"Despite our difficult circumstances we choose to be happy."

    Sorry for not writing last week. Here are the updates! 
    Our investigator David, who we've been teaching for about 3 months finally came to church! He's been having a hard time getting there because of work, but prayers have been answered and he came! We went to the English service and it was great! He loved it! He now has a baptismal date for August 9th! 
Yesterday we planned to go visit a Inactive Sister, who lives next door to a member, who happens to live in the same complex as David. Hope this makes sense. We are walking to go and visit her and we see that Hno. Marquez (MEMBER) and David were talking! We stop and talk to them for a little then excuse ourselves to go visit the Sister. We knock on her door but she asked us to come by another day. We go back to talk to David and we ask him if he has time right now to watch a movie. He said yes, so we watch a movie called Jospeh Smith. It was awesome! The movie is about an hour long, so after that we talk and testify of Joseph Smith. The Spirit was there, and it was strong. We told David that in order to know for himself, he would have to pray and that he would gain his own knowledge through the Holy Spirit. David shared that he knew that we were placed there for a reason, and that there were no coincidences. 
     We've been teaching an old lady named Maria, very funny but stubborn! She never wants to pray out loud! But some Elders gave us an Idea that they did. We asked Maria what was something she was grateful for. We wrote them down. Then we asked her what are somethings she needed, and we wrote that down. We put "Dear Heavenly Father" in the beginning and "in the name of Jesus Christ" at the end, and told her to read it out loud. She did, and we told her that she just prayed out loud. She said, "oh, it's that simple!' Yes it was! 
      Something that I have recently noticed is that there is always a plan in the lords work. Meaning that the Lord prepares the way for this work to go forward. He does that by giving us tools to better ourselves,  (scritpures, PMG...) so that we can be more qualified and prepared for this work. He also prepares members, through their own experience. Probably the most important way is by preparing the hearts of the people we are teaching, meaning our investigators. We meet lots of people who have lots of hardships, financially, emotionally, physically, mentally. All that they go through helps them be prepared to receive this gospel. Now I am not saying that I feel no sympathy, of course I do, but I know that it's an experience they need to go through. We are given things to overcome so that we can be edified. In the museum that I serve in, there is a quote that I like to use, "Despite our difficult circumstances we chose to be happy". Heavenly father has given us agency. The ability to chose for ourselves. What a blessing! We can choose to look at hardships as something that stops us or limits us, or choose to see it as a learning/growing experience. 
      Recently I've been reading a book called "Our Search for Happiness" by Elder Ballard. It's all about this restored gospel. How it came to pass, our beliefs and it's a very simple yet powerful book!  Everyone should read it. Members or non-Members. 
I hope everyone has a good week! 
-Hermana Recinos!