THE PARABLE OF THE POM POM

dear everyone,

this week was one of the most exhausting weeks ever and it was a blur, but there were a few awesome things that i am really grateful for.

the first i am grateful for is that i did not pee my pants or puke in front of anyone during my first zone training as a sister training leader. success! sister fleming and i had to give a training on involving members in our lessons, especially on how we can use members to help us invite our friends to Church. it took us a long time to get the training together. we thought we had it all done when i would turn to sister fleming and say, "please don`t kill me sister but it doesn`t feel right" and so we scrapped it and maybe scrapped it again, but in the end we were able to come up with a training that we hope helped our missionaries.

the second thing i am grateful for is what i like to call "the parable of the pom pom" where Heavenly Father let me feel a glimpse of His love for one of His daughters and her daughter. we have a less active that we visit who has pretty much been inactive her whole life and she doesn`t know very much about the Church, but she is incredible and she wants to learn and has asked us to come visit her. she is in her late 20`s and has a little daughter, Gail, who is 2. our less active member is so cute but she is the most nervous person i have ever met and the poor woman, her daughter has so much energy and, and it stresses her out so much. to preface this story, there are some handbags at H&M that have these wonderful pink furry pom poms on them and i have been drooling over these bags, especially the completely ridiculous furry pink pom pom on them for the past 2 transfers. last p-day i found i could just buy the pink furry pom pom and it was only $5, so of course i bought it! so with this pink furry pom pom on my bag, we went to this lesson. very active gail was walking around everywhere and talking and distracting her mom so much, so i was looking for something to distract her when she saw my pom pom. i unclipped it from my bag and handed it to her and she rubbed it on her face and kept saying "beau, beau, doux, doux, rose, rose" (pretty, pretty, soft, soft, pink, pink). after i handed the pom pom to her, i realized my dilema. taking a soft pom pom from a 2 year old when the lesson was over would surely bring on world war 3, and i could tell her mom was already getting nervous the second i handed it to her about giving it back. well before i knew it, i told her she could keep the pom pom, and i didn`t even think twice about it.

now the moral of this story isn`t that sister paine gave up a stupid pom pom that she loved, but that Heavenly Father knows what His children need. and sometimes He needs His children to give up things that they love (me) and sometimes He needs His children to feel love when they haven`t for a long time (Josianne and Gail), so He, through the Holy Ghost, whispers into our ears to give away the pom pom. i left her house not even caring about what i didn`t have anymore and filled with love for josianne and gail. so in the end i didn`t really"lose" anything because of the blessing i recieved. i am so grateful i got to have that experience and i know that Heavenly Father cares about us so specifically, even when it comes to furry pom poms.

the third thing i am grateful for is the splits i get to go on with our other sisters. this past weekend i went on a split with sister Ortega. she`s the coolest girl! she is also a chef and i have been very blessed by that haha. she is 24 and after our missions we are going to work in Alaska for a summer together. our exchange was pretty hot and draining. we didn`t have the car so we were dropped off in what people very quickly told us was the ghetto and "you really shouldn`t be here" oops! (missionary life sorry mom) but we were able to contact some amazing potentials. as we were walking to get food for dinner at the end of the day, a guy skateboarded past us and yelled "stay beautiful!" ...um thank you? hahaha but it definitely was a funny moment and we were grateful to have something to laugh about.

i have been reading Mosiah in the Book of Mormon. oh how i love that book of Mosiah! i love the discord of King Benjamin. i had always kind of glossed over scripture mastery scriptures in the past because we talked about them so much in seminary, but as i was reading Mosiah 3:19, the verse really stuck out to me. i love where it says that the natural man is an enemy to God unless he or she, "putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord" i know it is ONLY through the Atonement that we can be made whole and complete and be happy. And because of our brother Jesus Christ, we can live with Him and our Heavenly Father again and our families forever. 

i love you all!

have a wonderful week!

love,

soeur paine

pictures: 

we were cleaning out our apartment and found some interesting stuff....

sister ortega and i on our split

we visted parlaiment today for pday and went up to the peace tower where you can see all of ottawa! and yes it was very hot and sunny.