing!! :) I'm still in awe! I LOVE Heavenly Father! :) He is SO amazing!! :) And when one door seems to be closed to us, He will ALWAYS open another one.. a better one! :) We just have to CHOOSE to trust in Him and be willing to be led to and walk through the door He is opening for us! :) What a great lesson learned! :) I love the Lord and His great and infinite love and mercy He has for each one of us!! :) Despite our imperfections! :) Through Christ and His Atonement we can be truly and fully healed and helped; purified and peaceful; sanctified and saved! :) What a blessing. I love it! :) And I KNOW that these things are true! :)
Well I hope each of you have an INCREDIBLE and LOVING day and week!! :) Remember to always be looking for ways to share the gospel - whether BIG or small! :) Each effort is important and significant even to our loving Heavenly Father who truly loves us (each one of you!) SOOO much!! :) I promise that this is true! :) "I know it, I live it, I love it!" :)
Love, Sister Carlini :)
ps. QofW: 'We always refer to testimonies as either having them or not... "We have them! or they're Gone!" But really a testimony should be compared to a gas tank. There are different levels in which our testimonies may be at. They could be at 1/4 tank full, 1/2 tank, 3/4, or full! We have testimonies based on experience (1/4 tank) , study (1/2 tank), and revelation (3/4 tank)...' :) -Brad Wilcox (from his talk, "Filling our Testimony Tanks" :) I LOVE this talk on CD!! :)
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