Verdict is in

      Guten Tag! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas! And can you believe it is nearly 2013?! Wowza where does time go? Christmas here in Germany was fantastic! We weren't allowed to go and talk to people on the streets most of the week. Here in Germany they would take that very offensive with the Christmas season, and it would do more damage to the church than help. So, our week was spent in members homes! I cant wait to tell all about it! Monday, was Christmas Eve or as we call it here Heilige Abend! This is even a bigger deal than Christmas here in Germany. We left at 1 pm for a day spent with our Bishopric. (The entire bishopric is related.)  We started with a table full of different cake and cookies with hot cocoa of course. My companion looked at me so stoked and said, "This is Christmas, we even get to start with dessert!!" After they kept piling our plates full of sweets they announced they had a little surprise for us. They took us to their little towns old beautiful church that was built in the 1600's. It was incredible! Many people from the town piled into the wood benches with us and we all sang Christmas songs together. It was right out of a movie :) with hundreds of candles being the only light. This country is so rich with history and it is so fun to see it everywhere you go.

      After our amazing Christmas Performance, it was back to the house for more carols sung this time only by the Eckloff family and the missionaries! We then opened the presents they got for us. It was so much fun! However dinner was still to be had! Next was our Christmas feast! We didn't get home until 9:45pm. I couldn't have asked for a better Heilige Abend here in Germany!

      Tuesday brought Christmas! We got to sleep in an hour more than normal which honestly is the best gift you could give any missionary haha. You would think with me only having 7 months left that I would be use to this whole 6:30am bidness.....but this is just not the case. Then it was off to the church to make breakfast with the elders and senior sisters. Us sisters manned the kitchen with the elders to make a mean batch of breakfast burritos. That experience was hilarious in itself. Then after breakfast, it was more presents! People in our little branch were so kind to us :). But what would Christmas be without some Christmas Bingo?? haha the rest of the afternoon was spent playing bingo, phase ten, and many other fun games. We really do have a little family here with our elders and senior sisters. We are all extremely close and I was super grateful that although I couldn't be with my real family on Christmas this year, I did get to be with my Rostock family!

We saved the best for last though! SKYPE!!! Oh man, it was sooooo amazing to get to talk to the people who mean the very most to me! I didn't know what to expect.....was it going to be weird? Awkward? Would we run out of things to say? But, it was none of those! It just went right back to normal!! Time seemed to fly by way too fast for my liking though. I cant wait for Mothers Day when I get to skype again!

      The rest of the week was filled with many eating appointments, One of which was with an American couple. SO FUN! I really just don't think missionaries in the states know how lucky they are haha. It was so nice to just be comfortable with conversation, etiquette, and the food! I have never laughed so hard in an appointment than with the Dunn's. They are a young couple that are just here for a few months while he does a research project. She even gave us skittles at the end that she got sent to her from America.....yep thats sharing the love if I do say so myself!

      My week ended with a trip to Hamburg. President asked us to do an extra exchange this transfer. My MTC companion, Sister Bohne was in need of some help. Her companion went back to Rostock for the weekend, and I got to reunite with my very first companion :). My job was to help them patch up the problems in their program. I met with nearly every single one of their investigators during my time there. It was such a powerful weekend. They have some incredible investigators in Hamburg. It was amazing to see how fast connections were built to them. At the end I found out that there is a chance I might be sent to hamburg and that I was sent there to learn the program in case that happens. Wow, I would love to serve there. It really is SUCH a big difference from East Germany where I have spent my entire mission, to West Germany. Even though the wall has been down for years now, the effects are still very evident. It was also amazing to spend time with Sister Bohne. We went through so much together in the MTC and have really kept up an incredible friendship and support system with one another throughout our missions. It was interesting to go back to the person that I started this whole adventure with and to realize where I have grown and become different. I am still very much me, but just more refined in certain areas.
      Saturday topped off with Transfer calls. All the sisters where just buzzing around with their predictions. Everyone and their dog was just sure I was leaving Rostock. President as well as my zone leaders had also  told me I was leaving. So needless to say, I was also pretty sure I would be leaving. Well to my shock as well as everyone Else's, no changes were made really. I am staying in Rostock with Sister Moon!! I was soooo stoked! I LOVE this city and my companion is awesome! It was definitely a BIG surprise, but one that was more than welcome! Spiritual Thought: A quote by Holland is what I will leave: "Some of you may wonder: Is there any future for me? What does a new year or a new semester, a newmajor or a new romance, a new job or a new home hold for me? Will I be safe? Will life be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to stay in the past?To all such of every generation, I call out, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come” (Hebrews 9:11). Keep your eyes on your dreams, however distant and far away. Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness of trust and divine love that will transform your life today, tomorrow, and forever. That is a New Year’s resolution I ask you to keep."
      Well this sums up my week! Our investigators are doing well! We have missed many of them with the Holidays and we cant wait to get back to the swing of things! I hope you all have a fantastic New years! KEEP THE FAITH!! Love you all :)
Sister Linford

