Everyone Knows Someone in Colorado: Week 12: 11/4/13

For Halloween we had to be in by 6, or after dinner, and the family who the hermanas live with signed up for dinner so we pretty much had a party! I missed dinner-in-a-pumpkin, but he made us Korean food (that's where he went on his mission) which was pretty awesome. They got us pumpkins to carve :) and being the focused, hardworking missionaries that we are we decided to carve something gospel related! All the pumpkins go together, do you know what it means? :) There is also a man in our neighborhood who has a little observatory which he invited everyone to come to see the stars and some cool galaxies so we ran over there after our pumpkin photo shoot!

So I have been thinking. (A dangerous pastime--I know) As a full-time missionary I am called to focus on missionary work all of the time and do it all day long. Basically, missionary work is my calling, it is my job, it is my schooling, it is my friends and my family, it is in my journal and my dreams and my planner. That is a pretty unique situation right? (Besides the fact that there are 80,000 full-time missionaries out, but really that is not so many compared to the population of the world, or even the Church) Except...visiting teaching and home teaching is missionary work. All other callings are part of supporting and strengthening our wards and communities which is...missionary work. Caring about our friends and families is sharing with them the things which are important to us. Letting them know the gospel allows them to know us better. Seeing such great blessings in our lives should make us feel ashamed to keep them all to ourselves. Acting at work and in school as a representative of Jesus Christ and covenant-keepers qualifies us for the Spirit and the opportunity to share our light. These experiences are not reserved for full-time missionaries, nor should they be. Everything we do can be part of the work of salvation of souls. Some things are more focused on bringing ourselves to salvation, some are focused on others, but it is sure that we cannot help someone else beyond our own conversion. This is the time to prepare to meet God. We do not get to heaven by walking up a tower built of our good works, with a sorry if you didn't do enough extraordinary things to make it. We are not brought to judgment to weigh how many wrongs we have done against how many righteous acts, with a sorry if the scales are not in your favor. We are to learn heaven while we are here. The commandments allow us to know more of the nature and attributes of God, and if we want to live as He does, we need to follow those things and become as He is. I would argue that conversion is not simply about developing faith in Christ. Conversion is about living up to the command to "be ye perfect".

Missionary work should NOT be about finding time to add another thing to your schedule. It SHOULD be expanding what you do, being a little more Christlike and a little more in tune with the Spirit and living a life in the gospel. At our stake conference this weekend Elder Gay shared a wonderful analogy. Using the statistic that 90% of mistakes in mountain climbing are made on the way down we realize that reaching the summit was never the goal. It is making it home that interests us most. In this life there are many summits: baptism, the temple, marriage, parenthood, retirement. Our goal however is to return to live with our Father in Heaven. Can we not keep this focus in mind at all times?

We had a great stake conference and are just working to continue the work in the area we have been called to serve :) The time just keeps passing and that is crazy. If two transfers makes 3 months, then that is one-sixth of my mission right there! Past already! Well, almost, transfers are next week again so we find out Saturday what will be happening. There aren't any sisters coming in this time (except maybe a visa waiter or two) which is super crazy, but we have over 30 new missionaries coming in the next transfer! Anywho, with no sisters it is possible things won't be changed too much, but who knows what will happen!

love, Sister Emily DeFord