Week 69: October 20, 2014

Looks like Sister Roy and I will be spending Thanksgiving together! Along with our whole district. Nobody in Imanta moved, which is so happy. I love the people that I'm serving with. As soon as we found out, we divided who's bringing what for Thanksgiving dinner. WE GOT THE BIRD, MA! You should send me a good recipe for turkey, gravy and stuffing. Thanks!
Speaking of which, the pictures are of us at Film Night! I can't remember if I've told you that we have been planning towards it all of last transfer, but it finally was brought to pass on Saturday. We did a photo booth and everybody just ate it up! I was so glad because I was worried that photo booths are just an American thing but everyone who came really enjoyed making a fool out of themselves.
I feel like the Film Night that we had in Daugavpils was a good warmup to what we threw here in Imanta. Everything looked excellent and it was like all the ideas that I had had in Daugavpils but didn't have the resources for were able to be actualized here. We also were able to show Frozen on a projector and everything just looked great. I'll be sending pictures shortly. President Bogdonov requested that we do it again on November 15th. Woo hoo! I'm super proud of it :) 

So I don't mean this in a pompous way, but I haven't ever really been homesick on my mission. That's not to say that I haven't struggled significantly, but I have never felt the sharp desire to not be where I'm at. That's not because I'm a perfectly consecrated missionary (do those exist?) or because there's not much to miss at home: it's because I have felt the love of God more on my mission than any other place. I felt it walking out of Sister Valling's apartment on a February night in Narva, I felt it sitting at Ludmila's kitchen table in Vilnius, I felt it as Inna flipped through her thoroughly marked and beat up Book of Mormon in Daugavpils, and I have felt it every time that I've pled with Him to change the weaknesses that I can't here in Imanta. His love is warm and comfortable, but not in the average sense of those words. It is not the kind of paralyzing comfort and warmth that comes with holding a cup of hot chocolate and being all wrapped up in blankets. His love is a catalyst for change that starts in your chest and works its way down until the desires of your heart match up with your hands and you're empowered to do what you know. 

In other words, to be true to the truths that you know.

In contrast to love as it is portrayed in movies, the love of God lends clarity of thought and vision. His love is the light that shines brightly enough to reach the darkest parts of us. It is not blind to our inconsistencies or weaknesses and doesn't endeavor to cover them up, but rather to unveil them because He will not allow for us to blindly carry around the things that will eventually give us heartache if they haven't already. 

No wonder God commands us to repent--it is the single act that breaks down the walls that we so casually and unintentionally build to block out His love, the very power that enables us to change.
Repentance is a merciful gift because Satan has a way of making us feel like we're building a castle when really all it turns out to be is a wall. He is all about minimizing potential and happiness, and he works especially hard to make sure that we are hardly aware of his efforts. Therefore, he restricts our perspective to look at one brick at a time, trying to occupy our minds so as to keep us from seeing the lackluster future that we're building.
In contrast, the love of God enlightens and broadens our perspective. It gives us confidence, purpose, wisdom, and endows us with a very real power to chase away the darkness. We can clearly see what it is that we're working for my faithfully laying each brick and we are filled with a desire to do and be more rather than settling down with the mediocre. 

In short, the love of God inspires us to be consistent with who we really are and endows us with sufficient power to do so.

Consistency in truth always results in peace of mind, and that's what Heavenly Father wants for us. He demands consistency from us because He feels that we deserve peace and confidence and wisdom and purpose, and none of those come without first living lives and making decisions that don't put restrictions on the way that He can manifest His love to us.

Mom, you asked me to summarize my mission (what I've learned) last week, and my first reaction was to think that it'd be on the same level of difficulty of trying to describe salt to somebody who's never tasted it. But in pondering about it, Romans 8:35,37-39 came to mind:

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, orsword?

 37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The love that Heavenly Father has for us is the truth that I've seen consistently woven throughout my experiences and it's what has changed me the most. Because of His love, I'm home wherever I go. 

I love you all a lot. Like...probably more than you can comprehend.

С любовью,

Сестра Шакира

P.S. We're in the picture with Elder Atkinson and Elder Jensen. They're the funniest

Week 68: October 13, 2014

I think that fall always makes me contemplative, but when you add General Conference on top of all the leaves changing as well as beginning a new transfer, I feel like I've got enough to think about for the rest of my life.