Kirche Jesu Christi
Sister Linford
Friedrich Str. 14
18057 Rostock
Germany

Jingle Bells!

     Hallo!! I hope you are all enjoying Christmas Eve! I wish I could be home with you all, but duty calls :).

This week has been a tad slower than normal with the Holiday buzz. Lots of our investigators are in other parts of Germany spending time with their families for Christmas. However it did not stop us from having an amazing week!

      This email is going to be shorter than normal, because I hardly have any time today, so I would like to just talk about the people that I am teaching right now.

    Mark- Wowza is all I have to say. People always say that you will know why you have been sent to the place you have when you meet a few people that you know you were meant to be there for. Mark has been added to this list and tops it. I swear we are the same person minus he is a guy. Mark is the investigator that asked to stop meeting with the elders and asked to meet with us instead because of the few lessons I taught to him in Sunday School. He has been investigating the church on and off for 6 years. He is 28 years old from Indonesia. He is one of the most genuine people you will ever meet. We meet with him nearly every day and every time I walk out of there just amazed and blown away. We have seen Mark more progress in the last few weeks working with us than any other point of his investigation. It has been such a testimony builder to watch him. We were able to bring up baptism last night and he said that he is ready :). He isnt quite ready to set a date, but he said it was important for him to get baptized before I go home. Mark is someone I came to Germany for and I am so thankful Heavenly Father has allowed me to work with him!

      Degol! I have spoken of Degol a couple of times before. He is a masters student here at the University in Rostock. It has been extremely hard to meet with Degol because he is taking...get ready for this.....50 credits!! He is crazy! He honestly gets up at 5 am and goes to bed at 1am every single day to be able to get everything done. Even though he honestly has no time to meet, he always seems to open up a tiny slot to meet with us. We had such an incredible lesson with him this last week. I cant wait to see him get baptized when he is done with this semester in February!

      Patrick and Charles- They are doing awesome! In fact, they were suppose to get baptized this Saturday. However, because they dont have enough money for the bus, they havent been able to make it to church. The only members that have cars in our branch live way too far away to be able to give them a ride. We have been trying to solve this problem for weeks, but it had proven to be more difficult than we ever thought it would be. Charles and Patrick are so ready to be baptized, but its important that they go to church at least 2 weeks before they can be baptized. Hopefully our ward can help us out a little more so we can find a solution to this problem and add some new members to this tiny branch!

      Bodo is doing fantastic! He is progressing at a fantastic rate. Bodo is another investigator that has been on and off for years with the missionaries. But we are happy to report that just as with Mark we have been honored to see more progress in the last few weeks than the entire 6 years before this. He now has the strongest testimony of the Book of Mormon and we couldnt be happier! He is still deciding when he wants to get baptized but he is so excited about it.

      William is also still doing well. He takes his time with things and there is nothing wrong with that. He is still working towards baptism and will make the plunge next transfer. He is trying so hard to read everyday and inderstand all the stories in the scriptures. He has even inviting us over for dinner the day after Christmas! We are excited!

      Anna is still doing incredible! She is loving spending time with her family who live near Berlin. We are happy for her that she is able to spend Christmas with her fambam, but we cant wait for her to come back to Rostock :). We text her often though!

      Mario- Also another investigator that has been around for years and years. I love that he has chosen the same path as Bodo and Mark and really started to make so much progress. We talked to him about Baptism last week and he said that he too would love to be baptized. We arent sure when but we left him with the commitment to pray about the when.

      I wish I had to time to tell you about all 19 of our investigators, but the clock just wont allow it today! Rostock is just full of amazing people that are ready to fully commit to this Gospel. I am going to be so sad when transfer calls come this Saturday and tell me where my new city will be. This city was rough for me at first, but has made the most amazing turn around. This truly is a city of miracles and I have learned and grown so much from being here with these people.

