Families Can Be Forever

Hello my family and friends!

I hope that everyone is not too cold. I hear that the US has been practically frozen lately but don't worry i'm soaking up plenty of sun here! Ah! Well, what can I say about this week. It was pretty amazing! Even though we don't have a huge teaching pool yet since we are whitewashing we are definitely doing a good amount of finding and teaching! Hopefully all of the finding will pay off soon. One of the best things I guess I can say is that Thursday was our Zone Conference and so the mission president and his wife came and we had a day long conference where we had instruction and guidance on how to better do our missionary work. One of the biggest emphasis right now in Africa is family history. The church is definitely becoming more adaptable in a way that helps us in our missionary work. Since alot of the people here don't have internet or even know how to use the internet to be able to do family history the church has now provided us with family history booklets that people can record their family history by hand and then give it to other members who can get those names ready for them and take them to the temple. This is something that I definitely thought was amazing! One thing that I think alot of people miss about the gospel is that the family is central to God's plan and central to the gospel. We all lived with God before we came to earth. We were all connected. Being born on the earth has sort of seperated us from God and by being in families and by sealing our families together we are all connecting our families back together again and eventually sealing us all back together to God. That is the purpose of the gospel and it is what our Heavenly Father wants. So many people don't recognize that, and they don't recognize that Satan knows this is what God wants and so he attacks families. He wants us to be angry and fight with one another. He wants us to break apart because he knows that ultimately we will suffer and not truly be happy. That's why it is so important for us to build our families on the gospel. It is the only rock that cant break and the only thing that will keep our families together. I know that it is true and so I have definitely gained a greater appreciation from my family and I know how important it is to our Heavenly Father. So that was a wonderful day and I learned alot of things that have definitely changed my life.

This week has also been a very great one as I have been able to better feel and recognize the importance of the spirit and living in a way that we can feel the spirit. This week we had a relief society activity and it went a little longer than we thought and we only had like an hour to go teaching so we were trying to decided whether we should go out to the area that we planned to work in or should we just stay close to home and do contacting. So we decided, why not! Lets just go ahead and go out to the area we planned, we wouldn't have much time but we would have some. So one of the recent converts lives in this area and so we decide we will go and visit him. So we go to his house and we find that he is out of town. We were a little sad but then we met his sister and we started talking to her. A little while later her husband comes in and actually asks us to share with them our message. As we teach i'm I can tell that he is being totally defensive. Everything we say about the church, or Joseph Smith he tries to pose an objection. It came to a point where I was just answering all of these questions and I had no idea how but the words... they just came to me. That was a truly wonderful moment as I knew that Heavenly Father was speaking through me because I couldn't even remember what I said but I can see in his eyes that his heart was softened and even afterwards he offered to walk us to the kombi (African bus). It was really a great experience and I know that the spirit had touched his heart through me and that we were lead to go there and meet this family and I have such great hopes for them and what will happen. I know that God places people in our lives for a reason and that sometimes he touches their lives through us. I have a strong testimony of the gospel and I know that all of it is true. I hope that one day everyone will able to experience the joy that the gospel brings. It truly is good news!

Agh, I love you all!!!!!!!

Love

Sister Scott