Sister Michelle Christine North: Super BIG important Little things‏

If I could list of a brief list of the events that took place in my week this week, it would be like this: Vicky bought me new red lipstick, Chilean banana power, broken window = window ghosts, talking just like Barbie to teach English, freezing cold weather, broke my tooth losing to an Angry Bird pillow fight, chicken face for days…..but that might be hard to follow because…well, it was one crazy week. Really, I can’t really explain what happened. Just know it was eventful and a little wild. (I promise that I behaved).

I was thinking about something really cool this week, regarding the gospel of course. And maybe you guys already knew about it and this light bulb is probably just now going off for me (not really surprised) but I’m gonna tell you about it anyways. So you know how sometimes life just seems so hard? Especially living some of the commandments that the Lord has asked us to keep. For example, reading our scriptures every day, or praying, or going to church or for a missionary…being on time. So this week was just so especially hard for Hermana Birtcher and me. We actually did a fast to be more obedient this week, and every obstacle imaginable seemed to get in our way. I am not saying that we were "chueca" missionaries this week, but I am just saying that it was harder than normal to be obedient. I think that so many times as children of God our patterns of obedience tend to go up and down like a roller coaster ride throughout our whole lives. That’s just because we are imperfect. But there IS a way that our patterns of obedience can be more of a progressing line, a way that we can always be on the right hand of God and have more faith like, the Book of Mormon hero, Nephi. All of Nephi’s life, he had perfect faith and never doubted the Lords will. On the other hand, his brothers, Laman and Lemuel, seemed to always fall into that roller coaster pattern- like most of us. So how do we gain that perfect faith like Nephi? Through prayer! And not prayer where we are consoling the Lord, but the kinds of prayers where our ears and eyes are open and our hearts are willing (figuratively of course). I found a scripture in the Book of Mormon that went so perfectly with this, Jacob 4: 10- “Seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from His hand. For behold, ye yourselves know that He counseleth in wisdom and in justice and in great mercy, over ALL His works.” This is obvious right? The part that says to take the Saviors counsel and not to counsel Him…however, I think that so often we make the mistake of doing the exact opposite, without even realizing it! When we pray to the Lord asking for help, especially during a trial or hard time, we should pray for inspiration to know what blessings we need. The Savior knows exactly and perfectly the things that we need in those moments of weakness. Pray in gratitude, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this experience” and then listen to what you need. Our answers come through the Spirit of the Holy Ghost. How do we feel the Hold Ghost? Through service, scripture study, missionary work (Temples), good music- the little things. Do the Little things. Don’t worry about the BIG things, there is no such thing in the Church of Jesus Christ. I am going to be focusing on the little things this week and making small changes in my actions and thoughts so that they can be more perfectly in line with the actions and thoughts of the Lord.

This week in Chile has been FREEZING Cold. Like a cold that hurts everything. It snowed in a place 30 minutes from us the other day...which is not normal for Santiago! I was born to be in warm beach weather, this might not work for me! What was the Lord thinking? Just kidding. What did we just talk about up above? Ha ha! I am learning to deal and love it.

Xox, Hermana North

I want to make a shout out to my Broskee, Danny and sister-to-be Kiley! They got engaged this week! I am one hundred percent and absolutely so excited for you guys. (Everyone ask them how they got engaged! Such a cute proposal).

picture 1: my love Jocelyn :)