One More Day

September 15, 2013

Hey family!!! Wow. Does time fly! My 40+ days here in Mexico are finished. It´s been great, I´m going to miss the CCM so much, but I´m excited to get into the field! I can´t believe there are 24 missionaries from our stake and 9 from our ward!!! Wow. How cool is that! The church is true.

So I´ll let you know what happened these last few days. Quite more than I thought would have happened! On Friday, we had in field orientation. It helped me get excited for going to CA, but it also made me nervous. I began to be really stressed, but I did some push-ups, said a prayer and now I´m getting excited. I have more of a vision of what the field will be like. Transfers are on Tuesdays in my mission (I made friends with an elder who lives in my mission and he worked closely with the missionaries before he left). So I´ll be there less than a day before I´m sent out to an area. CRAZY. I worked out some more statistics and according to my calculations, each transfer is 7.7% of my mission (a transfer is every 6 weeks). I do the time I have been in the CCM 11 more times. It makes it sound like a lot less time and makes me want to treasure every moment rather than thinking "I don´t end till Feb. 2015." So I´m ready to work hard, I think. I know my Spanish is horrible, so that scares me. But I have trust that the Lord will help me!

On Friday the coolest thing happened this week. During in field orientation, they challenged us to ask God again about the truths of the gospel, and we could go into the field with that renewed testimony. Well, I did it, and I felt nothing. I asked for an answer soon. When I was teaching my last lesson on Saturday afternoon, I felt prompted to share a scripture. I looked in the index for it, found the one I thought I was looking for, and when I went to the page, 2 verses jumped out at me. It was Moroni 7:16-17. It was about how all good things come from God and it was an answer to my prayers. I was so excited! Super cool moment: it´s what I needed to hear and what the investigator needed to hear. The Spirit is amazing!

Tomorrow is Mexico´s Independence Day. On Saturday we went to a celebration for it. What a great way to leave the CCM!!! I haven´t laughed and screamed that much in SUCH a long time. I made recordings of it for you, and I´ll send it to you once I get to the states. But we sang their national anthem, watched an awesome video about Mexico and how it gained independence, and watched Mexican dancers. They were alumni of the high school here, and they were all still in high school. It was a fiesta. I´ll send pictures once I get my cords. But I´ve decided to become more Mexican. IT´s a fiesta every day, and they´re always happy. Mission goal throw down. But the attack began really early in the morning on the 16th, so the party starts tonight and I´ll get to drive through it this morning. We´re going to the gym at 10:30 and 11 we're going to yell. I´m not sure if that´s tradition, but I´m excited!

Let me tell you about something I learned in Relief Society. It was taught by Hermana Pratt (her and President Pratt say hello Michelle and Matt. In fact, I gave the closing prayer, and she announced me as "Hermana Lau, the niece of my visiting teaching companion in Hong Kong." Everyone was oohing and aahing. I laughed. So they say hello!). She talked about patterns in the gospel. She talked about the pattern of the Garden of Eden, where we enter a new place/situation, and it´s the lone and dreary world at first. Then we become comfortable with it, it becomes a garden of eden, and then we're given a new challenge and thrown out again. We talked about Nephi and Laman, but the really cool one was in John 15. It talked about the parable for the vineyard. How we´re like the branches, and the Lord will trim us back to have us grow better fruit and become more spiritual and better. I don´t have time to go into it, but I loved it and we went more into detail.

Well, I must go. I love you all! Now that I´m in the states, you should send me letters. Especially this week, since I know it´s going to be extremely hard for me. But I´m looking forward with faith, praying for a great trainer, and praying for a biking area. I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike...

Best of luck this week! You´ll hear from me on the 23rd. I´ll call you tomorrow from Mexico or Phoenix!

Love you all. God bless!!!!

Hermana Sami Lau