6 MONTHS!!

I know it is so crazy that it is almost 6 months! I feel the exact same way as you! I feel like I have been out here forever but at the same time I feel like I slept in my bed at home last night! It is crazy! The time at home is passing by so fast because hearing from all the people in school and everything I feel like their year is just passing right by them! But I don't need anything specific right now and we have tons of warmers still so don't worry! But yeah I am thinking that I am going to send my Mr. Mac suits home maybe and some letters and things so that I don't have all of this stuff here! I am thinking I am going to send my winter stuff home in the summer too then I wont’ have as much stuff! But I am glad that Annie liked her sweatshirt! I was debating just keeping it and wearing it for me!

But for your lesson I think that gratitude definitely correlates with small miracles! I think recognizing the small miracles and being grateful for the Lord go hand in hand perfectly because for a person to be happy, it is not just one huge experience where we are all of a sudden full of joy for the rest of the month or something like that, we experience small little things everyday that we can be grateful for that make us happy! For me, I always try to be grateful for the small things because those are what bring to pass the great things like in Alma 37:6-7. As a missionary, we don't have huge miracles everyday where someone comes up to us and is just like I want to be baptized right now, but we have small things that happen every single day that contribute to people learning about the gospel. Like if I made someone smile, that is what makes me happy! If I get to teach a lesson to someone, that makes me happy! If I even just see other people happy that makes me happy! These are small miracles that we can see every day and we need to be grateful for all of the small moments in life! I think the Atonement applies to this perfectly because Jesus Christ does so much for us and died for us that we could be happy! We can be clean from our sins and we can always have his spirit to be with us! With his spirit we can feel his love and enjoy our time with our family! When we receive this happiness too we can just have that sure knowledge that we are all children of God and that is something that we should always be grateful for because we have a father we can always turn to! Being out here too, I thought oh my testimony would be perfect the whole time because I am a missionary, but I always am asking questions to the Lord to help me to know that these things are true. I have received strong answers at times but for the most part it is just a daily feeling of love and happiness. This is something I am truly grateful for! One idea that you could use for your lesson though is there are Mormon messages from 2013 that are called Daily Bread, you could watch these they are all on lds.org and that talks about how we need to lean on the Lord everyday and we need to continually rely on the Lord and his teachings and be grateful.  Sorry that is really long I just started typing and couldn't stop, but with your question you just answered some of my prayers and my questions.

But that is great that Grandpa Goodman is doing great and that Grandma is doing better! Please tell them that I love them and also to not worry about writing! I completely understand!

But this week has been a pretty basic week again.  We have been working a lot with Liz. We have an investigator though who is named Jesus and he is ready to get baptized and has a testimony.  He just wants to be baptized in a river and be anointed with oil and for the prophet to give him the priesthood, but he wants to be baptized so that is great!   I love the people here so much! 

! love you all so much and have a great day!  I am sending pictures of right before Christmas with Hermana Chinchilla and her daughter, Allison! I love them so much and I feel like Hermana Chinchilla is like a second mom to me!