All you need is Love

We went knocking on doors. Unfortunately no one was home...we'll have to go back another time. ;) 

This week was a great one in the fact that it was busy. Lots of people to teach and places to be! Even when things fell through we had lots to fall back on. Like awesome recent converts to help team up with us! :)

So this month our Mission President gave us 4 summits to reach- one per week. This week, we were to try to get 10 lessons with out investigators with a member present. The goal in doing so is that a member can add fellowship, relate to our investigators and be a third witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Anyways, oddly enough we hardly thought about the summit as appointments just fell into place throughout the week. Until the week neared to an end and we realized we only had to get one more lesson to reach the goal! Already we'd seen most of our investigators multiple times. Sunday we'd report our work at 4:30 and it was already 1pm. Talk about stress! We were so close!!! Within reach even!

Then an idea came to me as I was pondering about church. I sent a message to an investigator who I was sad to see absent from church that morning. Turns out he was on his way home and was available for us to see him within a half an hour. Immediately we called the first member that came to mind who could potentially be available and the Lord made it work! We'd been working so hard to teach one more person for 2 days and it all came together last minute. 

This morning,  Sister Pribyl and I were discussing what attributed to this success. We realized that once we knew we only needed one more we focused more on the GOAL than on the people we were teaching. Fortunately, I listened to a prompting that dealt with genuine concern for someone. The reality of it was that we reached our goal when our hearts were in it. The Lord isn't going to tell us the next "member present lesson" but He will always lead us to someone who needs God's love. Though our intentions were good, the motivation behind it couldn't lead us to do the Lord's will. It was only when we changed that our will became the Lord's will.

How often do we do this in our lives? How we put ourselves and our needs before others? Or even how often we put our "good" goals before the Lord's perfect plan. His main goal is to grant us all eternal life but we've got to do this together. We're a team! (*insert any cheesy teamwork quote here... like "There's no 'I' in teamwork" or my personal fav that High School Musical puts so eloquently "We're allll in this togeeeether") By putting ourselves first, there's no way to be loving. Love is an outward expression and the pure love of Christ is charity.  If the common denominator isn't love, then how are we to learn the will of our Father?

 1 John 4:7-12

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 

He that loved not knoweth not God; for God is love.

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 

Need I say more? It's all about the love people!

Thanks to Steve and Tami for letters this week!! I loved them both.. and Steve's "teamwork" card was perfect haha. I'll be responding shortly! 

Love you all!

Sister Hawkins

Pics:

Finally pretty spring blossoms!

This is a cat that likes to hug... it does this automatically...
don't worry I steered clear. (allergies!)