t's unbelievable. Absolutely incredible. Ladies and gentlemen, buckle your seatbelts because Sister Goss has officially been out ONE WHOLE YEAR! *insert applause and cheering here woooooo* No one thought she'd actually make it (that's 95% a joke), but due to the grace of God and His constant preserving and delivering hand, she has. It's a miracle.
There's one activity in Preach My Gospel that has us write a newspaper article about the Book of Mormon so I've been practicing my "news flash" articles. They could probably use some work.... ;) But YES! I'm now in the repeating days of being a missionary which is CRAZY. Absolutely crazy!! I wrote a short snippet of some lessons I've learned since being out on Facebook so if you're interested, go give that a look. Honestly I've pretty much learned a lesson a day, so that list would be in the hundreds. Rather than actually create that list on paper, I'm trying to reflect that list in who I am. I'm definitely not the same person I was when I left on my mission. :) It's so amazing. In addition to the 6 lessons I wrote about on Facebook, I'd like to share one with you I learned on Saturday. I learned how dependent I am on the Spirit for literally EVERYTHING I do; I cannot do it without Him. On Saturday I wasn't paying attention as I should've in a mission Zoom meeting and I felt awful. Because of that, I wasn't able to have the Spirit as I normally do and that day was really rough. I struggled in a lot of ways and fell asleep frustrated that night. I woke up the next morning grateful for a new start and for His forgiveness, and I realized that the previous day was so hard because I didn't have the Spirit to help me overcome temptation: overcome the temptation of getting annoyed with others, temptation of being prideful, temptation of being lazy, etc. I quite literally depend on the Spirit 24/7 to give me strength to overcome temptation and I don't even realize it! I learned 1) to give more credit to Heavenly Father and His Spirit for who I am because I am nothing without Them, 2) to strive to always have the Spirit with me or I cannot be strong enough to make the right decisions. 3 Nephi 18:15, 18-20 from the Book of Mormon has new meaning for me. :)
That (see above) is how my mission has changed me every single day. ISN'T THAT AWESOME?!?! :D It's so awesome. My mission is awesome. God is awesome.
Quick summary of the week: we served at the bishop's storehouse and it's so fun!! The service missionaries there are awesome, it's peaceful with soft hymnal music playing, and it just feels good to serve. It rained on Tuesday!! I haven't seen rain in a little while so we went out and stood in it. ;) Within 10 minutes the sidewalks were completely dry again and it looked like nothing had changed, but it was lovely while it lasted! Haha. We had dinner in a member's home again WOOWOO!! We're only allowed store-prepared foods still, and it was hilarious how embarrassed the members were. "Oh this makes me cringe so hard. I'm so so so sorry it's just frozen ravioli warmed up. Oh this breaks my heart. I'm so embarrassed. Oh my." You know, I thought it was good and I'm just thrilled to be in members' homes for dinner, I could care less what I'm eating. :) It was really sweet of them. We also made a super quality post with a quality camera a member lent us. So I'm learning the workings of fancy cameras! Hooray! The rest of the week was finding, teaching, cleaning the church buildings, having AMAZING missionary meetings we do like district council, eating breakfast as a zone with the stake president in his mansion (woahhh), etc. It's been a great week. It's been a great year. The best year of my life, actually. ;)
Thanks for reading my long email! I miss you all SO MUCH and hope you're doing well. Thanks for the little emails/letters you send me! I appreciate it so much!! You are all amazing. Have a FANTASTIC week. <3
Love, Sister Mary Goss
1) PPT fort adventures
2) sometimes it's just too sunny for a picture here. Enjoy this very flattering photo of us
3) an example of the jokes President Watson makes on the daily. He is SO FUNNY 😂
4) service at a bargain market whaaaat
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