When Faith Endures..

"I will not doubt, I will not fear;

God's love and strength are always near.

His promised gift helps me to find

an inner strength and peace of mind. 

I give the Father willingly

My trust, my prayers, humility,

His Spirit guides; his love assures

that fear departs when faith endures"

We found two new investigators (or  "friends" as our Mission President calls them) this week or I guess you could say that Heavenly Father gave us two new friends. We had a member call us this week and tell us that he had someone interested in learning about the Gospel.   The next day we went over to have a lesson with her. To our excitement, there were actually two girls interested.  X and L and they are awesome! When we invited them to be baptized, they both said with confidence "PO! kur?" (Yes! when?) We set a date and they are super excited. They had both planned on coming to church on Sunday with the member family, but only the dad came and he told us that their car was not working and he had to ride his bike there. SO we'll make sure they are there next Sunday, but it was a huge blessing that we are able to teach them.  We have a lot of faith that they will continue to take lessons and be baptized.
Also, our investigator Za finally came to church! It has been a couple weeks since we started teaching her and this was her first time partaking of the sacrament. Luckily she has a member friend that grabbed her in the morning and walked with her to church. She left after church because she cant leave her mom at home for very long by herself, (she's in her 80's and cant move around by herself) but we were able to talk to her for a little bit after sacrament and she had had a great experience and loved it. Of course she did because Elder Charles (a member of the Quorum of the 70) spoke and it was amazing!  In his talk he had said that someone asked him when he was on his mission if he was having fun and he answered "No. Missions aren't just fun. But I'm having the most amazing experience of my life and I'm the happiest I've ever been" (now don't quote me on that because it wasn't exactly word for word, but it was to that sense).  I can testify also that this is the most amazing thing I've ever done and the best decision I've ever made, to serve a mission.
I love my mission even more with every day that passes. The more I learn and the closer that I get to my Heavenly Father, the happier I am.
This is God's work and I see his hand in every aspect of every day. I am thankful that I get to serve Him and that I have the privilege of knowing that I am a child of God and that He loves me. 

 

"Sweet Vera gave me flowers for my 20th Bday :)"

"Albania is cool"

"We did service for Motra Muriza and helped her clean her rugs. hahaha
She kept telling us we were doing it wrong...oops.  But she was grateful
that we were trying ;) "Shume Mire Motra, Shume mire""

"We got this pic from our service project in Shkoder...way back when :)"