Hopping fences --> clean laundry

 

"There are no rules to weekly emails. You can literally do whatever you want."

-me to my companion 27 seconds ago

Iaorana tout le monde! Bonjour et hello!

I hope you have all had a good week. Even more than that, I hope you tell me about your good week. Please email me.

Our good friend Crystal is preparing to get baptized next month! She really really wants to take this next step but still has a lot of thing she needs to do, so pray for her!

We had some fire lessons with her this week about the Word of Wisdom and the Plan of Salvation. 

We also taught a fire phone lesson to our friend Maria. She mentioned that 2 years ago, she received a small pass along picture of Christ. She has this image taped by her bed and it has really helped her. This lesson taught me that our simple acts of kindness do not go unnoticed. I am sure that the missionaries who gave her the picture originally were frustrated that they never were able to schedule lessons with Maria, but I hope they know that because they were doing good, someone has felt the light and love of Christ because of their actions. Our simple acts of good can change lives! 

Another miracle from this week: our friend Hector has a lot of health problems. But this week he seemed much more alert and has been able to breath almost completely on his own, without the help of a machine. We also started teaching his mom Rita who is amazing! 

Our washer broke last Monday which means that we had no clean laundry. We tried to hand wash some items but alas, we are lazy and accustomed to the conveniences of modernity. Luckily, there are a couple of elders in our apartment complex who have a working washer on their patio. Because we are not allowed to enter the elders apartment, we got permission to hop their fence with our bag of laundry. We got a good workout and the clothes are clean so life is good. 

And now, some deep, somewhat-spiritual thoughts from Sœur Hatch.

I gave a talk this Sunday. While I was somewhat proud of how I did, my satisfaction quickly became frustration and hurt as we received multiple text messages thanking the other speaker for their talk. (These kind ward members had the wrong number and texted us the Sisters instead of the Elder who also spoke.) The text messages were long and detailed the specific things in his talk that that enjoyed. The comparison between me and this other speaker, largely created by my own thoughts, was frustrating. 

If I am going to be honest I, I let the comparison that I was creating between me and this other speaker ruin my experience of speaking in church. 

This morning, I listened to this awesome BYU Devotional entitled Wrestling with Comparison.

The speaker made the clear point that God does not horizontally compare His children to one another. We can choose to receive our own self-satisfaction and joy on a horizontal level- by looking side to side to those around us, but what God wants us to do is to instead look vertically. We can look up to our Father in Heaven and see that He always loves us, even if we are frustrated with our Sacrament Meeting talks. When we look up instead of side to side, our result is divine motivation to improve instead of the discouragement and despair of comparison. 

Comparison is truly the thief of joy and we are here on earth to find joy, as the Book of Mormon says. 

I love you all! 

Je vous aime and ua here vau ia outou! 

Nana

Sister Sœur Tuahine Hatch