Happy 4th of July & 100 Year Old Windmill in Bocking

Hey everyone! Thanks for stopping by. This week went by fast as usual. When we have goals to work towards and appointments to look forward to, time just flies by. As always, there are some times where we feel discouraged and want to quit, but there is always a way for us to feel uplifted if we look hard enough. Highlights of the week: we got to meet President and Sister Stevens on Wednesday and also had a fantastic dinner that night, we have a family to work with and other new potential families, and we had a great 4th of July.

First off, I am so grateful I got to know President and Sister Jordan. They were truly wonderful in greeting us greenies for the first time and for their wise words to all of us. I only have been with them for three weeks and met with them a few times, but I do miss them. With that, I have been looking forward to meeting President and Sister Stevens for months now, and it was all and more that I was looking forward to. They are great! We have interviews with them tomorrow (7/715) and I am really looking forward to that.

What I wanted to address about my 4th of July really is about an experience I had while reading the Book of Mormon. We get the question all the time of "if God were real, why doesn't He stop all the bad in the world? Like all the poverty and violence and so forth". My answer for that is that God gives all of us agency and challenges that are individual to us to help us grow and progress, but I wanted more firepower in my answer, so I turned to the Book of Mormon and prayer. I said a prayer that I wanted to learn more about this and have a better answer, and before I even said "amen" I had Moroni 7 pop into my mind. I came across this: Moroni 7:12-19 (pg 521-522). The basic message is this: you can't blame God for the evil things in the world because the devil is unleashed and it is up to us to make the judgement of what is of God and what is of the devil. We each have this ability to judge because "the Spirit of Christ is given unto every man, that he may know good from evil" (Moroni 7:15).

So why do bad things happen in the world to good people and bad people alike? We, as humans, have the ability to make good and bad choices, and the ability to judge good from bad. Luckily, we have the Light of Christ and the Holy Spirit to help guide us to right decisions, though we can choose to reject these promptings. We also have unforeseen challenges and roadblocks placed in our path because life was meant to be a challenge. If life were meant to be a cakewalk and we sat around all day learning nothing, what would be the point? Luckily we are promised that for every challenge and temptation we come across, we are meant to overcome it (1 Corinthians 10:13). We are here to make choices, learn from our mistakes and repent of them, and work to be better every day so that one day we can live with God and our families forever.

Upcoming this week we are in Chelmsford today for p-day on a photo scavenger hunt, tomorrow we are in Ipswich for interviews, correlation meeting on Thursday, and dinner appointments. Yum. I love food.

Until next week, cheers!

P.S. I do love getting personal emails so email me!