on inadequacy

I always feel so awkward starting a weekly letter. What do I say? Um...hi, everyone. It´s me again. Maybe you´re all getting sick of me rambling on and on about things I´ve learned and weird things that have happened to me. And there´s no doubt you´re sick of me preaching about how you need to read the scriptures and pray. But you´ll thank me in the long run. Ha.


So word on the street is that today is Labor Day in America. In Ecuador it´s just hot. And sunny. And a normal Monday. So no bbqs in my neck of the woods. However, the good news is that it´s almost my birthday!! I turn 22 on Sunday! I don´t know when that happened. In my head I am still 15. I am creeping closer and closer to being an old lady who wakes up at 4:30am to read books and sip herbal tea and tend to my garden. Soon enough I´ll be adventuring around the world with permed hair, a wrinkly body, and bright red lipstick.

But for now I will celebrate my birthday with my dear friends here in Acacias. I think we´re going to eat cake a pizza and watch a church movie. Everyone will sing the birthday song in English. They always do that here. I don´t know why they don´t sing a spanish version. It´s hilarious especially to hear the people that don´t really speak any english at all. It just comes out as a mumble jumble, much like when Americans try to sing La Bamba or something. Ha. I love it. I get a kick out of it every time someone has a birthday. Maybe I will make a video of it to show you all when I get home.

The truth is I hate birthdays because I always build it up to be this huge thing in my head, but outwardly try to downplay it. I don´t like being the center of attention, so I hate announcing my birthday to the entire world (except oops i guess that´s exactly what i just did). Anyway, I always tell people I don´t really want to do anything, but then when the day rolls around and nothing ends up happening I get all disappointed because no one even cares that I actually lived another year. So. The moral of the story is...there isn´t really one. I am just rambling. But hopefully it will be a good day. It´s the one and only birthday I will pass with a missionary tag and frumpy clothes. So neener neener.

So you know how sometimes you just wander around in life and everything is going fine, and then all of a sudden for some reason you feel like you can´t do anything right and your entire world just sort of collapses around you? That´s sort of what has been happening these past few weeks. I don´t mean it in a dramatic way, I just mean that I felt like I was finally getting a handle on being a missionary and then all of a sudden I realized that I don´t know anything. I guess it has a lot to do with the pride cycle thing. I think I wrote about this last week too, but the truth is I can´t really remember. But anyway I really started to feel good about teaching and finding people and baptizing and everything else, and I think I must have stopping remembering that this is the Lord´s work, not mine. So He took it upon himself to teach me a few things about His work and how it should be done.

We have started from scratch building up our program here. That means we spent a lot of time looking for new people to teach and inviting them to be baptized. It means we talk to EVERYONE and invite every single person we meet to church. It means we make our ward mission leader go out and invite people to church and find people who are interested in learning about the gospel. So little by little we started finding people. And then we started finding really really good people. As in people that could definitely get baptized before September is over.

We found a family of 4 (mom, dad, daughter, and little baby...not yet old enough to get baptized) who are absolutely incredible. The parents aren´t married and only have about a year together. But they´re great. Every time we sit down they have a thousand billion questions. Do we worship saints? Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Can Mormons go dancing? Why did Adam and Eve sin? Why do I feel like crying when I pray? Does God actually hear me? And lots of other things. They are some of the most curious people I have ever met. They want to know answers to everything. It´s fun teaching them because they talk a lot and participate and I learn a lot from their comments and questions....but also it is really stressful because it´s hard to maintain control of the lesson and actually teach anything of substance because we´re just answering questions the entire time.

Yesterday was the crowning event and made me realize that I need to quit trying to do everything myself. I need to take a step back and let the spirit guide the teaching. I need to work on my weaknesses and prepare myself so that I can be a useful instrument in the hands of the Lord instead of some dumb missionary who has no idea what she is doing. It all started when we were teaching the mom (Jessica) of the way rad family we met. We had planned a lesson to talk about marriage, but since her husband wasn´t home we put off the lesson to another day. So then we had to come up with some other lesson on the fly, which usually isn´t really a problem because we have to improvise a lot all day every day. Except we said the prayer and then everyone just looked at me like...okay, what are we going to teach? I started rambling on about things like faith and repentance and doing little things to show faith in God. The lesson had zero direction and I was just sitting there talking about talking, wondering to myself when I was going to shut up because nothing that was coming out of my mouth made any sense at all.

