Oh today i just want to hug each and every one of you reading this!! Yes, you know who you are! :) I hope everyone is doing good! This last week was really great. We had transfers! I sent Sister Reid off, she was transferred to SLC! haha It was my first time sending a missionary home at the end of their mission...so surreal! Well I exchanged my companion for Sister Kutschke from Germany! She is so great. She is German in every single way! haha She is super SUPER shy and hilarious. I have a feeling this will be a very entertaining transfer. :) As she came and I began to explain about our friends we are teaching and the miracles that have been happening, I was once again filled with so much gratitude to be serving here in Munich. We have seen so many Ensign type miracles and it just never stops. So cool.
Another miracle happened last weekend! So a few days prior we receive a text from the Elders of a number and the name Tanja, they said she just moved to Munich, but had met earlier with the missionaries. I called her up and invited her to meet us at church last Sunday and she agreed! Well Tanja came and automatically felt at home. After church we met with Tanja and got to know her better. She explained her story which had its own set of difficulties, but it was so cool to see the hand of the Lord in her life. Well during the lesson we invited Tanja to be baptized and she agreed for the 2nd of March, 2014. It was just another time when I thought, wow, this is not our work, this is the work of our Loving, Heavenly Father who wants ALL of His children to return to live with Him. We are just lucky enough to be the tool in His hands to experience the joy and see it all happen. God truly is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is a God of Miracles.
This last week I was thinking a lot about our Heavenly Father and what that truly means to us that He is our Father! So it all started when I read a talk in the Ensign. A young girl wrote about her experience of studying at BYU as a nonmember. She explained how skeptical she was at first. I don't blame her...the numbers were against her. She explained that what stood out to her most and what she loved most was how Latter-day Saints "place God very near to Humanity". As I first read this I thought, ok... But the more and more I thought about it, it is so true. Since being here in this part of the world, I have truly seen how distanced people feel to God. I have seen how comfortable they feel with this distance. There are people all over the world with this same opinion or attitude. People have been let down in the past or have had a terrible experience and they associate these things with God. When they think of religion, they think of huge, cold, dark churches with gold statues and crosses. They have no real image of our Father in Heaven. And if they do have any image, it is a God of punishment which has been given them by sad priests.
Through the Restoration, we now know, understand, and love Restored Truths - one being the simple and yet life-changing truth that God is our Loving, Heavenly Father. God, the creator of our Universe is our Father, He has asked us to address Him in this manner. Since we know the importance of names in the church and how many different names He could have chosen, He chose Father. I just love that. We have a Heavenly Heritage. We are one generation from the King of Kings, His children. Similar to how I hope to be a parent like my parents have been parents to me, how I aspire to be half the woman my mom is, So we too are aspiring to be like our Father in Heaven. Just like the Savior taught when asked what manner of men ought we to be... "Verily, even as I am...". With our Heavenly Heritage comes things we inherited from our Heavenly Parents. The spiritual gifts that each of us have been given, the Gifts of the Spirit, are inherited. What a beautiful, beautiful thing.
This truth of who our Father in Heaven is helps us understand what He expects of us. It helps us understand His plan for us. He is near us. As we become more familiar with His words and come closer to Him, we will realize just how familiar we are to Him. Although we sometimes feel separated or distanced from Him, He prepared a way to shorten that distance. Elder Holland said, "God knew the challenges we would face...and He knew how lonely and troubled we would sometimes feel. So He watched over His mortal family constantly, heard their prayers, and sent prophets and later apostles to teach, counsel, and guide them. But in times of special need, He sent angels, divine messengers, to bless His children, to reassure them that heaven was always very close and that His help was always near."
I am so grateful for the Restored Truths of the Restoration. Heavenly Father is constantly trying to take care of us, His children. He is there to comfort, guide, and love us. I am grateful for the chance to help others realize that Heaven is never far, and that our Father in Heaven is always near. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we invite others to shorten the distance to God and to come closer to Him. We don't invite them to come to the church building, but we invite them to come closer to the Savior of the World. I know that God lives and that He is close. I have the Gospel of Jesus Christ to thank for that. So be happy and act like princesses and princes...be happy you are of Heavenly Heritage and we have been promised all that our Father has if we but follow His Son.
Ich liebe euch!
XOXOXOXOXOXO
Schwester Jaynes
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