Kalene's Mission Blog

Kalene's Mission Blog

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Armadillos Carry Leprosy

Don't worry too much.... maybe worry a little. We see roadkill armadillos around here all the time (we've yet to see a live one and sister McCleery has been out almost a year). But everyone will tell you: "don't touch the armadillos; they can carry leprosy and it can transfer to humans." Well... isn't that a fun thought. It's something we've been rather dismissive of but one of our investigators has a sister who has something wrong with her leg and we're 20% convinced that she touched an armadillo and got it. But, if you're going to worry about me, you should worry about the mosquitos. They're pterodactyls down here. So I want all of you to be praying that they decide to include the Texas Houston South Mission in the missions where sisters are allowed to wear dress pants.😜

Something interesting I came across while I was preparing for a talk on baptism for a district meeting. On the mission, our commission is to "Teach repentance and baptize converts." Did you know that's the final commission that Christ leaves with his apostles? Matthew 28:19 says "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And as we fulfill that commission of the Lord, he'll be "with you always." I know I've felt his presence in my life while I've been out here.

The Sabbath was great yesterday. We started the day by going to PEC where I wrote down a quote from the Bishop that I thought was funny: "Thou shalt not do that." I thought it was funny but I think it's a really great way of summarizing the 10 commandments. The people weren't ready for the next step of God's law so he had to give rules to the house of Israel the same way we give them to children - in essence - "thou shalt not do that." But as we grow and progress the thou shalt's change. They become "thou should be's." The Lord wants us  to make good choices in our life. Choices that help us become the person we're capable of being. And the first counselor spoke about how "The Lord has a system that produces predictable results. The cool thing about the system is that it works on imperfect people like us ... like me."

And in Sunday school we talked about repentance. And Sister Ellis had a wonderful comment "Like water, in life things that stand still become stagnant. So, I'm thankful that the Lord stirs me up." It's so true. And I'm thankful the Lord has given us a way to clear the waters, to progress, to release weights that burden us. In third hour, we went over President Uchtdorf's priesthood session talk (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/04/in-praise-of-those-who-save?lang=eng). I really enjoyed it but something that really stuck out to me was when the scripture was quoted "charity never faileth." And for a second I thought, I don't know about you but it's pretty hard to be filled with charity all the time so obviously it's not perfect. But then I thought charity never faileth doesn't mean that we never fail at having charity; it means that charity is the solution to almost every problem we have in this life. If we have true christ-like love in every situation and for every person, the problems we face in life cease to be problems.

Our investigator Chuck got his paycheck on Friday. He payed all of his bills and was left with some (what he calls) walking around money. He told us previously that he was worried about that. He knew he'd spend it on alcohol. He did. We were disappointed; not in him but for him. But we had a great member there with us when we taught him a lesson yesterday who has also been overcoming addiction. And he said many encouraging things, mainly that repentance is there because we mess up and as we continue to repent it becomes easier and the mistakes become fewer. But like I talked about previously, some people think they run out of chances to repent. But I liked what our member said "I can repent as many times as I mean it."

Oh, by the way, we had THREE investigators in church!!! That's a record. We've been really busy these past couple of weeks but the work's been great.

Hope y'all have a great week too

--
Sister Gillespie

No comments:

Post a Comment