Listening.

I am so grateful for the updates from each of you this week :)  I'm glad that Sarah's birthday was smashing!  I smashed it here celebrating by putting together Bee boxes!  Probably not quite as cool as skiing.. but can any of you say you've ever built a Bee BOX?  I didn't think so.  We were on an exchange in Nebraska City and it was a  pretty good day (aside from the terrifying snow we drove home in... how grateful I am for prayer).

Before we ever start an exchange we always pray a lot, mostly because we are nothing without the Lord's help.  I felt so inadequate coming into this exchange, I don't quite know why but I knew I needed to pray hard.  In my selfish worries of how I could help the sisters, it became very clear to me that my focus for the exchange would be to Listen.   I wrote that word down in my prayer journal like 8 times.... so Heavenly father was trying to tell me something.  How often do we seek answers and ask and ask and ask and ask and forget to listen?  How often do we learn how to ask questions and then fail to listen to the answer.  I have often felt so focused on how I'm doing as a missionary that I forget to listen to what people around me are saying.  Sometimes we have to listen for what they are not saying.  Sometimes it is really hard to hear the spirit, but if we open our ears we can hear.  One of my favorite stories in the Book of Mormon is in 3 Nephi, when the nephites are not able to hear what is being said until they open their ears to hear.  How in the world do you open your ears?   Maybe you know better than I do, but I know it's something that I am slowly learning how to do.  Maybe we can all work on it together.

Yesterday during testimony meeting a little miracle happened.   We have been working with this sweet and kind of sarcastic girl named Krista.  I love her to death, we call her just about every day because she just needs to do missionary things (she wants to go on a mission but is snailing her way there :))  She got up during sacrament meeting and told the congregation how much her testimony has grown because we have been so persistent with her.  She has been coming to church almost regularly and is preparing to go to the temple.  It was such a sweet moment when I realized that the lord's work is perfect and if He sent me across the country to help Krista so she can go on a mission somewhere else in the world and bring people to Christ, well then I have accomplished the Miracle he sent me here to do.    It was a very sweet realization.

Other miracles, we have a new investigator named Jason, he's pretty golden and it's really exciting! Cool to because his 3 Sons are pretty closely related to Joseph Smith.  Sister Youngberg and I keep noticing how incredible the spirit of Joseph Smith is when we teach.  It's really cool.  We are excited to see him start to progress! He came to church so we're on our way!   I love this work.  It's amazing.

Keep doing what you're doing because I know the Lord is so proud of all of you and your hard work.  Thank you for being such an incredible support to me.  I love each of you so very much.   Good luck with everything!  Happy birthday to this week's March People! (Stuart!)  Hope you are all enjoying getting old this month (I crack myself up sometimes... haha)  Love you to the moon and space!

Love Always,

Sister McMaster