Write your story.

Happy Monday!  I think that I have never loved Monday´s like I love them on the mission haha.  But I hope you are all enjoying your Monday :).  I don´t know what I have updated you on and what I haven´t so I will start with the transfer from two weeks ago.  Sister Mobley left me :( I will miss her a ton because I seriously love that woman to death!  But the good news is that I am still here in Aracati and my companion is Larissa!  I don´t know if you remember the girl that always did exchanges with me in Novo Oriente when I got to Brazil (I always took pictures with her when we saw each other in the stake center...?) anyway she is doing like a practice mission that they do here and she has been serving in our mission for two transfers and now is my companion!  It´s like the coolest thing ever!  I love having a friend at my side!  The only hard part is calling her Sister J Lima and not Larissa.  

So I think you have all seen the ´´my family´´ pamphlet that the church has.  Well we have been using because we have to explain it to all of our baptisms and they have to fill it out before they are baptized.  Anyway this week when we were explaining it to a girl that we are teaching Sister J Lima (Larissa) said something that I couldn´t stop thinking about: ´´You get to write your own story here!´´  I kept thinking about the truthfulness of that statement.  God created us to act and not to be acted upon and because of that we get to write our own story!  We get to decide what we want to do, who we want to follow, what we like and don´t like, who we will become!  How amazing is that!  I guess I had heard it a million times but I hadn´t really understood it until now.  So our decisions are super important because they write our story, they shape our future!  How we will make sure that we are writing the story that we want? There is a quote from one of the best talks by Elder Uchtdorf that goes like this:

´´ No, God does not need us to love Him. But oh, how we need to love God!

For what we love determines what we seek.

What we seek determines what we think and do.

What we think and do determines who we are—and who we will become.´´

So it is when we love God that we align our priorities as they should be, that we make the best decisions, that we have a happier and more blessed life!  A better story!  and the best part is that there will be a happy ending.  How great is the love that our God has for us... don´t you think we could at least try to reflect a part of that?  We are, after all, His children.

This week, write your story as you would like it to be written!  Love God, seek God, think God, become like God.

Love you all!

Sister Westove