Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Lovest Thou Me?

How great was General Conference?! So, so great, but it went by way too fast! I am sure your experience was wonderful, but I promise you that mine was better. I truly believe that the best General Conferences are those while on your mission. My experience was also better because I was in a church packed full with Brazilians when a new temple in Brazil was announced. Everyone went nuts, including me! Also, there is no better feeling than watching General Conference with those investigating the church … it was such a special weekend. I know that as we listen to our prophets and the apostles we are truly hearing the words of our Heavenly Father. I am excited to study those talks for the next six months!

This week we had a cool experience with one of our investigators. We got to her house with the intent of showing her an awesome message that I will attach as a link below. We got there and I was trying to pull up the video, but the computer seemed possessed by Satan himself. I have never seen a virus so bad in my life. The computer was typing on its own and doing whatever it wanted. I was working on a video clip on lds.org for 45 minutes. I was determined. I was trying to cast out the devils in the computer in my mind, yelling "Sae Satanas"! Haha, it was funny but I was frustrated. I was saying prayers over and over in my head. Then the Spirit prompted me to invite our investigator to pray and ask for the computer to work. She prayed, and the next time I tried it worked perfectly! I didn’t even watch the video because my eyes were shut the whole time praying that it would continue to work. It was a cute and spiritual experience. It was like Heavenly Father telling me " Sister Vance, you can’t do this work alone, ask me for help, even in the smallest of details."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRYkedXJDS0

This week we had zone conference and it was so spiritual! When I had my interview with my mission president, we were talking when he stopped, looked at me and said, "Sister Vance, do you know how much you are loved?" I was a little taken aback by this, because it came out of the blue, and I answered that yeah, I think so. He paused, then said again, "Sister Vance do you know how much your Heavenly Father loves you?" When he said that, I felt the love of our Heavenly Father rush over me. I couldn’t respond. He then asked "Sister Vance, do you love your investigators?" He saw that I was unable to respond, but knew the answer through my tears. He paused and said, "I know you do." We continued to talk and after this interview I began to think about the love of our Heavenly Father. I can’t begin to imagine how much my Heavenly Father loves me … while I don’t understand, I know that he does. I realized that these three questions were correlated. When we know and really believe that we are loved by our Heavenly Father, and when we love Him, we truly love others. The first commandment is to love the Lord God with all our heart, might, mind and strength; and the second is to love others.

I have always said that love is spelled T-I-M-E. We love Him because He loved us first! We can’t just say that we love Heavenly father or Jesus Christ without showing it! That’s like a relationship where one person tells you that they love you, but they do jack squat for you! And what would you do with that person? You would dump him so fast! Haha, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get "dumped" by our Heavenly Father, because I need His help! So how can we show Heavenly Father that we love Him? We can show Him through serving others, keeping the commandments and following the perfect example of our Savior! I’m trying to do that … everything I do here is out of love.

When I finish my mission, the only important thing to me will be if I can say that I truly loved these people here; the way the Savior loves them. To do that, I will need to do everything I can, put their needs before my own, and work as hard as I can to bring them to the joy of the gospel. Truly … love never fails.

Love you all!

Sister Vance

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