yo lo vi

I was looking at my proseliting card the other day, the one that legally certifies me to Preach the Word of GOD (yeah-yuh!) It has a start and stop date, and my stop date is shorter than 18 months...... I decided not to ask anything about it until the time comes. If it's correct, then I only have 1 year left. And I'm not okay with that. So I'm going to live on assuming that I'll be here till August 2014 and I'm not going to ask questions otherwise until next June. So you'll see me when you see me! :)

Two stories

ONE

Saturday we had a ward "Blitz" where we got members to come and have breakfast (an assortment of everything you could ever possibly want from Dunkin Donuts) and then break out to visit as many people as we could. I went with these two crazy ladies, Hermana Guzman and Hermana Gonzalez. You know those Halmark cards with two old ladies crackin' jokes at each other? These sisters are the perfect real-life example of this. Hna Guzman was driving and Hna Gonzalez was back-seat driving, and it was NOT appreciated by the driver. They'd yell at each other and then all the sudden they'd be using pet-names and laughing. So crazy! "CARRO! AY!" "YO LO VI!" "AY! HERMANA, PARA!" "YO LO VI!!!! Cuantas vezes yo he manejado aqui?! CUANTAS!?"

There was some difficulty in finding our first appointment. I knew one way to get there, hermana gonzalez knew another, hermana kept making u-turns. SO I drew a shoddy map on the back of my planner. "Ahhhh, alla. Yo se como llegar alla." Perfect, so we get to the appointment. When we're leaving we decided to go visit some sisters in the hospital. Hna Guzman lives right by the hospital. So essentially we're just driving back to her house. We drive for 6 minutes and I kid you not, all the sudden we are RIGHT BACK where we had just left the appointment. Exactly the same cross road that we had just pulled away from. I didn't say anything, and I'm pretty sure that nobody noticed we had just made a 6 minutes circle through Boston. My guess is that Hna Guzman only knew one way to get home and so she went exactly that route starting from the closest place she knew. Turns out that route crossed paths with the route we were already on. Ay yi yi. 

Sunday my companion and I were standing on a corner trying to decide who we should visit. We get the idea to go visit a less active with the Relief Society President! We call her and she's surprisingly available to come with us!! We walk 15 minutes and arrive at her house to find that she's not home. The more I think back to our conversation I remember her saying something about "Digna". Ohhh maybe she's at Digna's house! How did I not understand that? I'm so embarrassed and we're running out of time. We pull out the map and see that the road we are on curves, so we can hop back onto the main road really easily! We walk down a crossroad for maybe 2 minutes and guess where we came out? Exactly where we had left from 17 minutes ago. I only knew one way to get to her house and I went exactly that route, taking 15 minutes, and it could have taken only 2. 

I prayed before my mission that I'd have experiences that would humble me. And those prayers have been answered in abundance. Yikes. I'm being humbled left and right and I don't like it one bit. I will never be truly humbled because the moment that I think I am, it'll mean that I'm not humble any more! 

TWO

One of my first investigators dropped us this week. Scott is 17. 

I can't feel good about saying a whole lot about him right now, but I can say that he is in every aspect of the word, Perfect. He believes, he trusts, he understands, he knows... and yet when it came down to it he couldn't chose God over Man. And the thing is, I couldn't convince him otherwise.  He has a very justifiable situation... his predicament is horribly difficult. With what he's been given in life and what we introduced him to through the gospel, they can't mesh. He has to chose one or the other, and he chose the other. Even worse, he is fully aware of the blessings he's forgoing by not accepting the gospel. He is sad about it and he says he's still going to come to church. He said he didn't want to waste our time but he'd still like to see us every once in awhile. Gosh I absolutely adore this boy and it breaks me to see him come so far and learn so much just to put it down and say, "I can't do it." 

Well friends, my message to you today is that YOU CAN DO IT! I say it all the time, "Si, se puede!" Heavenly Father does not mandate, he does not dictate, he does not control. He offers. He'll never tell you "No". He'll only tell you "yes". And the answer really is yes! We can do whatever we want! And he'll still help us. But how much easier would it be to run with the wind, than to walk against it? How much happier will we be following in light rather than leading in unknown dark spaces? We don't need to trod along and make our own path. A road has already been paved. I am a sucker for off-road/off-trail mountain adventures, but every time I take my foot off the path I scrape against a rock. Maybe I'm happy and excited in the moment, but that scrape turns into a scar.  I could have stayed on the path and gone unharmed. But wherever I am I know that I have a loving Father in Heaven cheering me on, "Si, se puede! You can do it!"

LIFE IS A MISSION

DO IT!

Hermana Hileman