16 Months?!🤯

 Hi everybody how are you?! Miss you lots!

Guess what?? I hit 16 months of being a missionary this week!!! Aaaah it's crazy! Time is flying by!

This week started off so good, we had an amazing lesson with our friend Juan on Tuesday night and then another great one with him on Saturday! He's awesome and a very deep thinker. He loves to have visits at the park and he walks pretty far to get to all of them. He says he enjoys walking out in nature, even when it's cold, and when our members offer him rides he doesn't even want them. Everybody be more like Juan. He's still on baptismal date, but please pray for him because he really needs help getting to church more!!

The weather has been SO GOOD this week. I'm grateful for California Decembers.

On Thursday we tried going to a bunch of new laundromats we'd never been to before to find people. And SUCCESS! There were so many people to talk to and start teaching!! It's always such a good feeling to find new people in a place you hadn't thought to look before. At one of the laundromats, we started talking to a man named Genaro who seemed to snap a little when we started the conversation. It's definitely easy to let that catch you off-guard and assume the person's not interested. He said he was pretty busy, but we offered to write him a quick card just as he was finishing up his laundry. After that, he ended up opening up to us and sharing some really difficult things he and his family were going through. It was an eye-opening moment for me to be reminded that we can't judge or assume things based on a first impression. The Spirit really helped guide us and I believe God needed us to talk to Genaro at that moment to give him the comfort he was looking for.

On Friday I had exchanges with Sister Anderson again, this time in her area! She's in a YSA ward, which means we talked to a lot of people around our age and spent a bunch of time in Target and other stores. It was a fun day. Also doing YSA work makes me worry about being an awkward missionary when I get home haha but I guess maybe that's just part of the gig.

Sunday was good! Lots and lots of meetings. The mission has taught me how to have a lot more patience in long meetings haha. Carlos and Alejandro (two of our new members) received the priesthood!!! It was such a special experience to get to see that and know that they can help bless so many others' lives! We are currently teaching Alejandro's mom, Yeni, and she got to be in the room with us all when he received the priesthood. When we all looked up after the blessing, her eyes were filled with tears and she was so happy for him. Alejandro then got to bless the sacrament in sacrament meeting!

ALSO we got to go to this little Christmas event where the church displayed a bunch of different nativity sets from all around the world! And someone there wrote all our names in Hebrew for us. It was super cool.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

As I'm nearing the end of my mission, I sometimes have moments where I reflect and hope that I've done good enough and been the missionary God wants me to be. I think at times I put pressure on myself, or to feel like I need to be so much closer to perfect in order to finish my mission. 

One thing I am coming to realize is that finishing a mission doesn't equal perfection, and that God doesn't expect that. He has helped me grow so much up to this point, and He wants me to keep growing after! If I think that the end of my mission should be my peak, then I'm not looking at my mission the right way.

A church leader who once visited our mission said, "The mission is the pinnacle of your spirituality up to this point in your life."

I'm so grateful to know that I can keep growing every day, every week, and every year for the rest of my life! 

My invitation for you all is to make a list of ways that you have grown over the past few years. I'm going to do it too! Then say a prayer of thanks and pray to know what your next step is, even if it's something small. God loves you just as you are, and He also sees the potential in you!

I love all of you!

-Hermana DeMordaunt