Gratitude in Every Circumstance!

Hello!!

I think if I had to define Heavenly Father in one word, I would say "kind." He is so aware of his children and He always treats us with so much mercy and love. One thing that I've been trying to focus more on lately is gratitude. I've been studying Elder Uchtdorf's talk from last conference on gratitude and trying to apply it more in my life. One thing I've realized is how vital gratitude is to faith. If we don't recognize blessings big or small that we have now, how can we have faith in the future? 

Having gratitude really helped us this week! We contacted about 60 people and everyone must have been having a bad day or something. No one was super nice or wanted to talk to us, but we kept trying to contact anyways. Finally, I said a prayer as I was biking and just a few minutes after we met this awesome lady!! I guess my former companion and I had contacted her a few months ago. We had said a prayer for her mom whose health was declining. She said her mom was not only feeling better, but was going back to work even! She asked us for a Book of Mormon and was very interested in learning more! It was a neat experience. It definitely was a testimony-builder that even when things don't look super great, as long as we are having faith in the future and gratitude towards the present no matter our circumstances- that God will provide and bless us abundantly!

So, crazy story of the week: Sister Bl crashed her bike on our way home Wednesday night at 9:15 pm!! We were cutting through a parking lot to avoid construction. She braked too hard and split her chin open. :( So, we with our bikes, sitting in the dark, empty post office parking lot, with no napkins or anything to put on her chin. There was blood everywhere. We had no way to get home except to bike. BUT, within 30 seconds, this car just HAPPENS to cut through the parking lot and see us sitting on the ground. It's this sweet grandma who is retired from the medical field! So she tells us all the Urgent Care Centers are closed (how dumb is that?), but insists on driving us to the closest hospital. Her husband has a truck so she called him and he picks up our bikes and drops them off for us at home. Then she takes us to the hospital and tells us to call her if we can't get a ride home! She was literally a good Samaritan. I know NOTHING about her except her first name and phone number. (She called the next morning to see if we were okay. How sweet is that? She was SO nice and I thought it was crazy how quickly Heavenly Father sent us help!! He is so very aware of his children.)

Now the part you will be proud of me for: I called the mission president (like we're supposed to) to get permission to go to the ER and I didn't freak out at the gushing blood. I called sister Bl's parents to get her insurance info and sat with her for like 4 hours in the ER waiting room surrounded by miserable, dying people (Ok, That was a figure of speech...hopefully no one was dying). I told her all my embarrassing stories in the ER to keep her distracted because, obviously, she wasn't too happy. It's a good thing I have so many embarrassing stories to tell. (Never thought I'd say that!)  I watched the doctor stitch her chin up THE WHOLE TIME AND DIDN'T LOOK AWAY ONCE--even when blood dripped from the wound, as he was stitching it! And when he stuck a needle in the wound several times to give her shots to numb it, I watched that too! I continued to watch as he put in ALL 9 STITCHES! And I kept watching even when the skin around it got sickly pale-looking because of the loss of blood. Then I examined her stitches afterwards too. I have to take them out in a week!! Let's just say it's a good thing this didn't happen a year ago because as you know, I would have been a MESS. An absolute wreck. But I did it!! :D

Another funny thing is that we were one person away from our contacting goal for the day and were praying for Heavenly Father to put one more person in our path to talk to :P So, on the plus side, we hit our goal that day. Next time, though, we're going to try and avoid having our last contact be the person driving us to the hospital... Haha!

Also, I am convinced that President B doesn't sleep. I think he's probably secretly been transfigured. He told us to call him when we got home, no matter how late it was. So, sure enough, we call him at 3:30 in the morning and he's up, sounds completely awake and is cracking jokes. even. But, thankfully, he told  us not to worry about getting up at 6:30 am and to get the rest we needed the next day. It was weird to sleep in. 

Zone Conference Sept. 2014

One of the challenges of being a missionary is teaching people who had sad/difficult family circumstances in their youth.  They have trouble comprehending the idea of "Heavenly Father" and that he is our perfect "dad," who loves us unconditionally and is always aware of us. The very first thing you teach as a missionary in the first lesson is "God is our loving Heavenly Father" and so many people just cannot understand or believe that. And most often, it's because they don't have a good relationship or feelings towards their earthly parents. It's such a blessing to have parents who loved me in such a way that understanding the nature of God was easy for me. A lot of people don't have that and it makes it hard for them to accept the gospel. Parents are important, especially in just letting their children know that they are loved, unconditionally!!

Have a great week!! :) 

-Sister Ashlyn Galloway