It was a good week. We watched Conference with the branch in Center and it was fun to get to know some of the members there. A woman named Tatjana brought what she called “American salad”, which consisted of fried rye bread, mayonnaise, corn, and cabbage...pretty sure that's about as Baltic as it gets.

I also went on an exchange with Sister Robinette in Center. Because of that, I got to go to the botanical gardens twice and talk to my good friend Karles. I'm not entirely sure how to spell Latvian names, but it's something like that. We've been raking leaves and stacking wood together for the past few times and, since he works there, we've worked closely with him. He's reaffirmed my suspicion that everyone who speaks English without an accent learned from watching Cartoon Network. He's great.

I didn't have time to tell you a few weeks ago, but something cool happened to me when we were on a bus heading home after a long day. It was crowded so I stood near the doors. I noticed an old woman staring at me, and as soon as I smiled at her, she got up from her seat and stood next to me. Her name was Galena and I had apparently spoken with her a few weeks before. I didn't remember what our conversation had been about but I did remember her face. She told me, "I did what you said. I've been writing down my prayers and it has really helped me and my relationship with God." Then I remembered. She had been very adamant in not wanting anything to do with me because she was active in the Russian Orthodox church. I remember feeling like I could at least talk to her about prayer and I found myself telling her what helps me personally when I pray: writing it down. I invited her to do the same but didn't expect much to come of it. In fact, as I was talking, I wondered why I was talking about something so specific and something that I'd never used in teaching before. Looking back, I can see that the Spirit clearly guided that conversation and that I spoke of specific things because I was talking to a specific person--Galena. 
It was cool for me to see that even if people aren't ready to hear about the Restoration, the Spirit can guide me to give them what they are ready for.

I'm sorry it's so short this week but there are a bunch of hoolies throwing rocks and banging on the church windows. Time to get my belt out!

Love you all :)

Love,

Sister Gooch

Week 67: October 6, 2014

You know when you learn some incredible news and you're excited to tell someone about it so you tell that person over email or text that you've got something to tell them and they better be excited but it'll have to wait until tonight because you're both busy with work or school but then on your lunch break you're crossing the street and you see this person and you want to tell them every detail of what you've learned and they even ask what it was that you wanted to tell them but you're in the middle of the street and cars are waiting to turn right and it's so disappointing to realize that now is not the time and even if there weren't any cars, it just wouldn't be the right place because you have a lot to say but the person that you're telling would have other things going on in their head like what class they have next or how many minutes it'll take them to get from their present location to their destination if they continue standing there listening to what you have to say and that's the last thing you want because what you have to tell them is something that they can't really understand or feel as deeply as you do in that state of mind and you don't want to tell them just to say it and get it over with but you want it to change them like it's changed you but you're rushed so the excuse that comes out of your mouth isn't a fully comprehensible sentence so much as it is a bunch of mumbled syllables because you see car blinkers out of the corner of your eye but they understand that you meant that they'll have to wait until later and you make it to the other side of the street feeling like you just managed to put a cork in a firehose? 

That, my dear friends, is what it feels like to email you every week. Especially this week. 

First, before I forget, I'll explain the pictures. I think one is of Sister Roy and I in Old Town today. I always underrate the old town of the big cities that I've been in. It's beautiful and made me feel like such a tourist. But sometimes it's nice to feel like that. It's relaxing.

The other picture is of me in a really, really ghetto apartment building. To get to one of the members' apartments, you have to walk through an abandoned apartment building and we thought we'd express how sketchy it felt through this picture. Can you feel the cobwebs collecting in your heart?

Salaspils was amazing last week. It was a concentration camp from 1941-1944. The whole place had such a heavy feeling to it. There was a big slab of rock to place flowers and inside the rock, there was a drum that sounded like the beating of a heart. I'm so glad we went, though. It was the coolest place I've been on my mission and it fulfilled my lifelong dream to visit a concentration camp.

We had zone conference this week and, as always, I was thrilled to see my homies from Daugavpils. Elder Farns told me that ever since I left, Valentina doesn't let them touch the potatoes in her garden. She always says, "Я сама!" which is like, "I'll do it myself!" That warmed my heart somethin' sore. (That was for you, Mike. I don't think it works in that context.)