      I am stoked for this coming week! We have Christmas tomorrow which means skype!! WHOOO!! Also, lots of fun eating appointments, a service project at the zoo, transfer calls,  and I will be doing an exchange with my MTC companion Sister Bohne this week too! She has been struggling with training and has done a special request to president and he approved it. I am exciting to return to Langenhorn and see how the apartment is looking post fire :) haha.

      Well I love you all so much! I hope you have an incredible Christmas! Ich wünsche Ihnen ein frohes Weihnachtsfest!!

Love, Sister Linford

 

PS Dont send anything to my address this week, I will tell you next week where my new address is :)

 

On Fire Literally!

      Hallo! Well this week takes the cake for the craziest week on my mission! So much happened and so little sleep was had haha. Stellar combo right? But, it truly was an awesome week!

      It started off last Monday with the Preets. This is the family that I write often about. They are traveling back to India for a month and they needed help getting to the airport in Hamburg. We just happened to be going to Hamburg for exchanges last Monday as well. Manpreet is a single mother with 2 children, and 2 crazy children at that! We got her and all of her massive amounts of luggage totaling at well over 200 lbs. from Rostock to Hamburg. Our morning starting at 4 am and this adventure ended at 2 pm! Now that you know the end and the beginning, lets fill in the middle! Two of the 50 lbs. suitcases broke on the way. The youngest child Sam had a poopy diaper for a solid 2.5 hrs and there was nothing we could do. The airport workers made a mistake with their passports and called the police. Oh the drama. We worked that out right before they were going to be taken away. Me and my companion had to literally drag the broken suitcases through 5 different trains and finally the airport. And although my companion and I were about ready to pull our hair out at the end of this experience....it ended in the best of sorts. The chance of me getting transferred is pretty high and so this is most likely the last time I will see them. It was a tearful goodbye from the family that has just completely taken me in here in Rostock.

      As we walked out of the airport, we were  filled with relief as we thought we had the rest of P-day just to relax. Boy were we wrong. We decided we would go see the sisters that serve in Langenhorn, which is Sister Bohne my MTC companion, and then just do our emails there. My current companion use to serve in Langenhorn so she is a pro at navigating us all around Hamburg. To make a very long story short, we were just walking out of emailing our families when we got a frantic phone call from an elder we didn't know. He asked us if we were still in Langenhorn, which is a city right outside of Hamburg. We happened to just be walking to the train station to go to Hamburg to meet all the other sisters for exchanges. He said that the fire department just called him and we need to get to the sisters apartment as fast as we can to see what is going on because the Langenhorn sisters aren't answering their phone. Right as we hung up the phone we hear sirens and lots of them. We took off in a full blown run towards their apartment following the flashing lights. When we arrived a swarm of fireman were going back for the hose, pulling it off the truck as fast as they could. They all saw our tags and thought we were the ones who lived there. In seconds we had 7 different people yelling at us for the keys. See in Germany they have really really weird laws and they cant just break down a door. We were trying to explain that we didn't live there so we didn't have the keys but we were all come from the same organization. They accepted that answer and asked if they could bust the door down, we of course gave them permission. Within seconds we heard them axing away at the door and windows were opening with smoke billowing out of them. It was at this moment that my companion and I looked at each other and she let out an awkward giggle and all I could say is, "This is real life...." Our phone was ringing off the hook. It was my mission president, the zone leaders, the landlord.....everyone BUT the Langenhorn sisters. Everyone was in a frenzy. While my companion manned the phone I was having to give all sorts of information about us, the sisters who actually live there, the mission office, and so much more to multiple policemen and fireman. This is all in German too.....haha man alive it was stressful. In the end we found out that the fire was started in the kitchen from them leaving the stove on. The fireman that talked to us said it was a sheer miracle that the whole thing didn't blow. He said that the fire reached the gas line and everything. His last sentence was, "You really must be from a church!" haha yes we are! The damage was fairly minimal which was VERY lucky. After about 1 hour and 20 min. the Langenhorn sisters finally arrived. Just shocked and frankly a tad embarrassed. We were just laughing as we showed them around their apartment. Needless to say our meeting time for exchanges totally got butchered. The sisters from the cities of Kiel and Elmshorn had to rush back to appointments. So it was us Rostock and Langenhorn just left in a daze haha. We couldn't make it back to Rostock that night because we missed our train and we couldn't sleep in the smokey apartment.....so....off to Elmshorns sister apartment for the first 6 sister sleepover! See blessings always come :)! We had a blast that night laughing about the fire and talking about funny memories we all have with each other.

