"Love"

Kumusta Family and Friends!!

So this week was...well this week....haha lets just say that everything fell apart it seems even my body!! Everyone gets sick at the end of their mission because your body is just so tired I think and it just can't go anymore! So I may or may not have had a couple of sick days and other things fell apart around me...like Joy was sick too so we didn't have a baptism! Sayang! But we'll have it this upcoming week. And we may have lost almost all our teaching pool, one who is really progressing got a job and we haven't seen her since...curse trabaho!! Then one doesn't want to be baptized till the next year because that's when her life will calm down...uhh...no. And nobody came to church and all the members can't work with us or either cancelled on us for certain things. And being the back up plan to speak in sacrament meeting. Weekly planning just went down the drain.

So that's what a missionary's life feels like when everything is falling apart but good things still happen. You just have to look for the good and make bad things better. Even though my life feels like it's falling apart right now, I just had to take a step back and see what the Lord wants me to learn right now. I still don't really know why and maybe I won't but part of the answer to me came in a blessing from my awesome zone leaders and my talk that I felt inspired to give at church. During my blessing, Elder Wise said I would be able to endure (the rest of my mission), but fulfilling my calling to love. I realized that maybe I hadn't been loving as much as I should. I remember one time in Santa Maria when I was struggling as well, what Heavenly Father had sent me here to do. To love. To serve. And to teach. But most above all to simply love. It was just a beautiful reminder that pure Christ-like love will change the world and it most certainly has changed me. Through my circumstances, my areas, the members, the people and my companions. I know that I was sent to love. 

From my talk I read Pres. Monson's talk last conference..."Dale Carnegie, a well-known American author and lecturer, believed that each person has within himself or herself the “power to increase the sum total of [the] world’s happiness … by giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged.” Said he, “Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime."

"Love is the very essence of the gospel, and Jesus Christ is our Exemplar."-Pres. Thomas S. Monson.

I know that's what we are doing everyday, no matter if our life or world is falling apart, look at what Heavenly Father really wants you to do. He wants us to simply love, serve and teach others to become like His Son and return back to Him. And that's why I'm here :)

Mahal ko kayo!! I love you all!!

Love, Sister Burnham