Dear Family:
Yeah for babies! Congrats Russ and Lezlie-Anne! He is SO cute! I can’t imagine the Spirit he has brought into your home! I’m going to have to make up for lost time in December!
There isn’t too much to say this week. I’m just as happy as can be. In all honesty, I’m addicted to the Spirit that attends this work. I really am. It is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. I think Jen nailed it when she said that the first time she felt the Spirit (although she didn’t know what it was) she just wanted to climb to the rooftops and shout “It’s true! It’s really true!” I love that girl so much! And she is right! When you feel that all you want to do is shout from the rooftops “It’s true! It’s really true!”
We aren’t teaching very many people right now but the people we are teaching are some of the elect of the elect. I love them dearly! Can I tell you what I really love? I love the better understanding I have now of my relationship to my Heavenly Father. That is the most precious doctrine I’ve learned on my mission. Although, it’s been so tough. When people say you have to “cultivate the Spirit” in your life they mean it. You have to get your shovel and start digging, diligently and tediously going through row by row just like you would a garden. It’s tough and it’s dirty because Satan does everything he can to distract, discourage, and deceive you. That basically sums up my last few months… ha ha. But the Spirit that follows makes it totally worth it!
Ironically, I had this quote close by that says it perfectly! (Thanks Jordyn for sending it!) Sister Hinckley always knows how to say it just right!
“I don’t want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with grass stains on my shoes from mowing Sister Schenk’s lawn. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor’s children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone’s garden. I want to be there with children’s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”
I love you! Thanks for being such good examples! I’ll talk to you next week (hopefully from Wilmington…ha ha).
Sister Painter
P.S. Dad, your San Diego sunset is pretty good, but it doesn't compete with my Ohio sunset! haha
Sunset her dad sent her from San Diego this week. . .
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