Lots of Beautiful and a Little Bit of Pangit

June 17, 2013

Hello family,

So this has been a great week with lots of beautiful and a little bit of pangit. haha.  There is always so much I want to tell you throughout the week and then it is hard to remember it all.  Well first off I just want to thank you for raising me in the church, teaching me how to pray and making sure I knew that God was listening, for telling me stories from the Bible and the Book of Mormon and being married in the temple.  It certainly made all the difference in my life and I am so grateful for the many blessings I enjoy because of my great parents.

They do celebrate Father's day. Primary in the 2nd ward (the other sister's ward-- we aren't assigned to the same ward) made cute little ribbon medals and the primary in our ward made the shirt and tie cards. Cute, cute.

For independence day we didn't even seen any fireworks.  They apparently sometimes have them but it isn't a big thing for independence day.  So far it seems like the biggest holiday for them is New Years, closely followed by Christmas.  As far as I could tell for most people it was just a day off from work like Martin Luther King day or something.  But there were lots of people selling flags and some people put them on their cars.

Sometimes the Philipina sisters get packages from home but none of the ones I live with have yet. 

Our church building has air conditioning!! :)  Yay!  The floors are all tiled. No carpet. The weird part is our chapel actually doesn't have benches.  Our sacrament hall is just set up with chairs every week and then they take them down afterwards.  The windows have white bars on them.  The air conditioning isn't centralized so our recent convert has the job of turning them off and on with a remote depending on whether the room is being used or not.  This building has 2 floors.  So sacrament and relief society are upstairs and other classrooms and the bishops office is downstairs. There are palm trees on all the church grounds I've been to. :)  Yay.

So this week I have been reading Joseph Smith history a little bit each day.  For anyone who hasn't read it within the last month I highly recommend it.  I am loving every bit.  I have learned a lot from the example of Joseph Smith with how he handled things and the experiences he had.  One thing that really struck me is when he receives the plates he is told by the angel Moroni that if he loses the plates because of carelessness or lack of effort he will be held accountable, but if he does his best to protect the plates they would be safe.  Here we see the promise that Heavenly Father has given to all of us, "if we give and do our very best, God will make up for the rest."  He knows we aren't perfect. He knows we all have weaknesses. Heavenly Father never requires of us things we can't do.  What He does require is our very best effort.  He has promised to make up for the rest. If we feel we are not good enough for a certain calling, we do our best and He qualifies us.  He literally makes up for our weaknesses.  It is so beautiful.  It is the same with the atonement.  As we do our best not to sin and to follow His commandments, God gives us His son's sacrifice to make up the difference.  But we are still required to do our very best.  I know that as we give our best, Heavenly Father will make everything work together for our good. Nothing is impossible when we do our best and have God's help.

Have a great week. Smile for there are at least a million reasons to do so.

Love,

Sister Hamm