March 14 Dinner in Serbia

Apologies for my lack of email last week, it was crazy. I don't remember if I mentioned, but we drove to Adelaide a week and a half ago for a missionary conference. The man who is kind of the president of the church for the Pacific area came here and gave a training to all us missionaries. He is such an amazing man. His name is Kevin W Pearson, look him up :) Anyway, a big part of the training he gave was about our divine identity. He spoke how we are all children of God (we know that) but to we remember that in our daily decisions? He helped us remember that as children of God, we have the potential to become like him (Psalms 82:6). For myself, I forget all the time, and I'm serving a missionary, talking about God to people 24/7! But remembering who we are and what potential we have to become like God, that gives such a vision for what we do here.

This week we had an amazing lesson with our Malaysian family. We were a little unsure at this point with what to teach them, but we were definitely prompted to go over our divine identity. As we spoke about it, the lesson turned towards our progression, and what we need to do to become like our Heavenly Father. Each person went around the room and shared what they felt would help them most to progress closer to Heavenly Father. So cool to hear the different responses and to see their understanding and evaluation of where they are at spiritually. I felt such a love for them, and the Spirit in the room was so strong. Then at the next lesson it was so good to see that almost all of them had acted on what they'd said, and felt the difference! 

But that would be the reason no email last week, we had just finished the 5 hour drive home and I had no concentration left. 

This week we also had another really neat experience. We were knocking on the door of someone we'd met a while ago, and we knew he was a preacher, but not what faith. We met his wife, and she said she was really busy and would call next week for a time we could pop by. But then 30 minutes later, she called us and said, "Do you have any plans for dinner? Come over to our house!" We did, and weren't really sure what to expect. When we got there, the table was set for 7 people, and only 2 people live there. Then a bunch of people from their church show up... We started talking to them and found out they were 7th day adventists. And they were so nice! Usually when we've met people from other faiths, they want to argue with us. But these people were so kind and we really built on the common ground that we had :) It was so cool. And the food was really good, that's always a bonus. The couple, one is from Bosnia, and the wife is from Serbia, and she gave us some of her homemade relish. Yum.

I hope everyone had an amazing week. I hope we are all looking for the spiritual experiences we have in our lives, cause I know they are there. A spiritual experience can be something as simple as recognizing when something happens that makes you feel God is there, or when you feel closer to Him than you did before :)