Turquoise Door and Notebook of Faith

Hi Family!!

Happy February. Happy Monday. Thanks for writing me and sending pictures of your lives. I love love it. Everyone looks good.. like life is going well. Love to see that :)

Well we are officially in our FE de FEBRERO. We had a meeting about what were going to do, focus on, how were going to work hard, and are promised that we WILL see MILAGROS en MARZO. Each of us are studying extra hard and diligently this month (we have a cute chart that we get to color each day:)), we can only listen to music from the Tabernacle Choir (thank you ipod. I have LOTS), were also all making different sacrifices.  We’re not have zone activities on P-days this month, and we each get to choose a personal sacrifice or something we want to change. I’ve decided on a few different things, but one of them is about email time. And I would love your guys help. I’m going to spend some of my time on the computer finding and printing off talks, so this month I probably will only have time to write my family. But I also would love to hear thoughts, from each of you. Your testimony, quotes, talks, feelings on FAITH (or anything else important that you want to share). I’m making a notebook of scriptures and thoughts on faith, and it would be even more special if I could add things from you guys. 

So this month.. is obviously going to be very special. I’m so excited to see the miracles that come along with our faith. But I’m also excited to exercise my faith... even in rejections and disappointments. We got to practice that yesterday when a few of the people we have with baptismal dates didn’t come to church (after passing by their house every day to talk, asking about what they’re learning, and reminding them about church on Sunday). But I know that the Lord works in HIS timing. And he will help us as we keep trying.

This week we got to do lots of random acts of service during the day as we walked from appointment to appointment and just talked to people. One of those was help someone paint their front door turquoise. (I wish more of us had turquoise doors in the USofA) But it was great to use our painting skills and share the first lesson as we did. The down side was they gave us a HUGE plate of lunch to say thank you, right after we had left our lunch appointment. I don’t know HOW I got it all down. But it was a good break during the day nonetheless. I’ll send a picture :)

Painting...!

Right now here in Ecuador is a huge holiday.. called Carnival. Everyone is out of school, and everything is closed (we finally found ONE internet open to write today). It’s pretty much one big water fight everywhere. It kind of reminds me of the water parade in Eagle. Today technically was the first day, but it’s been going on for about a week so we’ve had to be really careful walking around. People throw water balloons from their windows, cars driving by, there are water guns everywhere and tons of people have these bottles of foam that they squirt. Apparently during these few days no one has respect for anyone. If you’re out in the street, it’s fair game... so we had to stay inside all day today to protect ourselves. People also throw flour, eggs, paint... I think anything they can find. We’ve been lucky and only gotten a few water balloons and one big thing of wet foam thrown at us. But.. I’ll keep you posted about the rest of the week :)

Today, because we had to stay in for the day, I decided to start on my notebook of faith. I read articles from the Liahona, which took me to scriptures, which took me to True to the Faith, and back to another article. Man... if I could have more days like this :) I loved being able to sit on my bed for a couple of hours and just read, and think about the plan that Heavenly Father has for us. It’s times like that when it is just so easy to see it all.. Why we’re here, what we need to do, why we have trials, and where we can find happiness. But... it’s out in the real world when all of that is really put to the test.

Visits with a member in our ward.

I left my notebook at home.. but I loved a quote I read from President Uchtdorf that said something like.. "Sometimes it seems like our prayers aren’t answered right away. Or like they’ll never be answered at all, but we need to have faith that the one who knows all is in charge. One day we will look back and realize that our circumstances now were blessings from the Lord."

I know that the Lord has so much good prepared for us. I can just imagine that he’s up there saying... "Just trust. If only you knew what I have prepared for you." And that is faith, trusting that HE will help us in any circumstance we are in. It’s sure something I am trying to improve. 

Thank you all for your love and support. I know that the Savior loves us. I know that we really are never ever alone. He is shaping us into the people he knows we can and will become. 

Love you all! Don’t forget to send me your thoughts :)

Love Hermana Yorgason