Jacquelyn's Missionary Blog: Week 2 In The Pool

Hello!

It is a beautiful day in Liverpool! I am starting to get use to this beautiful country. I love it. The people here are so loving and kind and I feel honored to be in this area. Sister Chaipinit is a wonderful example and I am learning a lot from her! Our area is doing great! Ebony is getting baptized!! I love her so much. She fasted that her mom would let her be baptized and her mom is letting her. We are teaching her mom Emma and she asked for a priesthood blessing! It was so cool! Bishop Gomez gave the blessing himself! When they walked in you could feel the spirit come with them. Anyways Sister Chaipinit and I saw many miracles this week! We found a ton of potentials this week and found some new investigators. Saturday was one of those days when I learned a ton a grew a ton. For some reason all of our appointments fell through. We were trying to keep positive attitudes but it was getting rough. We probably said three prayers together. We decided we wouldn't have dinner until we taught someone haha so on our way back we stopped at every house that had a light on. We ended up teaching an amazing woman named Sa. She only speak Thai!!!!! Sister Chaipinit taught her the restoration in Thai and invited her to be baptized and she said yes! I just sat there and smiled and nodded my head, but the cool part was I knew what sister Chaipinit was saying. I could tell when she was talking about Joseph Smith and The Book of Mormon. So every once in a while I would say a tiny bit of my testimony even though she couldn't understand. It was amazing! She said that she thinks we are servants of God. My heart was so full and we immediately thanked our heavenly father. I am also thankful that I've learned a little Thai from sister Chaipinit so I knew how to say hello and goodnight. That's pretty much it though haha. Anyways there were heaps of smile moments this week as well. One day I decided I should try my Aussie accent. I look at Sister Chaipinit and she asked me if I had hurt my tongue haha.

We went to Sister Allen's this week to share a message and all the sudden she whips out some oil and starts putting it on Sister Chaipinits face, Then she forced me to put it on my face too. There are HEAPS of tongans and somoans here and they WILL NOT take no for an answer haha. I am still getting used to walking on the left. It is so hard. It is my natural instinct to walk on the right. I am helping Sister Chaipinit learn English and every time she goes to send a text I check it before we send it and one time she showed me a txt that read, " Hello Roy is it ok if we come over and share a massage with you." I told her what she said and she laughed super hard. Anyways I've been studying a ton about pride this week. Probably because I really want to humble myself. There are so many Christlike attributes that I need to work on. Jesus Christ had the perfect personality. In the scriptures it talks about how we have to have a broken heart and contrite spirit so that we can humble ourselves. We can choose to be humble or God will humble us. I want to choose to be humble haha. In a talk by Elder Benson it says, "Pride is Ugly, it says if you succeed, i'm a failure." A lot of times we compare ourselves to others. At least I do. When we do that we are being prideful. But then I read "if we love god, do his will, and fear judgement more than men's, we will have self esteem." So my goal this week is to not compare myself but to try and lift others up!!! I also realized that sometimes people put on masks. Like as missionaries sometimes we put on the "missionary mask" or when we go to church we put on the "church mask" and then we leave we go back to being the natural man. That's not how it is supposed to be.There should be no mask. It should be real. We are supposed to love ourselves and try and seek the good qualities we have and try to better ourselves every day. If we take each day one day at a time we can become those sons and daughters of God that our Heavenly Father knows and wants us to be. I know we get what we are putting into it. Ask yourself the question, "What am I putting into it?" Don't blame mistakes on others. Ask "Lord is it I". This gospel is so good. I love you all so much!!!