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