Week 55 - I Can Rest When I'm Dead

And just like that it's Saturday again! Crazy.

This week was incredible! We had zone conference on Tuesday, which put Sister Kropf and me on a spiritual high and renewed our convictions to be the best representatives of Christ we can be. We came home and immediately discussed some things that we needed to change, set some goals, and put plans in place to achieve them. The rest of the week was so much better as a result! While I know we were doing perfectly fine before, I also know that it's easy to let small things slip over time as you get busy. Reevaluating your progress, your efforts, and your desires regularly is SOOO important. If you want a hard core spiritual reevaluation, go read Alma 5. It is so amazing how we can repent every week, day, hour, and minute to try and align ourselves more with Christ.

With zone conference came interviews with President Howell, during which President expressed at length his gratitude for my contributions in the mission office and his confidence that no other missionary currently serving here could do what I'm doing as well as I'm doing it. I think he's exaggerating, personally, but nevertheless he asked me one fateful question: "Sister Balls, would you be willing to finish your mission in the mission office?" to which I replied "Yes." Thus why I can rest when I'm dead (for those of you unaware, it's mission terminology that going home from your mission is "dying"). I never pictured my mission to look like it did with COVID, and I certainly didn't picture it involving me sitting in a cubicle 8+ hours a day for eight months of it, but here we are! This will also mean that I spent over half of my mission in Bismarck, and only 6 weeks outside of the Bismarck zone. Wild. 

Pretty cool experience happened yesterday where Lexi called us and asked us to come over. She expressed pretty intense guilt and sorrow over something she'd said to a friend, so we taught her how to repent again and she asked if we could pray with her and help her repent right there, so we got to kneel down with her as she poured out her heart to her Heavenly Father, confessing her mistake, apologizing, and asking for forgiveness and the strength to change. She knows it's a process that doesn't happen all at once, but just this morning she called again asking for a refresher of how to repent so she can keep trying to become better and closer to our Savior. It was such a sweet experience! Repenting is the best, I promise.

Oh, and the morning of zone conference we got a text from this woman I've been talking to asking if we could grab her some gas because her car was empty, her phone was dying, and she only had $1.50 to her name, so we rushed out the door with some spare food, walked around outside in sub freezing temperatures for 15 minutes trying to find her in the area she described, dropped off the food, filled up her 1 gallon gas container, and gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon. It was crazy, but we made it to zone conference on time and helped her out! It was awesome.

It was also Sister Kropf's birthday yesterday! Woohoo!

That's all for this week, talk to you again soon!

Sister Balls