Life Perspectives

Date: Tuesday, June 9

Hallo Familie!

Ich bin so dankbar für euch! I am so thankful for y'all! Thank you so much mom and little brothers for your emails. You don´t realize how much it means to hear from you. Ritchie will soon understand. :) It is always great to hear from you. I loved hearing how Chris is so excited to be in high school with Jason, and that Ritchie loves working at Broulims with Chris. Family really is where it's at. Chris that is so cool that you like working more than sitting around. I have found that to be an eternal principle. Work is much better than being idle. It makes you feel good, that is for sure. Um, as for the clock forest, I don´t know why they have it either. :) But I thought it was cool. They have some other random things here, but it´s cool. I hope you all had fun at the Fitzgerald reunion at Lagoon. Did it rain? It sure rained hear on Sunday evening. We were walking to an appointment and it just started pouring really hard. I just started laughing, I thought it was so funny, until I got soaked. Then it wasn´t funny any more. :) When we got to our appointment she asked us if we wanted a brush for our hair. :) I love being a missionary. It is so funny. Also, yesterday we were street contacting and we ran into this lady and started talking to her. And she stopped and started talking to us about her mother. I caught a lot of things, but couldn't connect everything together. So at the end we gave her a pass along card and I decided to give her the one that talked about families because I knew she had said something about her mother and how she might die in a few years how she had just gotten out of the hospital. After she was gone my companion just started laughing and I asked why. She said, "She just went off for 10 minutes telling us how much she didn't like her mom and you gave her the Family Home Evening pass along card." I manage to do that a lot. My German is coming, but it also has room for improvement. :)

So I have been thinking about mission life. I do it a lot. And I think I touched on it before but it amazes me what an amazing perspective it gives you. I feel like mission life is a life within a life. It just shows you what life really is all about. You prepare (home & MTC), your born (golden\greenie), you live, you might train, then you die (you go home). I feel like mission life is a preview of what life is. Anyway I am just so grateful for the perspective that it gives me. I just thank the Lord everyday for this amazing opportunity he has given to me, to be a missionary.

I have also thought about the 13th article of faith a lot. So many people talk about trials, why does God let that happen, why are good people hurt by bad people? I think about it a lot, and although we don't know the mind of God, I think 2 Nephi 2 provides some good answers. Everyone has agency and in order to grow there has to be opposition. There has to be. Sometimes when I have wondered why some things are so hard though, I have thought of the 13th article of faith. "We hope to be able to endure all things." Our goal is to overcome all things, in Christ. With faith in Christ we can endure all things, we can overcome all things. We can't do it on our own, but we can with faith in Christ. Faith is powerful. And we show our faith by our works. Those works are as simple and as powerful as studying the scriptures, praying (to God our Father who knows all things, and loves us and wants to share with us everything he has), attending church, keeping the commandments, and serving. By small things, great things are brought to pass. I love the song by the Goodman Family, "Start where you are make the best of whatever. Start where you are make the best of forever." We make a lot of mistakes, but we repent and move on, make the best of whatever forever.

Well I better go, but I love you all. And I hope you don't mind all my thoughts. I just thought today that you probably would like to hear more about Germany, or investigators, but I feel like these thoughts have a lot to do with missionary work as well. I will try to share more German mission stuff in general though.

Love
Sister Fitzgerald

P.S.
I thought of some other German things. They have milk here that is so pasterized that it doesn´t need to be refrigerated. It is milk from a cow that instead of putting in the fridge you can put in the cupboard for a couple years. It´s pretty interesting.
I have Arthella´s address, but could you get Ruth´s mission address for me? And yea we do have all the standard works in German. I think most languages do. That's a lie, we don't have the Bible in German, but everything owned by the church we do. The footnotes just aren't as extensive.
Also, a favorite quote of the week:
"Attitude determines altitude"