Fat Joke of the Century

Hola Familia,

Judging by everyone's emails, this week was kind of crazy for you guys!  I am so glad that everyone is doing fine and that Emily received her call! That is so awesome!

Now, I am pretty secure here in Paraguay with my physical appearance and all that, but today we had a zone activity with something that we weren't sure if we should be ashamed of,  or if we should just go with it, so we just went with it.  We had a BOUNCY HOUSE at a zone activity.  Eesh. We had a blast!  At one point, there were three North American sisters (all about my size) trying to climb to the top of the slide through the slide.  Well, we got up there and all of a sudden, the top part started to cave in.  We were like...haha, it is just because the other hermana is coming!  So we sat there at the top of this giant bouncy slide and all of the sudden, the top part started to collapse all of the way, and the slide TIPPED OVER...just because we were sitting at the top.  We totally fell off the side when it tipped over. we were embarrassed a little bit...but, at least there were three of us so we could all take a little bit of the blame:) But still, we tipped over a huge bouncy slide, who can say fat joke?

Another experience that made me giggle was on Thursday, when we went to lunch, turns out there was a huge party going on, and one of the moms who came brought her two twin boys, her ONLY children, with a nanny for each one.  I just giggled inside as the mom talked about how hard her life was, and I was thinking, "You think your life is hard?  You should see my Aunt Laurie.  She goes DEER HUNTING with twins and 3 other small children. So there:)"  Laurie, you are awesome!  As well as all of my aunts, my grandma, and my mom!  you are all such wonderful examples of dedicating your life to your family.  It makes such a difference!

I have been thinking a lot about the whole love and charity thing.  I was reading in Moroni 7, and it says that the true disciples of Christ are the ones who have the true charity.  So, you need to tell mom that she can't kill you, because she needs to have charity;) (I sent her a singing Valentine in front of A LOT of people), and also, it says in this verse how if we want charity, we need to ask for it, because for most, it doesn't come naturally.

In preach my gospel it talks about how the Atonement was done because of the love of Jesus Christ, not only for His Father but for us as well.  Everything that we do as servants of Christ is because of our love for Christ and our appreciation of what He did for us.  If we don't feel the need to do it, it is because we don't have charity.

As far as my contacting, I am still struggling.  I contact, but it isn't nearly enough. We have so much to do that a lot of the times I use the excuse we don't have time or we need to go.  But the other day I felt an impression to talk to a teen girl, and in talking to her we found a less active and an old investigator.  So, I need to contact more, and not "quench the Spirit", because that is what I have been doing.  Just relax and feel the Spirit and have my priorities straight.

As far as the work goes, we had zone conference on Tuesday, and we were there all day because we had interviews with President McMullin.  They went really well, and we had some interesting conversations.  The focus was on goals and on the desire to make goals, work to meet them, and all that.  We went to the AP and he sat us down and said, "When you begin to have relationships with someone who could be your future spouse, at what point in your relationship will you set goals?"  We were like....WHAT?  ELDER.  Number 1: We don't say or talk about the "M" word in the mission. Number 2:  Why on earth would we tell you? Yeah, that was slightly awkward at first.

Something that I really liked from this conference was that we talked about desire. They gave us a talk by Dallin H. Oaks, which talked about how our desires determine our priorities, our priorities determine our choices, and our choices determine our actions, which determine our salvation.  Really, if we want something badly enough, we will be able to accomplish it, with the help of the Lord, and lots and lots of work.  I love being a missionary, and even though sometimes it really just stinks, I know that nothing will happen that I will not be able to overcome, because we all have a loving Heavenly Father who knows us and our weaknesses perfectly.

Also, something that I just realized is that this week makes one year since I opened my call!  The time is going by so flipping fast.  Random question...is my plaque in the church?  How weird...19 years of my life i looked at all of the missionary plaques...weird.  Everyone is just growing up so incredibly fast and moving on and making choices.  Loca es.

I love you all and I hope you have a good week!

Love,

Hermana Farish