      The next morning started yet again very early. We decided to go ahead with exchanges and just meet back up the following day. So my companion took my MTC companion back to Rostock. The other two sisters went back to Langenhorn and I got to spend the morning with Sister Niebergall :). This is the sister I lived with in Dresden. Oh man we had too much fun! Before we knew it, it was time to exchange with the Kiel sisters where I was suppose to be the whole time. I may have been a tad tardy, but I finally got to have my time with Sister Thornton and return back to Kiel! I love that city! And I love Sister Thornton! She was the other sister besides Sister Bohne who I was in the MTC with. We had a blast that day together! And the night could not have ended better...I got to play soccer! Every Tuesday night all the missionaries in Kiel get to go play indoor soccer. Oh my heavens I loved every second of it!

      Wednesday started once again earlier than normal. We had to catch a train to meet back with everyone in Hamburg. Before I knew it I was on yet another train headed back to my own city of Rostock finally reunited with my real companion. The craziness was not over though. We had only a few hours in our city before we had to get on a train for Berlin. Because of all the traveling, we packed our appointments like sardines! We didn't even have time to go to the apartment. It was bam bam bam and then on a train to Berlin! We spent the night in Berlin because we had Zone Conference early the next morning.

      Zone Conference was amazing!! It was a special one where Elder Kent Richards did a mission tour. It was 4 hours without a break, but it was incredible! Wowza, he is an amazing general authority! He was a mission president in Texas and gave the best advice. Plus, we got to see half the mission again at this conference...which means more sister time! Oh how I love it!! It is always a blast being around the other sisters.

      Finally late Thursday I returned to my apartment for the first time in 4 days! I was so excited to finally sleep in a bed!

      There was so much drama and traveling this week but what I haven't talked about is our investigators! We had some of the most amazing lessons this week! This area truly is booming! We nearly tied our record this week and we were gone so much of the time! It was nuts! But its such a blessing to have people so willing to meet with you and learn more!

      Patrick is doing amazing and is looking good for his baptism in less than 2 weeks! Anna is having a great time with her family right now for Christmas. We are sad that we cant meet with her during her school break, but we still talk often :). Mark is a new investigator of ours. He actually requested to stop meeting with the elders and start meeting with us because every time I taught he felt that it was just for him. I have been saying I wish Mark was our investigator for weeks now, so I was super stoked for the switch to happen! We have met with him lots this past week and he is progressing really well! Bodo is still praying about when his baptismal date should be but he has the strongest testimony of the book of Mormon now and is doing fantastic! I know its only a matter of time with him! I would love to tell you more about our investigators but I just don't have enough time! We have been super blessed with a lot of people to teach right now. It will be interesting what transfer calls bring in a week and a half! Yikes I am nervous!

      Spiritual Thought: This month I have really tried to focus my studies on Jesus Christ. I was reading in the Bible when I read two different scriptures that struck me. The first is found in Mark 1:16-18 and says, 16 Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. 17 And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. 18 And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him. We all have nets in our live that keep us from walking with our Savior. Temptations or distractions of the world sometime create nets that prevent us from focusing on what is important. What are the nets in your life right now that are keeping you from going "straightway" towards Christ? The second is found in John 1:38-39 and reads, 38 Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou? 39 He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day. When we walk with Christ we will see where he "dwells". We all say we want to be like Christ or we want to be full of faith, but what are we doing to get there? Christ has invited us to come and see what he has to offer. I pray that we can all focus on how we can "come and see" more in our lives by leaving our nets behind and following Christ straightway! Thanks for all the love and support! I love you all so much and am so grateful for each one of you! I pray so hard every day for the people back home. This season brings those feeling of gratitude to the surface.....I just love it! I hope you all enjoy your Christmas season! Also this next week I will not be doing emails next Monday because it's Christmas Eve, so emails will be done this coming Saturday instead. So email before then :)! KEEP THE FAITH!
Sister Linford

Kirche Jesu Christi
Sister Jessica Linford
Friedrich Str. 14
18057 Rostock
Germany

Pictures

Family friends the Baumans are on a couples mission in Sister Linford's mission. Sister Baumann sent us a few pictures of S Linford and her companion.

