A Labor of Love: A Visit From an Apostle!

HOLA!

This week FLEW!

This week we spent some time visiting members! It was such a good lesson to me, that we need to always be looking out for the active members too! Because they have necessities and struggles too! Sometimes it´s hard to be the faithful ones! One of the families we visited is probably the most faithful family I have ever met! We went to help teach them primary songs for the primary program! They are from Bolivia and there are six kids all under the age of 13. They have NOTHING. But give EVERYTHING to the church. They live so far away from the church yet every single Sunday without fail they are there. All six kids, on time and reverently waiting for the meeting to start. Their house is so humble and is COVERED in church pictures and phrases! Ahhh. I love them. This Sunday we were talking to the mom and she had tears in her eyes telling us that she felt like she wasn´t doing enough to help the missionary work in the ward, because she works all day in the fields with a baby on her back and then comes home to take care of the other kids. And she´s worried she’s not doing enough? Wow. I admire her so much. She is such a great example. She is helping the work. By raising her 6 kids in righteousness.

The week ended with something really special...

A visit from D. TODD CRISTOFFERSON. Thursday we left for Mendoza, but had to make some stops in other zones; a night in Alvear... where, I stayed in the pension of my MTC comp. Hermana Ellgen! She´s finally here! In all, this weekend, we spent 17 hours on a bus. But I loved it. I love me a good bus ride. We also had our 6 week training meeting! It was so good to see everyone from my district and how they were doing!

Saturday the ENTIRE mission (all 245 of us) came to Mendoza for a conference with Elder Cristofferson! What a blessing! To be all together with an apostle. I don´t think that happens very often! He shook every single missionary´s hand and wanted to hear where we were from. Wow. How cool is that? He gave some time to do a Q&A session. I loved it. An Elder asked "Can you tell us how you came to know the church was true and how you gained your testimony?" I loved his answer. He said he couldn´t think of an exact time that before "this" time I didn´t know and after "this" date he knew. He said that he was STILL converting with every day. If an Apostle is still converting I think its okay if we don´t know everything eh? I loved that. He also talked a little about the spirit; "When we teach with words there are limits, but the Spirit... has no limits." There are things we just can´t explain with words. We can only use the Spirit to teach the most important things. :)

My FAVORITE thing he said was when he was talking about weaknesses. He said:

"We all have weaknesses; the miracle is that still he allows us to represent Him."

How is that for humility? He KNOWS we aren´t perfect and that we make many mistakes, but he doesn´t care. He lets me, as imperfect as I am, represent HIM, as PERFECT as he is. I think about when I do a project or something like that and know that it is going to have my name on it, I want it to be perfect to represent me well. Well, he has given me the most important project in the world and has trusted ME to put his name on it! That´s a lot of trust. I know I´m not perfect and have countless weaknesses, and faults, but all I can do is try my best to represent my Savior. What a blessing :)

Con Amor, Hermana Matheson