I mentioned last week that I'd only have time to share one part of what I learned from Helaman 5. The part that I didn't get to share is that I've been thinking a lot about all of the miraculous displays of power and faith in the scriptures and all of them have one thing in common: they were true to the truths that they knew. I find it especially impressive in situations like what Nephi and Lehi faced in Helaman 5, where they have no logical reason (to others) to hope or to keep trying. Their circumstances were dark and the peoples' hearts were so hardened that they woudn't even turn to the Lord when facing destruction. And yet, Nephi and Lehi decide to spend all of their energies and efforts on a mission. Obviously 

they didn't make that decision by looking around at their circumstances: they looked to God. To them, God's matchless power and mercy were more real than what they could see with their physical eyes. 

It's the same for many others: Moses hadn't ever seen the Red Sea part but he had seen God do the impossible and take a stuttering, weak man and turn him into a prophet. Nephi hadn't ever built a boat but he had been undoubtedly guided in the wilderness and had seen visions. 

They had the faith to give just as much validity to those miracles (gradual though they were) as they gave to the fact that the sun would rise the next day. They could do that because they didn't cound God as a whimsical Being that cared about them and showed it just through abstract things like good weather and a nice hair day.

We can tell that they must have known that God would never leave them unaided if they were righteous and if their hearts were in the right place; that He is unchanging, because He had delivered their ancestors; and if He's unchanging, then He loves His children and always will.

Obviously there's a whole lot more to what they knew, but what I find so incredible is that they were actually true to their knowledge in their actions. All of their circumstances were factual: there were an army of Egyptians surrounding them with only a sea to escape to; there wasn't a single hammer lying around and there certainly wasn't familial support, but Moses and Nephi understood that some truths supercede others. The power of the truth that emanates from God about His character will always dominate circumstances or facts. This kind of truth operates on a higher power and, therefore, should have higher priority in our faith and beliefs. 

By its very nature, truth abounds and multiplies because it is all somehow connected: truth recieved and acted upon invites a gathering place for the accompanying truths, thus fulfilling the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 88:66-68. 

Having your eye single to the glory of God means that you treasure and collect truth, acting in accordance with each addition of knowledge. 

We are often distracted by facts dressed up as truths that are far less superior to the truth that emanates from the very being of God Himself. That's why I was feeling so discouraged when I first came here: I was looking at a fact like "that woman did not want to talk to me" and connecting it with the "truth" that "nobody that I come into contact with is going to accept the gospel". I was connecting it with the wrong truth. The truth is that everyone has agency, not that nobody is prepared. 

I don't know how to explain this without making it jumbled and not concise, but I had the realization that we often prioritize the facts that we see to be in front of the truths that we know. And with the knowledge that we have of God, that's just not logical. 

I pretty much don't have any time to tell you about zone conference but it was the most inspired one that I've ever attended. As it was wrapping up, they announced that we'd hear the last testimonies from Sister Roy, Dalley and I. I felt like I'd been punched in the face. Seriously wasn't expecting that. All of us stared at each other in shock. Thankfully the Spirit was already really strong and so bearing my testimony felt right. 
I love you all a lot. Aaaand now I gotta cork this firehose. Have a great week!

Love,

Sister Gooch

P.S. Just throwing this out there: I would really love some hot chocolate and pumpkin spice...if there's any relief society woman who has pity on me, feel free to jump on that. Haha just kidding. (Not really.)

Week 66: September 29, 2014

I counted this morning and we are sleeping with seven layers of blankets (and a few tablecloths due to the lack of blankets) on our beds. That's not even taking into account that last night I slept in thermals, the wool hiking socks that Big J sent me, and the onesies that you sent me last Christmas. I seriously debated just keeping the onesies on when we went running this morning. 

So yeah, our apartment is freakishly cold even though the weather isn't too bad. Summer is definitely over though.

This week, we decided to turn our apartment into a soup kitchen and BAKE ALL THE THINGS. Sister Roy has a lovely bread recipe and we made six or seven loaves of bread for members and soup for daysss. Plus brownies. We (or rather, Sister Roy) came up with the idea to drop off dinner and a pre-made family home evening spiritual thought for the members who are too busy to meet. We're dropping off our first batch tonight and it's going to make me feel like such a Relief Society woman from the 50's. I'm trying to figure out how to make my hair do that beehive thing and start using exclamations like "hot dog!" and "by golly!" more often.

