Monday, November 28, 2016

Gratitude!

In honor of the wonderful holiday that is Thanksgiving, here are 7 things I'm grateful for!

1) My Heavenly Father and the knowledge I have of Him. 
We had a lesson with our investigator, Nastya, and we watched this video

In it, two girls talk about how they have self-confidence because they know they are daughters of God. Nastya turned to me after the video and asked, "Where does that confidence come from? How do I get it?" I shared with her the testimony I have recieved as I've been on my mission that my Heavenly Father loves me and because He loves me I don't need to compare myself or worry about what people think of me. All I need to worry about is what Heavenly Father thinks of me. If I am in good standing with Him, then that's good enough for me.

2) My Savior!

3) My Family
It's been a LONG time since I've seen them. And as it turns out a lot has changed since I left them, but my family has been the best support system I could have asked for even from hundreds of miles away. Oh how much I love them.

4) My companion!

Look she even comes with a bow on top!

But, I really do love her and I'm so grateful that she decided to extend her mini-mission so that we can kill each other off! She makes the best food and makes me clean things, so overall she's an ideal companion. 

5) My district!

This was our potluck lunch for Thanksgiving. We actually had pumpkin pie and turkey thanks to our awesome senior couple, the Lunds!

6) The fact that we got to our train to Rostov on time! BOTH WAYS!
That's a win my friends. Especially when you hit traffic in Rostov. It can get pretty bad. But, miraculously we still made it and we did not have to take a bus. Buses are the worst.


We had a selfie celebration of dramatic, Russian selfie poses.

7) My mission.
​I do not have words for the gratitude I feel when it comes to my mission. I have changed so much, learned so much, and become so much. I'm so grateful it's not over yet. My brother shared with me a beautiful thought this week. He has been reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the book Scrooge tells a man asking for Christmas donations something along the lines of how he hopes that the poor of the city would die of starvation to, as he says, "decrease the surplus population". Scrooge goes on to later say, "It's not my business. It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly." But, as the book goes on the point that Charles Dickens is trying to make is that "mankind is our business". I love that, and I know that my mission has taught me just that. Why else would Christ have come to the world? Why else would He die for us? It is because His business was to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. I know I'm trying to make that my business because I want to be like Him and live with Him again.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry start of the Christmas season in America!

Love,

Sister Jarvis

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