Week Thirty Three: Rejected but Redirected

Jammie hearts we made!

Hello! I wanted to give a quick rundown of my week....first off, I got a call from President Green last night and he asked me to train! Pretty gutted because Sister Whitby will be going all the way up to Hartleypool, but I'm looking forward to training a new sister! I swear I was just in that chapel, a new wide-eye missionary, looking out at all the trainers wondering which would be mine. Now here I am, 7 months later, wondering where all of that time went!

Last week with Sister Whitby.😢 I have loved being comps with her!!!

On Thursday we taught our friend P. As Sister Whitby and I discussed what we should teach him, she said that she felt prompted that we should only teach him the first principle of lesson #3 instead of the whole lesson. I wasn't sure why, but I trusted her. We spent the whole hour talking about Jesus Christ and his atonement. Later that night we had Come Follow Me study group and to our surprise, P. turned up! As we discussed the readings and prompts from this week they were all centered around Christ's atonement. It's so incredible to have experiences like this where the spirit prompts you to do a certain thing, then you are able to see why afterwards. I feel like the amount of times this happens on a mission is like, tripled! So cool!

Ruby. Relief society president..I love her

On Friday we were able to help Sally set up a family history account to prepare for the temple. As soon as she entered in her granddad's name, a few generations prior appeared. She discovered that a distant cousin of hers was a member and had already done some of her work. She was absolutely thrilled. The more I do family history, the more I love it!

Sister Whitby painted this for Ruby

Ok...Come Follow Me. Did anyone else just love it this week?! I got so much out of it. One of my favourite verses was 2 nephi 10:20-

"And now, my beloved brethren, seeing that our merciful God has given us so great knowledge concerning these things, let us remember him, and lay aside our sins, and not hang down our heads, for we are not cast off; nevertheless, we have been driven out of the land of our inheritance; but we have been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path, and we are upon an isle of the sea."

Sister Whitby drew this. (She is currently an art major at Utah State 2023)

The part I want to focus on is the last bit. Jacob explains that although they'd been driven out of the land of their inheritance, they "have been led to a better land." How many times does our life not go the way we think it should? We didn't get the job, we didn't make the team, we got declined, rejected, but then, redirected. The Lord sometimes redirects us "out of the land of our inheritance" to give us a better opportunity further down the road.

When you ask the Lord for something, he will never answer no. He will answer: yes, not yet, or, I have something better for you. Trust that he knows all things. We don't see the big picture, but he does. Amidst the troubles of life, trust him enough to cheerfully lift up your head and say, "the Lord has something better in store for me." This is something I'm really striving to do out here in the middle of England.