Yesterday at church, I was writing a note to attach to a loaf of bread in the kitchen when a member came in and looked at the fact that I'm a lefty, then said, "Левша!" That means southpaw. I had learned that word just to be obnoxious but it turns out that I actually needed it! I nodded and got really excited about it but I bet that he thought I was pretending to understand because it's quite colloquial. Either way, I've been feeling an abiding sense of satisfaction ever since.

I had an enlightening realization that I'm only going to have time to share one part of this week. 

In the beginning of Helaman 5, we learn that Nephi, a prophet/chief judge of his people, is dealing with a bunch of crap. The government has become so corrupt that their concept of justice doesn't even look remotely like the real thing and, put simply, "they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good."

I don't think that it's too far-fetched to say that Nephi had plenty of restless nights, asking the Lord what more he could do and feeling incredibly heavy in his heart as he watched things spiral steadily downwards despite his best efforts. 
So, to me, it made perfect sense when I read that he gave up his position to the presumably wicked Cezoram. The guy had exhausted all of his resources in trying to help these people and asked to be guided in every aspect, but in the end it didn't make a difference to them. His cries to return to that God who gave them breath fell on deaf ears, or at least they fell on ears who would rather be their own god instead of the One who actually requires His creations to become something worthwhile. 

So yes, giving up when you've fought for as long as you have the strength to is not only understandable, but it's logical. It seems sometimes that, in the circumstances that we wrestle with, we're trying to chase the tide away only to realize that we're just under the required size to stop an ocean from moving.

I would have guessed that that's how Nephi felt if I hadn't read further.

If those had been his true feelings, then he would have abandoned society altogether and spent his days plotting out something unchanging that he could have faith in, like the waxing and waning of the moon in a cave somewhere. Or at the very least, he would have found a nice little home one the outskirts of town so as not to be further bruised by the rejection of his people.

No. Obviously "hopeless" was not the most accurate word to describe how he felt because he decided that he was going to devote allhis time and energy to the one thing that he had perfect faith in: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What strikes me is the humility that had to be such a fundamental part of Nephi's character. Even though everything about his circumstances indicated that any extra effort on his part would be useless, he had the humility to recognize that perhaps the Lord needed him elsewhere or to try something a little different instead of assuming that his work was finished altogether.

How tempting is it to count the obstacles that we repeatedly face as insurmountable when it seems like our best efforts aren't cutting it?

Well, join the ranks with the greatest examples of faith in the scriptures: there's always a first time to part the sea, to build a boat, to walk on water. The prerequisite is having the humility to acknowledge that your ways are not His ways and that the tidbits of knowledge that He gives along the way are enough to keep both of your feet on the ground.

The Lord has a harvest of blessings prepared for each of us, but He isn't interested in just the giving of blessings: it matters to Him how it's received. The difficulties that we pass (or crawl) through are the Lord's way of preparing us to receive the gifts that He gives us for what they are. He wants us to have eyes that can find value and worth in the overlooked; to learn how to see the full depth and dimensions of our blessings.

You can guarantee that if you're experiencing any kind of opposition in your life, the Lord is trying to change your heart to be more like His. Perhaps if we looked at our trials in this light instead of mourning the fact that they exist in the first place, we'd be more likely to recognize the divinity of our circumstances and, by extension, we'd be less likely to give up and throw in the towel. 

If Nephi had done so, then 8,000 people at the very least never would have found the peace and solace that comes with repentance and baptism. 
And who's to say that the humility with which you get through trials won't effect just as many? We are eternal beings and the consequences of our actions are eternal, so the decisions that we make really do mean something generations down the line.

Deciding to have faith in what you can't see why will always, always lead to moments in your life when you'll look back and see that decisions you made that had seemed to be small and insignificant actually made the biggest differences. Heavenly Father is a great rewarder of those who believe that He is always good on His word.

If you're looking for an enlightening scripture study, then read Helaman 5 and ask yourself what gave Nephi and Lehi the power to continue working with all of their heart, might, mind and strength even though they were weary. Remember that the answer is applicable to you and what you're experiencing.

I love you. I hope that this week is better than the last or the one before that and I hope that your gas tank lasts longer than usual and that you find some way to doubt your doubts instead of your faith. 

С любовью,

Сестра Гучка

P.S. Today, we're going to Salaspils with the district. It's about 45 minutes away by train so that's why we're emailing so early. But apparently there used to be a labor camp there and it's got a monument from WWII so I'm pumped! Hopefully pictures will follow next week.