Seeing God's Hand in My Life

Good morning beloved friends and family! How is everything!? I loved to read all of your emails! I am so glad Mom and Dad had a great time in Europe! those pictures look amazing! Speaking of pictures I don't have any for you today! Ya know this MTC thing is a lot of the same stuff every day:)

This past week has been awesome! We had a devotional from Janice Kapp Perry! She is the woman who wrote all of the truly great children's church songs: A Child's Prayer, As Sisters in Zion, Army of Helaman, just to name a few.  I don't remember a lot from Primary, but I remember her songs! The devotional was wonderful. We all sang with her and she shared some great stories. I felt the spirit so strongly. Then on Tuesday we had a devotional given by D. Todd Christofferson! It was amazing! he spoke on the worth of souls. I loved it and took a LOT of notes! Unfortunately I did not see President and Sister Welch. One of the sisters in my district is headed to Kobe though and she saw them!

Ok it is time for my weekly spiritual thought. A friend recently asked me how I saw God's hand in my life...

I have seen God's hand so many times over the past few days. I have seen it in the devotional given by D. Todd Christofferson and the devotional M. Russel Ballard. Also the devotional by Janice Kapp Perry. I have seen it in the scriptures and the general conference talks that I have been reading, but the one I will tell you abut is my experience at the temple last Thursday. Recently (a couple weeks ago) I was struggling. I felt like I was doing all these things correctly, I was obedient, I was worthy, I was reading my scriptures, I was serving others, I was studying the language really hard. I was doing all of these things, but I wasn't feeling the guidance from God that I have heard so many stories about and that I expected and quite frankly, felt I deserved. I felt like I kept putting my faith on trial and there was no witness. Anyways, It was really discouraging. I didn't feel like I was being guided in our lessons. I didn't feel like I was understanding my investigator's needs. I felt like I was failing. It was at a really tough point in the language as well. All of these things that (maybe I was hyper-analyzing) were very discouraging. Luckily I think I responded correctly, and instead of letting my faith wane I responded with an extra effort to be faithful. P-day finally rolled around. I love p-days. They are such a nice time to recoup from the super high levels of stress associated with learning a language and just the MTC in general. So we went to the temple and did an endowment session. Afterwards I was sitting in the room crying unto the Lord (silently), asking him to please be there, to please strengthen me, to please bless me in my efforts to learn the language and to teach with the spirit and to be like Christ and to love the people around me etc... After that prayer I looked up and there was this gorgeous chandelier. Every time I am there I just gaze at it for awhile because it is so amazing. This time when I looked, I felt this amazing feeling of peace and comfort come over me. It literally felt like it started at the top of my head and just washed over my entire body. The best part is that it wasn't a new feeling. It was the same feeling of peace (and specifically not-stress) that I had been feeling every once in a while, very subtly, for the last few weeks. To be honest I started to cry a little bit because I realized that God had been there the entire time. I was just too busy to listen to him. That Is how I saw God's hand in my life. He is always there, always waiting for us to turn to him. We need to learn how to take a step away from the busy-ness of life and just listen. Life can overwhelm you. Life can encompass you. The trivial temporal things can be all that you see. But God is there. God will lead you. God does love you. And God will NEVER abandon you. I know that (sore ga shinjitsu da to shite imasu(それが真実だとしています)! 

I love you all and I pray for you every day! Spencer welcome home! I can't wait to see you! 

Love, Siebach Choro!

P.S. Thank you so much for the pastries! You sent them just in time for the birthday of one of the Shimaitachi in my district! They were delicious! Love you all!