August 10, 2015

August 10, 2015

Thank you for your email.  I dont know why sometimes I forget that you know me, and also that you are a lot a lot like me, but I guess I will just chalk that up to its been a while that weve really talked.

I really have been thinking a lot about this week about how we cant stop at just tolerating our weaknesses, we have to overcome them.  This week I hit my 10 month mark and I felt kind of like I didnt know if I really had learned a lot on my mission.  And of course, I maybe a little bit naievely voiced my convcerns to my comp and she lectured me on the importance of how if we are just surviving the mission, we are wasting our time, and every trial we have, we have to overcome, not just endure (and cetainly the prophets and apostles have taught us the same thing, I just never thought about it like that).  We have to be humble, and I said that I sometimes felt humble and sometimes felt like I just thought I was humble and really I still had pride, and she told me that she knew that she was humble, and couciled me to humble myself or I never would learn anything on the mission.  I wanted to cry because I dont want to have wasted the past 10  months of my mission. But I coudn.t  Because I am stronger, or because I am more hardened, I am not quite sure.

I am confused.  And you know how much I love being confused.  But its not all the time.  Just some of the time.  And I dont know how God expects me to learn  and grow and feel exhilarated in the mission if I dont have someone to inspire me.  I am exhasuted just by getting along with every diffent comp that needs a new, different, changed Liza.  I dont even know who I am anymore.  I feel like I learn something of a comp, and then the next comp comes and tells me how I teach all wrong and how I have learned nothing and I just want to say to God ¨I am trying to learn something from these comps that you give me, so why do I have to be the comp that gets put with every comp that needs a very specific kind of comp to be happy.  I cant please everyone!¨  I am seriously that missionary that gets put with the people that nobody else wants.  From the beggining it has been like that,  I hear about a comp, how they stuggle with their comps, I am put with that comp.  Then I get a rest.  Then I hear about a new comp that is dificult, and the next change I am put with that comp.  and I love them and I tolerate them, but then this week when my comp said that tolateing is wasting time I felt like my whole mission was thrown out the window.  All I have done is work to get along, and with the rest of the energy I have work.  But sometimes, I am just tired.

Have I learned anything these past 10 months.   I dont know.  In every single one of my blessings, everyone told me before the mish, that I would be the one inspiring my comps, helping them find their way, that I would have an exhilarating mission. 

I know that God loves me.  Yesterday, I wanted an answer to my confusion.  To what have I learned.  If I am destined to be a super spiritual woman that leads every organiztion in the ward practically (like all of my family members, cousins.,and be the woman I should or must be to fulfill my blessings) i have to learn a lot in the mish.  I have to come home with something worth something.  Some grand knowledge of the scriptures, completely fluent in Spanish, or a keen ability to listen to and follow the spirit.  But sometimes I think that all I have learned is how to bite my tongue and smile through the trials.  And these certainly are not anywhere near the characteristics that leaders of the church need to have.  They are the ones who never bite their tongues, but instead speak through the spirit, they are the ones that pray and then recieve answers and overcome their trials.  Not just endure them. 

I didnt really get an answer to my confusion.

But I did recieve one answer from the Lord, through a mormon message where elder holland says ¨dont quit.  Just dont you give up.  Some blessings come soon, others come later, and some dont come untill the next life in the heavens, but good things come to those that follow the commandments of the Lord¨.  I know that God is in charge.  And If I have wasted these past 10 months, if I teach awfully, he still loves me, and he still is blessing me.  I just have to hold on.

And that is exactly what I am going to do.  This gives me peace.

Love, 

Hermana Jarman

(the other answer I recieved last night was that I have a great source of spirititual wisdom that is waiting to help me if I just ask.  Someone who loves me, someone who knows me almost better than anyone in the world.  And that it isnt weak to have a mom.  And to ask for advice from her.)