hi lovelies!! hope you all had a great week! my birthday was great thank you all for asking :) got some wonderful gifts some including a glove full of edamame beans and lots of cake. we are going to the mission home tonight so i am super excited to get all of your packages and stuff! hopefully they are there or else i will be super let down...haha

 

i love everything that i learn here and i am learning so much. our investigator is very slowly changing but it's so awesome to see her changing. she reminds me of a little child sometimes just stubborn and wants to do what she wants but she can see the influence that we're having on her and i know that it's changing her and helping her come unto Christ and God. This week after church i asked her what she thought and she said this week i had some impression (which is like a miracle because when she first started coming she thought church was boring and wanted to leave as soon as she could) and i asked her what she learned and she said i think i need to think about my neighbors more (the speaker talked about the first and second greatest commandment of loving God and our neighbors) and I was like yes! you do that! she was happy and i was happy!

 

just wanted to share what i studied about today. i studied out of John 15 because our mission president asked us to read it to prepare for zone conference. it talks about Christ is the vine and we are the branches and how we must abide in Him but there's one part where he talks about how the disciples are His friends, not His servants, but His friends. And I thought about what it means to be Christ's friend and how friends are different than servants. Servants do what they are ordered usually because of the pay. they serve with the end reward in mind. friends serve each other out of love. They serve each other to sincerely serve the other with no reward in mind. And that is the attitude we must have in the church and concerning the gospel. Do we serve in our callings only because we are asked or with some end reward in mind? (some may think that a certain calling has no reward at all) or do we serve because we love the people we serve? because we love Christ and we know that His representive has asked us to? Think about your relationship with Christ? Is He your friend? I hope that answer is yes! Because it's great to have friends. especially Christ.

 

Kay well I'm done now! Have a good week hope you all know how much i love you!!

 

Sister Blickenstaff