Well this past week was an improvement on the week before. Firstly, there was a huge massive miracle that I'm just gonna start with: Paul started living the Word of Wisdom completely!!!!!! By himself!!!!! Like we met with him one day and followed up on it and he's like, "Yeah, I'm living it. I decided it was time. No biggie." And I was like "...." Yeah, I was totally speechless. I teared up a little bit. It was fine. :) Miracles happen, guys. All the time. So he is now finishing the preparation for his baptism - I'll let you know how that goes!
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| Beautiful English clouds (I love the sky here) |
Also this week we got to go to a Zone Conference! It was in York this time (ooo, so exotic!) so we had lots of travel to get there and back. The actual conference was really good. Sister Pilkington talked about how attitude is so important. (See last week's e-mail). And President talked a lot about not gossiping or harming others with our words or actions. It was something I really needed to hear and helped me to gain a different perspective on what the word "charity" means. Charity is the pure love of Christ. If you have pure love for everyone, you would never say or listen to anything mean or negative about someone else. So like President Uchtdorf said, when it comes to gossiping, stop it!
By now you might be wondering what the title of this e-mail has to do with anything. Well I'll tell you. On the bus back from conference, we as missionaries were getting bored. One Elder brought his Rubik's cube (he brings it all over and uses it in street contacting). So my district leader started teaching me how to solve a Rubik's cube. And this is where the parable begins:
And it came to pass that the sister missionary asked her district leader, Behold, how is it done? And the district leader answered her questions and showed her how to move the cube in order to solve the puzzle, the great cube of Rubik.
And it came to pass that the sister missionary began to be astonished, and slowly started to learn how to solve the puzzle.
But behold, that night when the sister missionary took the cube of Rubik home, it came to pass that she completely forgot how to solve the bottom of the cube. And so during her nightly follow up, she asked the district leader, How is it done?
And the district leader did not directly answer her question, but instead gave her a hint to remind her of things she had already learned. And it came to pass that the sister missionary was satisfied and solved the cube, with much help and guidance and advice from her district leader.
And behold, when the morning came, the sister missionary began to solve the cube again. But behold, she got stuck, and began to be distressed, because she could not solve the cube on her own.
And it came to pass that in nightly follow ups, the sister missionary meekly asked again of the district leader, How is it done?
And the district leader in his much patience and wisdom guided her slightly and then told her to figure it out herself because he had other people with whom he needed to speak. And he also had much confidence in her abilities and so knew that she could do it on her own. (Or at least, we shall assume so for the sake of this parable).
And it came to pass that the sister missionary toiled and laboured and learned how to solve the great cube of Rubik all by herself. And behold, now she is a boss at the cube of Rubik and can solve it in under six minutes. Which is quite impressive considering she has never before learned how to solve such a great puzzle.
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| A "my companion locked me out of the flat" selfie. :) |
The end. Sorry for the really long parable, but there is some correlation between this and prayer: Sometimes we pray for help and guidance, and we receive it step by step. However, we sometimes get to a point where we ask a question and Heavenly Father needs only to give us a gentle prompting to help us find the answer for ourselves. Sometimes he lets us figure our questions out for ourselves completely. The important thing to remember, however, is that He will always help and guide us, though it might be through different methods. :)
I hope you all had a great week and a good long weekend! The work here in Newcastle continues to go forward despite setbacks and miracles happen everyday! Love you all!
Love,
Sister Larson
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