Mission Week #7

"It feels like Christmas all the time in the mission. That is because Jesus Christ is our Savior every day--not just in the Christmas season. I wish you all a Merry Christmas! I could say something cheesy like "remember the reason for the season," but I hate rhyming. I think you'll get the message otherwise. Thanks for all your love and support!"

The Miracle of the Lost Cell Phone

My companion and I lost our missionary cell phone. This is a huge deal because we are unable to contact anyone without it--like most cell phones, I'm sure. Luckily we were at a conference, so we didn't need it for anything, but we knew that we couldn't get right back to work when we were finished because we had no way to communicate other than randomly stopping by places (which isn't always successful). Although it seems silly, we prayed that we would find this phone. Then we got to work by tearing apart our apartment and car. We looked at the church which was the only place we had gone that day. After hours, it was nowhere to be found. It was the end of the day, and we were just going to give up, and ask the office for a new cell phone and get in trouble for losing our old one. I half-heartedly said, "maybe we threw it in the garbage." Then it wouldn't leave our minds because that was the one place we hadn't checked. The thing is, we had already thrown our garbage in a dumpster. But we were desperate, so we drove to the dumpster, ready to get our hands dirty, and lo, and behold--our cell phone was just sitting on top of the snow on the ground away from the path we had taken.

IT WAS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!!!!

This seems like a typical experience, but it really was an answered prayer. God cares about the seemingly insignificant things in our lives. He often requires us to exercise our faith by going to work. It wasn't until we were ready to dig through trash that our cell phone appeared. This experience might not have mattered in the grand scheme of the universe, but it taught me a lot about how God works in our lives. We go through hard times--not so that God can sit back and watch us suffer--but so that we can realize how he guides our paths. I know God is very involved in the details of our lives. It is only when we are stretched to the limit that God can help us grow and become more like Him.

Mission Week #5

Being a missionary is so hard sometimes. For example, yesterday was fast Sunday, and one family scheduled us for lunch and another for dinner. However, the lunch appointment was changed to an hour later and the dinner appointment was changed to an hour earlier. And Sunday lunch is more like dinner anyway. This basically adds up to having to eat two delicious dinners and two delicious desserts within an hour and a half. I was so full, I wanted to cry. I don't know how I fit the second dinner in, but it was definitely a tender mercy. I have it pretty bad here in Canada sometimes.