Laundry Drama

      Guten Tag! I hope everything is going well for everyone!! I am doing just dandy myself :). I am warning though this email might be a tad shorter than normal because I am currently in Hamburg not Rostock. I will explain more about that later! But lets chat about my week shall we?
      Last Pday was just sad but funny. Our washing machine broke so we had to go to a laundromat. Well that nearly killed my companion. haha she was being so dramatic, "I would rather die than go to a place like that! Who knows what else has been in those machines!!" For being the rough and tough type, Sister Moon was surprising me but it was so funny I just kept laughing. German washing machines are not like American ones...they take FOREVER. Honestly around 2 hours. So my entire pday was spent at a laundromat while my companion was having a melt down :). There was a reason she didnt get sent to a third world country!! haha.
Another funny part of my week was that I had to sing.....multiple times in a quartet!! So if any of you know me well, you know that i CANNOT sing and there for I dislike it. Well there are 2 elders in Rostock as well as me and my companion. We all are AWFUL at singing. However, the members in our ward made us all singing appointments at all the old folks homes around here. When I say it was bad, picture it worse and that is what happened. We just kept busting up laughing because it was so bad. Oh how the mission stretches you in so many ways :).
       I have spoken about some less active members quite a bit that we have worked a lot with and now they are doing amazing.....well Manpreet is one of them and she was asked to give a talk on Sunday. This was quite the ordeal haha. She was SO nervous. She made us come over and Tuesday and we helped her write it. Then on Saturday she called us and said she was going to fake sick haha. We talked her out of that though no worries :). Sunday came around and she did such a good job! It was one of the moments on my mission where you just stop and think of how amazing missionary work is. I have seen her make so much progress in the months I have been here in Rostock it is crazy! It is simply incredible to be around and be apart of. Today I had to say goodbye to Manpreet and her family. They are going back to India to visit family and they wont return until after transfers. They have been my Rostock family. It was so hard to say goodbye but I know I will see them again! I LOVE the people I have met here in Germany that I get to call my friends.....it makes the hard times worth it!
       Anna is still doing awesome!! Funny thing about her last lesson. So her friends heard that she was meeting with us and they made her watch the South Park episode about Mormons! Oh my heck I am going to kill south park haha. I have never seen it myself, but South Park is huge over hear and nearly everyone under 25 has seen that episode! Well it took us a while to clear some of that up, but we are back on track :).
      Another cool announcement....we got two more people on baptismal date!! Whooo! I am sad that I most likely wont be here to see most of these baptisms, but it is soooo amazing to watch the progression taking place in these people! Asante and Kofio are going to be members of the church of Jesus Christ come January! Also we have another investigator praying about when his date she be right now! His name is Bodo and he has been an investigator for years! We were able to start things up with him and it's going so well! I will have to tell you more about that next week!
       Spiritual Thought: Sorry I dont have much time today like I said, so here is another video :).
http://www.lds.org/pages/mormon-messages?lang=eng#hope-ya-know-we-had-a-hard-time
      Well this coming week is going to be a crazy one! I am currently in Hamburg. I am doing an exchange in just a few hours and then I will be in Elmshorn with Sister Niebergall. I cant wait! We use to live together when I was serving in Dresden. Plus, Sister Niebergall goes home in one short week, so this is even more of a last hooray!  After Elmshorn, I will be going to Kiel tomorrow. This city was my last exchange and I loved it! I will be with Sister Thornton who was in the MTC with me and is my really good friend. It's going to be a fun couple days of exchanges. If that doesnt get crazy enough I will be traveling home from Hamburg Wednesday just to go to Berlin for Zone Conference! I left this morning with clothes for 4 days! Crazy huh?? Hopefully this means that next weeks email will be more entertaining than this one was haha.
       >Thanks for all the love and support. I ask for the blessing of everyone who gets this email to go to my new Niece Izzy. She was born this week at 27 weeks....at a mere 2lbs 1oz. Miracles have been seen. And for that I am eternally grateful. The little fighter needs all the prayers she can get :). Love you all and wish you amazing weeks!!
Sister Linford

Winter Wonderland!

      Hallo! Burrrr.....is all I got to say! Rostock has been colder than ever. It has been snowing lots here this week. The wind makes it so much worse too. I remember when I use to complain about winters in Utah.....hahaha yeah, that wont be happening again! Despite the frigid temperatures, awesome work was still to be had here!

