Dear Family-
Got your letters mom and dad :) thank you thank you. You can't know how perfect their timing was- this week was great- we started strong, stayed busy and even found a new investigator, Cile Sorrell, who is an elderly woman that recently lost her husband to cancer. She is a peach- the cutuest southern accent you ever did hear! very proper. But then friday- I was SICK. I woke up with a raging fever. sore throat. couldnt sleep a wink from the pain. I was discouraged because we had so much work we wanted to do- why would I get sick like this? I never get sick! well- the fever was bad (101) - I couldnt get cleared to leave the apartment. I didnt know what to do so i prayed- and I knew I needed to get a blessing. I called the elders and they were sooooo amazing- they dropped what they were doing and came straight away. then I conked out until they got there. Elder parsons annointed me (his first time :) and Elder Sanders who has become a dear friend I respect and admire very much, gave me the blessing.
It was a beautiful blessing. The first words out of his mouth wa that this trial was given to me by the Lord to help me draw nearer to him in purposeful personal prayer, so I could learn to rely on His power. I was amazed by this- because through out the past couple weeks I have been noticing a disconnect in my PERSONAL prayers- the reason for this is because as a missionary I proabaly say about 12-15 verbal prayers a day in everyones home after appointments, for dinner, comp study- people ask us to pray all the time as missionaries and its great! but the problem was that then at the end of the day when it came time for my personal prayer- i would be too exhausted. i would feel like I had already talked to God all day so my personal prayers were lacking. I had noticed this the night before and it bothered me so I prayed and asked the Lord to help me with my personal prayers. Then I wake up feverish. Then I get that blessing. Then the mail comes right after I got the blessing and the Ensign came and guess what the talk was on written in bold letters on the front of it? "How to have Purposeful Personal Prayer." wow. Coincidence? I think not! ha.
So I read the article while sick in bed- from this experience this is what I learned:
to have truly effective personal prayer- we must spiritually prepare ourselves. We must have adequate time allotted so we can offer a heartfelt prayer without feeling rushed. We must have a specific question or focus in mind- if we havent taken the time to focus our thoughts enough to have a specific purpose or focus for our prayer, how can we expect to receive revelation and answers from God in return? We can't- and this is why my persoanl prayers were useless- I always said them so thoughtlessly because I was so tired at the end of the day- I offered the lord incomplete thoughts so He offerd me incomplete answers in return. I am so grateful the Lord gve me that trial so that I could slow down and re-focus and align my prayers. Prayer is how we communicate with got and get "feedback" so as a missionary prayer is everything- in life prayer is everything! It is our life line to God. and It is a free gift to all 24 hours a day. I also learned that God will give us temporary pysical or emotional trials if they will help us in the bigger scheme of things- namely our spiritualy progression. Our physical strength and temporal comfort is of far less importance to the lord when compared to our spiritual strength and progression. This makes me understand why faith in God has to includes faith in His timing. I'm not sick anymore and now my persoanl prayers are purposeful. The lord answered my initial prayer by giving me a trial! so cool.
I'm running out of time! so quick update- we met a girl at Smoothie King named Olivia, she's 21, and she recognized who we were. We got to talking and she wanted our number so we are going to start meeting with her! Our other investigator JC, who is 16 and dating one of the guys in our ward also came to church this sunday. It was a great week! Love you all
Love, Sister Bertoldo
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