If it is to be, it is up to me!

Sister Weaver.. Sister Stewart.. Sister Saili

Hola mi familia!!!

                          

Como estan? This week has been so great.  First of all, can you believe it that it has been a whole month since Ive been here???  That means i am 1/18 way done.  Not too shabby!  Guess what i finished the book of mormon today.　I started it when i first got here.  I actually got to finish it in the celestial room at the temple today.  It was pretty cool.  So I have had two way cool experiences happen to me this week, so in this email i will probably just talk about them if thats alright.  

So to start off with i will talk about what happened on thursday.  Thursday we went on companionship splits with the other hermanas in our disctrict.  So now i have officially had 4 companions in a four week duration... i think that is a record for missionaries!  any way i was with Hermana Wade she is 25 and she has her nursing degree and she is going to guatamala to be a missionary and a nurse for missionaries.  So for gymn we went out to the field and played sand volleyball me and her and Hermana Weaver(one of my companions) and Hermana Orr(Hermana wades companion) and we joined in with a group of 8 elders that are going to some weird country.  ANy way so we were playing and i realized that i had lost my earing.  I was really sad because it was my favorite pair of earings that i where all the time.  Hermana Weaver suggested that we pray to find it.  I kind of thought it was silly because after all it was just an earing, but all the other hermanas and elders thought it be a good idea too.  I told hermana weaver to pray because she probably had more faith than i did.  She said the simplest little prayer as we were all gathered around one another.  She prayed that we would find my earing.  We all looked around for about 10 minutes or so but we had no luck.  There was so much sand and the chances of us finding it was really slim.  I told everyone to stop looking for it and to just keep playing volleyball because we only had a few minutes left of gym and i really wanted to just keep playing.  It was time to go back to the Mtc so we were all putting our shoes on.  Part of me was still kind of sad becasue of the little faith i had i was really hoping we would have found it.  I was bending down tieing my shoe, and one of the elders came up to me.  He opened his hand and there was my earing.  It was one of those moments where there should be the "halaluja" music playing haha.  It was simply a miracle.  The Lord answered the little prayer of 12 of his little missionaries that day.  I learned alot that day about faith.  I was reading in Ether and it talks alot about miracles come after the trial of your faith.  I wish i had more time to write down all the little scriptures i found, but instead i just challenge you all to read Ether chapter 12 sometime this week.  Have faith in things you hope for and then excersise that faith.  I know that if you do this, the Lord will bless you.  

The second cool thing that i wanted to share with you is one of the coolest spriritual moments i have ever had.  I feel like i say that alot in the mtc, but that is because i am contantly surrounded by spiritual moments, but this one was particularly special because of the lesson that came out of it.  In class saturday night our teacher hermono mella was teaching us about teaching with the spirit and how can we be deserving of the spirit and then how to listen to it.  He told us to write down one thing we were going to do to be deserving and then to listen to it.  I had no idea what to write down.  I prayed to Heavenly Father to help me know what to do to be deserving.  I ended my prayer and wrote down one word on deserving..work.  And on listening i wrote "always be in an envirornment that welcomes the spirit."  anyways i didnt really think much of it until about 20 minutes later.  In 20 minutes my whole outlook and perspective on missionary work changed.  My teacher told us we were going to practice mock roll playing with our companions.  Yesterday we had to think of someone we knew that was either inactive or not mormon to play as an investigator for future little mock roll plays.  I chose to be Vera McCarthy haha.  So my companion Hermana Weaver was the Investigator and i was the missionary in this little roll play.  Hermana Sa'ili was with the teacher being an investigator.  So Hermana Weaver was giving me backround info on her investigator she was playing so i knew where to start with my lesson.  I then asked her who she was playing.  She told me "im not going to tell you."  So we just started rollplaying and i was asking her questions trying to see where she was at and trying to see what i needed to talk about to help her come unto christ.  Then i stopped.  I looked at Hermana Weaver.  I said to her "i know who you are playing, you are playing your sister huh."  I looked at her and both of us had tears rolling down from our eyes.  I then saw her not as Hermana Weaver or a fake investigator, but as a child of god.  I then came to realize why i am here.  I instantly loved this investigator.  The teacher got our attention and i looked around the room and every single person in my district including all four elders had tears coming from their eyes.  We sat in silence for probably a good 3 minutes or so.  Then teacher asked us what we learned.  Elder Friener couldnt even talk he was crying so hard.  He finally got the words "I saw how much elder wittier cared in his face and i realized how much i now care."  Its kind of hard to explain what happen and how we all felt in our classroom for that 20 minutes or so, but i can tell you this.  The spirit was so strong.  We all learned the exact same lesson and the exact same time in each of our individual mock lesson.  It was so amazing that we were all in tears.  Our teacher told us in all the time he has taught in the MTC that, that moment was the most spiritual moment he has ever had while being here.  It was simply amazing.  

This week has been filled with many spiritual experiences, but we have definitley had a lot of fun too.

One quick funny story about my companion Hermana Sa'ili from Tonga.  She is chill.  So while we were waiting for one of the devotionals to start i wanted to play tick tack toe with her.  She had never heard of it, so i explained all the rules to her.  We played one game of it, and that is probably going to be the last game she will ever play because after we played it once she said in her cute little tongan accent "that is the dumbest game ive ever played."  hahaha it was so funny.  A couple of days ago i was stading in front of the door way, and i guess i was in her way because she said "MOVE!"  and then i kind of laughed and was like, dont you mean "could you please move Hermana Stewart?"  Then she said, "NO, thats just too many words, now MOVE!" haha oh i sure love her!!! My companions are awesome.  My whole district is awesome.  It amazes me how close you can become with people in a 4 week period but that is because we are litterally with them 16 hours a day haha.  For gym we either go out to the field and i play spike ball with the elder while my companions walk around or we go to the main gym and i play basketball with the elders while my companions walk up on the track up stairs haha.  The elders are so much fun.  So i taught in relief society sunday and i totally sand a song in the middle of my lesson.  It was on faith in the atonement and i sang i know that my reedemer lives.  also on sunday me and elder pace are going to do a special singing musical number.  I Have found a real love for singing here.  Life is really great here.  I get my flight info in the next day or so and i cant wait to get out to georgia.  We had to say goodby to our other disctrict in our zone on monday.  That was really hard, so i cant even imagine how hard it will be to say by to my own district.  They are my family here.  Im going to try and be super diligent the next 12 days and take advantage of it all cus i know i wont have as much study time out in the field.  Keep the dear elders coming i love them!!  I love you all so so much!!  You are always in my prayers!!  Keep up the good work.  I love you and remeber "if it is to be, it is up to you!"  I cant wait to talk to you all next wednesday!!!!

Love, 

Hermana Stewart

xoxoxoxo

Being Abby as usual