8/31/15

Crazy week, mostly because we weren't actually in Traverse City until Friday. We spent the week as far North as we can go in the mission. HEY MOM!! I SAW CANADA!!!!! (I forgot my camera so pictures will have to come next week.) Good work was done even without being here. Jennifer is being very blessed, but still needs extra prayers as she tries to continue in her progression. Erikaś baptism had to be pushed back a week, but its still on :) 

I have been having a lot of sleepless nights lately, and last night was yet another. I got out of bed and read in my old journals from Lansing for about an hour or so. I don know if any of you remember my emails from then, but it was a very difficult time for me. For about 5 months, I was going through very severe doubts, among other trials, that led to intense exhaustion. As I read about what was going on in those times, I was filled with joy to see how far I have come... Near the beginning of that time of trial, I wrote: 

¨A mission, like life, is a marathon, and not a sprint. Some miles feel better than others. This counsel from my dad is how I felt reading my old journals tonight. So many times, I have made promises, pledges, and covenants with myself and with the Lord to never sin again, or to wear out my life in his service. I can remember the fire I had when I wrote those words, but very quickly does the intensity dim. While I still have the desire to do those things, the intensity is not the same. I feel the Lord is trying to teach me to pace myself. I still find myself trying to force spiritual things, what that has never been a fruit of the spirit. Too often I look to the past, longing for who I was and what I felt yesterday, not realizing the future events still in store if I endure it well. The day Peter became the great apostle is when he stopped being so impetuous and impulsive, and frankly, I think the Lord is trying to beat that out of me.¨

What followed were months of entries documenting intense highs and lows, as the Lord molded me into something I never thought I could become. I remember the feelings of hopelessness. Feeling like I would never regain my testimony, and that I would be for the rest of my life, at best, unsure. As I look back and realize all that has been done, I am in awe at the workmanship of his hands. The truths I always believed were persecuted, questioned, doubted, and tested, until they have become truths that I now know. Its funny how, in recolection, the time I am most thankful to, has been my most difficult. So much has changed in these last short months, but I am eternally indebted to a divine and compassionate physician who loved me enough to keep on cutting, no matter the pain it brought me.

The greatest struggle of my mission it seems is to not be able to adequately say or write the innermost feelings of my heart. I am just truly in awe at all the Lord has done for me throughout my life, and all he continues to do as he continues to mold me in his image.

Elder Wheat