Hermana Samantha Yorgason: February of Faith

Hi Family!!!

Thank you everyone for writing me! Snow snow and more snow it sounds like. Glad everyone is holding up. And getting lots and lots of practice with shoveling the driveway :)

Sometimes I feel like the weeks of the mission blur into one. But it was a good week. My companion and I both got over our sicknesses and got back to work. I saw both how the Lord helps us so much and also how Satan wants the ruin everything we do. Again this week... I learned so much from my studies in the morning. The sad part is my brain isn’t good enough to remember every detail of every scripture I read, but I love the spirit that comes from the Book of Mormon.

Mercedes' baptism.

This week we had a baptism of a lady named Mercedes. Ah, it was a great day, and (although she let us all know how cccold the water was), she was so happy. A few of her kids are members, and she actually has one daughter on a mission, and it was cool to see them all support her. The Lord really helped us, and helped her understand what we were teaching and her number 1 success... she learned how to pray. And she does it every night. I’m so excited to hear what her daughter that is on her mission says... I know the Lord helps the families of his missionaries. As you’ll see from the pictures... Mercedes always wears the clothes of Otavalo. Especially with the older generation here, that is the norm. So... my companion and I decided to celebrate the occasion and wear the little part of the Otavalian outfit that we have. (Someone in our ward gave us both skirts.. A blessing because they’re like 70 dollars). Anyway… I'll send pictures of that :)

Our Otavalian outfits.

We taught one of the part member families here how to make pancakes.
They had never cooked or eaten them... so they were pretty excited :)

We have a few different people working towards baptismal dates, but like I said, satan works hard and for some reason... attending church is just always a battle. I guess it’s because people like to sleep and our church is a little further away, but luckily we have a GREAT ward, and the members here are soo willing and happy to help, do visits, and become friends with anyone new we bring to church.

Right now we’re teaching a family of 9. The mom is 27 years old, their house is about the size of our kitchen, they have 7 kids, and the dad has been in and out of jail because his other wife wants more money from him. It’s such a hard situation, but so humbling to see that they still have faith that the Lord is watching over us. Reminds me to count my blessings.

February is starting, which means the month of faith in our mission is starting. "Fe de Febrero trae Milagros en Marzo." I am super excited to study, learn about and exercise just a bit more of my faith. We had a really cool lesson in our zone meeting to start off the month. We were all blind folded and one by one had to walk off the stage... onto a table, and then more tables, that we didn’t know were there. It was so cool to be able to physically FEEL what faith is like.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to know that the Lord.. really is guiding our lives. "Men accomplish marvelous things by trusting in the Lord and keeping his commandments- by exercising faith even when they don’t know how the Lord is shaping them." I’ve learned that having true faith, is trusting that the Lord will bless us, but letting him decide HOW he will bless us.

Thank you for your letters and love. I know without a doubt that this is the Lord’s work. He is in charge, and when we trust in Him, he can do more with us than we could ever do on our own.