March 5, 2012

Hola!!

Can you feel the winds of change?? I can! I was so sure that I was NOT leaving my current sector, that, after getting emotional while bearing my testimony in church yesterday and having all the members ask me if I was leaving, I reassured them all that I was most likely NOT leaving.

Well, the Zone Leaders called us last night to give me extra time to pack my bags:( Ironically I am switching places with my companion from the MTC, and we are the only hermanas who are changing this time. Big surprise! I can`t believe it.

I am very sad to leave this place and these people that I have grown to love so much. But I am excited to go to a new place and meet new people. Today will be a sad day of saying goodbye. My dad used to have in his house a frame saying, it said something along the lines of , "We never really leave a place we love, part of it we take with us and part of us we leave behind." This is so true. This sector is a place I will love for all of my life and will always want to come back, but I'll take a part of it with me - the things I have learned and experienced here and the friendships I have made - and I will leave a part of me here - the memories that I have left behind.

Change is always hard, but always brings new growth and new friendships.

I won't be able to write very much today because there is a lot to do! and this morning we went to visit a place near our sector that is in the mountains and close to two rivers. We had a great time and came back tired, but happy.

The scripture of the week that I had been thinking about over and over, and even more now that I am getting transfered is in Mosaiah 3:19:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

Especially the part that says that we need to be willing to submit to all things which the Lord puts in our path, whatever it be. I am excited to get to my new sector and see what the Lord has in store for me there and what work He would have me do in another part of this beautiful country of Chile:)

Much love, Hermana Bowns
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