Come Follow Me: The Atonement helps Anything!

July 25, 2016

Hello family and loved ones! Well how are you? Sounds like a good week for everyone and I'm glad all is well for everyone there in St. George and summer vacation. Well I'll be honest, this week we weren't able to go out and do a lot because of the knee but we do have some good experiences still and I have some spiritual thoughts I want to share. Sorry, not very exciting this week. So this week we had Branch Conference. President and Sister a Welch came to our area. Boy is that always the best, I LOVE the Welch's so much. They are parents to me here in Japan and just are so close to the spirit. We also had interviews with President Welch this week. Those are my favorite things ever. I always feel the spirit so strong and so much love from him. I can testify, mission president are for sure called by God, they know everything. I compare them to moms because he seriously knows all we feel and everything. It's amazing. Well after branch conference a member came up to us sisters and said Dohi Shimai is having a hard time, will visit her with me? And of course we would love to do that. Dohi Shimai has some disease I don't know but her body always hurts, especially her back. She can't eat really and just struggles. So we went to her house, gave her some goodies and just listened to her. She has a hard time trusting God now and she never lets us pray but we said can we pray together please before we leave and she let us. My companion said it and the spirit was so strong and I could feel the love God has for her. Even though she says she can't feel it, I know deep in her heart she can feel it. It was just a neat moment to know we all felt they warmth in our heart whether she says she did or not. God loves all his children no matter trial he gives to them. Last I want to share the spiritual thought and challenge this week. So I was reading a talk from August 2016 Liahona by Elder Bednard called Accepting the Lords Will and Timing. So I won't spoil the story but it talks a lot about faith and I want to share a quote that changed my view of faith. "After this experience, I knew that having faith--at least in my circumstance--was not necessarily knowing that he would heal me, but that He could heal me. I had to believe that He could, and then whether it happened was up to Him." Faith to me has always been having faith it'll happen, which is right but after reading this, I realize that faith is knowing it can happen but accepting either results. And boy do I need to work on that, I know for me faith is just k he can do this and now do it please ha but it's not that. True strong faith is knowing he can but being willing to accept any result because you know it's his plan. I know God has a plan for us even if it's not the plan we want. I challenge you all to read this talk and look at your faith and see if you could have this faith the people have in the story. If not quite, pray, use the atonement, and strengthen your faith to trust his plan. I know it'll bless your life, and I know it's through the atonement that we can strengthen our weaknesses or even our strengths. This church is so true, Christ died for us, and he wants us to do all we can to become like him. I know it's all true. I love you all and miss you like crazy. Keep staying close to your savior in good or bad. #RELY #FAITH スミス姉妹 Smith Shimai