Luckily Jessica had to walk out of the room for a minute to take care of her baby. I looked at my companion and our ward mission leader and told them they had to get us out of this disaster of the lesson. They looked at me like I was nuts and were totally confused about what the point of the lesson even was. Awesome. If they were confused, the investigator most likely had no idea what I was even saying. She came back in the room and we wrapped up (a little more gracefully this time) and left.

I took a big fat deep breath, apologized for teaching the worst lesson in the history of mankind, and we evaluated what we need to do to actually help people instead of confuse them more. Our ward mission leader is an absolutely incredible teacher and served a mission just over 2 years ago, so he helped us get things figured out. We had a lovely meeting/self evaluation time about how to get the spirit in lessons, how to love people, and how to teach according to their needs and help them make changes in their lives to prepare them for baptism and going to the temple someday.

I think sometimes it´s easy to fall into the belief that when you are being as obedient as you can be and trying to be the "perfect" missionary you should be automatically blessed with baptisms or something. But the Lord expects more than that. He expects us to love people and to make them happy. He expects us to listen to them. He expects us to teach them directly and not beat around the bush. He expects us to invite them to repent and to know for themselves if the message is true. He expects us to be ourselves and not try to fake becoming someone else. I kept trying and trying to force myself to become something I wasnt...I had no personality and forgot how to love people unconditionally because I just wandered around all stressed out all the time.

So now I am sorting myself out and realizing that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. (I think I have a lot more weakness than strengths, but that´s another story for another letter). I think success lies in figuring out what our strengths are, using them to our advantage, and recognizing the abilities of others. It´s like Moses and Jeremiah. Moses was terrified of talking in front of people. Not his strength. Jeremiah, on the other hand, had a way with words and with people. Both felt inadequate when they were called to do the Lord´s work. But the Lord has always called men in their weakness. He called a 14 year old boy to restore the fullness of the gospel to the earth. He called 5,000 young men who had never fought a battle before to defend their people from the enemy. He called the sons of Mosiah, who were some of the vilest of sinners, to preach the gospel and baptize thousands. He called David to kill a giant named Goliath.

And for some reason He called a freckle face, awkward, 5 foot 8 girl to preach His gospel in Ecuador and invite people to receive a remission of their sins.

I am far from perfect, but he still called me. I didn´t call up the prophet one day and tell Him I wanted to go to Ecuador to serve for 18 months. The Lord chose me, even though He knew how imperfect I am. And as I turn to Him to be my strength, He will qualify me for His work.

And so it is in any aspect of life...not just missionary work. So many times we are put in situations that are hard and that we are not cut out for. Perhaps we´re working 50 hours a week and going to school full time. Perhaps we´re starting high school, or taking on new responsibilities at work. Perhaps we have to deal with kids who think they know what they´re doing when obviously they´re headed down wrong paths. None of us are really cut out for what we´re called to do. We´re inadequate in every way. But that´s why the Savior came to the earth. He came to qualify us for our callings. He came to show us the way and help us become the people we can be. He came so that we can put our faith in Him instead of ourselves.

The question is...how do we put our trust in Him and let Him make our weaknesses strong? Simple. Read. Pray. Go to church. Pray more. Work hard. Always be willing to do His will, even when it doesn´t make sense. Doing the little things a little more and working a little harder makes all the difference in the world.

So this week I am trying to quit thinking I know everything. I am going to let Him do His work, and figure out what part I play in it. I will love people more, laugh more, and teach more.

I love you all more than watermelon flavored chapstick.

Have the best week of your lives.

And eat a piece of cake on my birthday for me :)