      Last P-day we spent the majority of our day at something we call in Germany the Weinachts Markt. Which just means Christmas market. It was a Christmas dream!! I remember watching Christmas movies and seeing towns that were decked out in decorations and always thinking, "I wish this really happened, and it wasn't just in movies!" Well I know where Hollywood got all of their ideas! Germany! It was seriously right out of a movie.....so incredible! I loved every bit of it :). In addition, that night for FHE we decorated the Christmas trees for the church. Its official....I am now in the Christmas Mood!!

      This past week was our Christmas Zone Conference. We actually got to spend the night in Berlin Tuesday evening because we needed to be in Berlin really early in the morning. We stayed with Sister Child and Sister Larsen who are currently serving in Berlin. It was a blast as always to spend the rare and cherished time with others of the female gender. Zone Conference was amazing! It has been so long that I have gotten to just sit and enjoy a spiritual message that I understand!! The only meetings that are in English now are Zone conference and we haven't had one in ages. It really was such a re-charge of the spiritual battery. It was also fun to see my trainer, Sister Neukomm there, along with Sister Dieterich. We are reppin' the Holla-hood(Holladay) well in Germany!

      We got to do a service project this week! We helped a family move. They use to be investigators and they said that the Elders just stopped coming by and they aren't sure why. It was a perfect opportunity to build up contact with them again. However, it provided quite the workout! They live on the top of the 9th floor. In Germany not too many buildings have elevators either, so LOTS of stairs and heavy furniture it was! My calves and biceps are still hurting, but the pain was worth the gain!

      Yesterday was our ward Christmas program! It went so well! We had 5 investigators at church!!! It was so awesome! The elders also had 3 investigators there, totaling at 8. The bishopric came up to us and said that have never seen so many investigators at church :). The musical numbers were awesome and everyone felt the spirit so strong. We also had quite the German feast after the program. The investigators got right in and were talking to the members.....it was so cool! Most of them didnt leave until 3pm and church starts at 10am!! It was seriously the best Sunday I have had on my mission!

      Our investigators are all doing well for the most part! Charles and Patrick who we put on baptismal date last week are doing awesome! They are both reading lots in their scriptures every day trying to get ready for December 29th :). We actually started teaching their friend now as well. Me and Sister Moon actually split up and I teach Patrick who likes to get really deep in the Bible and she teaches Ali (their friend) and Charles who need just the basics, It works amazing because that just fits our personalities better. Than at the end we all come together and have a testimony meeting/ review of what we learned. They are awesome!

      We are also still having such incredible lessons with Anna! Wow, I love teaching her so much! This week we really felt that instead of continuing to teach her the commandments, that we needed to do something else. We prayed all week, but nothing was coming to us. It came to the point that her appointment was in 5 minutes and we still had no idea what we really were going to talk about. I still can't tell you exactly what was said....but the spirit guided that time we had together. We talked a lot about Christ and what Christmas really means, It was more of just a discussion but she got emotional at the end and said that she really needed that and  she hopes that we don't stop meeting with her. Don't worry Anna, we have no plan of stopping!

      Spiritual Thought: This week at Zone Conference a missionary who is going home in just a few weeks was bearing his testimony. He said he has learned that in his time here that you can either choose to go on your knees or be forced. He was referring to trials that we all experience in life. I loved this statement because it is so true! We need our Heavenly Father....it is just a fact. We can either recognize that from the beginning and make it easier on ourselves....or we can be stubborn and wait to the point where we can't take it anymore and get forced to ask for help. It reminded me of the quote, "Sometimes the Lord brings you low, so he can bring us higher." And that is exactly what the process of trials and asking God for help does for us! This is a gospel of Becoming. We aren't expected to be perfect. There are just ways of life to become like him that make it a lot easier if we choose to do them. Take the story of Lehi's family going into the Wilderness. Laman and Lemuel were obedient just as Nephi was.....they all left their belongings and traveled away from Jerusalem....but their attitude was very different. They fought their trials and asked questions such as why is this happening to me? Such questions can overtake their vision, absorb their energy, and deprive them of experiences the Lord wants them to receive. The difference is that Nephi was willing to go to Heavenly Father for help and put his trust in Him. "Whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day."(Alma 36:3) I hope that we can all be quick to look towards Heavenly Father this week in help with our trials!!

      Well thank you all again for another great week of emails! I am excited to hear more of the happenings in your lives next week! Thanks for all the love and support!! Bis nächste Montag!!

Sister Linford