EB Mission Blog: Life is hard sometimes, but with the Savior we can make it through, I know that!

Dear Family and Friends,

So a couple experiences from the week...

First of all, I got to see my favourite human being (Sister Sharp) TWICE in one week. This is a beautiful thing. She is amazing and I love her so much. Pictures to follow. Hallelujah for mission conference and zone meeting.

We go visit this lovely lady named Morvia, who got baptised a LONG time ago, and was less active for quite a long time. She is hilarious. We write songs with her and sing them, and it makes her so happy. She found out I can play the guitar so next time we come I am going to play and sing for her, it'll be awesome :) we wrote a song about rain this week and then what happened? It rained every day. That's what we get I suppose haha.

Also one day we were just walking our bikes trying to find our gypsy investigator (I will explain this later on) and we saw this lady who was kinda getting harassed by this man, so we went and rescued her and she is the NICEST lady ever. It was so cool cause we went up and just told the guy that we really really needed to talk to her, and he ended up going away (after offering us a box full of alcoholic chocolates). Her name is Marta, from Poland, and she has a beautiful little son and she wants us to come visit her again. Service, even if it's just rescuing someone from a creepy dude, brings miracles.

Ok so the gypsy story. We are actually teaching a lot of gypsies (who are awesome! They love Jesus so much), but we have one in particular who really wants to get baptised named Rastislav. And he just lost his house a couple weeks ago and now his phone is off so we have zero ways to contact him. The only way we can....is by roaming around this certain road where all his gypsy cousins live and asking them if they know where he is. So a part of our day is designated to "find Rastislav" for an hour or so. We have met a lot of cool people from it as well. So hopefully we will find him soon!

Another gypsy story. We are teaching this gypsy family from the Czech Republic, who are awesome! The daughter, who is 18, is especially awesome. Her name is Marketa and she loves her saviour so much. But one thing about gypsies is that they LOVE to feed you. And I happen to be allergic to gluten...so we went to visit, they kept bringing out loads of bread and I am like "me no bread. Bad bad" pointing at my stomach cause their English is not the best. They didn't really understand and just kept bringing out more food, and finally brought out this meat and gravy dish, with a load of bread sitting in the middle of the dish and everyone started eating and....so I ate. You may say "why did you eat it if you are allergic??" Well...at that point it would've been so rude and they couldn't understand why I wasn't eating anything. So I ate it. Yep. And we had a DA with a member right after, who fed us the most food I have EVER eaten in my entire life. Let's just say...my stomach was not happy with me, but we survived and now we just laugh about it.

Last funny story for the week....we were walking our bikes home (bikes hate me, this is what I've decided. Every time I get on one something breaks), and we ran into this guy on the path and it was pitch black so we were panicked a bit in our hearts. And he started talking to us about God, and then he said "oh I have to go" and he walked across to the other side of the road but was still talking with us, so we basically ended up teaching this guy a lesson whilst yelling at eachother from opposite sides of the road haha. Good times in Peterborough.

Also, on Monday was the conference with Elder Cook. OH MY GOODNESS. What an amazing experience. I had to play the organ as well, which was so cool because Sister Cook, randomly in the middle of her talk just had me come up and play and the mission sang a song and she added a random new part to it...and it was exciting. She is amazing. But I really really truly learned so much from the conference and felt the spirit so strong. One of my favorite things that he shared was 4 things that we really truly need to love as missionaries (although it can apply to any calling I think). Here are the 4 things and a couple of my thoughts...

Love the people. the people I have been called to serve are here in England right now. And I do truly love them. We can be called to serve lots of people, whether it be our family, friends, relief society sisters, young women, young men, ANYONE! Whoever it is, love them.
Love your companion. Whether that be your eternal comp or your mission comp or just any person you happen to be lucky enough to live with. Love them. Even if it's hard sometimes. Just love them :)
Love your mission President. Or we could say...bishop, stake president, anyone. Love your leaders, they are called of god and they truly care for you. I know that.
And most importantly, love the Saviour. I love my Saviour so much. It always just amazes me how much he has done for each of us. Like...I am so imperfect. I make mistakes every single day. And even though I'm not even close to perfect, Christ suffered and died for me. Yes, he did it for everyone. But I fully believe he did it for me as an individual. He knows me and my individual struggles and trials and because he suffered and died for me, he knows how to help me through everything I go through. And I am so so so grateful for that. Life is hard sometimes. And without the saviour, it's even harder. But with him, we can make it through the hard times. It doesn't mean they will get taken away. But we can make it through, I know that.

Life is good, the mission is awesome, and I am happy :)

I love you all lots!

~ Sister Emma Beazer