Consecration

Over the past two or three months, my mission has been talking a lot about consecration. President VanBruggen is really emphasizing this and encouraging us to become the consecrated missionaries we promised to become when we accepted our calls to serve. Earlier this week we had to stop by the office to pick something up. President happened to be there, and he invited us to sit down with him and talk. (He's so great! I love that he'll just take a few minutes out of his day to talk with us and see how we're doing and get us even more excited about the work.) We talked a lot with him about consecration. One thing that he emphasized with us is that consecration is not a destination - we will never become completely perfect in this life - but that we are on a lifelong journey of becoming more consecrated to the Lord. I was really impressed by that - consecration is not something that just ends once we take off our nametags, but a lifelong pursuit. We truly owe everything to the God who gave us life, and we have to be willing to sacrifice everything on His altar. I'm so grateful to the God who gave us everything, and I hope I can become to consecrated missionary and person He wants me to be. I encourage each of you to look at your lives and pray about what you can do to become more fully consecrated to the Lord. I know you'll be blessed for that.

Last night we were able to watch the General Relief Society Broadcast, which was definitely one of the best moments of the week. I felt like I was at home as I sat with the Ukrainian sisters and watched and listened to our church leaders speak to us from halfway across the world. I'm so grateful that we have a living prophet and inspired church leaders who help us to learn more of the Savior and know how we can become like Him. It was really neat to be able to listen to the meeting in Russian - and understand basically all of it. The gift of tongues is real, and I'm so grateful for that.

We had some neat finding experiences this week. We'd tried to stop by the home of a woman to whom we'd given a Book of Mormon a while ago, but she wasn't home. That was disappointing, since we'd gone to a far region of our area just to talk to her. But we began contacting in that area until we had to head to our next appointment. Right as we were about to leave that street, we stopped one last woman. I invited her to church, and she pulled out her glasses to see exactly what the name of the church was. After examining the card she exclaimed, "I know that church!" Being accustomed to people mistaking our church for one of many others, we asked her how she knew about us. She replied "I was baptized in that church." Surprised, and still not believing that it was our church, we pulled out a Book of Mormon and asked her if she had one. She said yes and told us how she had been active for a while, but then had moved and lost contact with the church. She was excited to have found the church again and readily gave us her number. That was a neat witness to me that God always puts us exactly where we need to be in order to find who He needs found, whether that person has never heard the gospel or has been wondering how to get back in contact with the church.

Later that night, we contacted into a family. As soon as I approached them, the father said (in English), "I am coming from Utah." Completely taken aback by that, I asked him if he was from Utah. We found out that he's from France, his wife is from Ukraine, and he goes to Utah all the time for business. (He works with a business in Spanish Fork - small world!!) He knows a lot about the church, and has been invited a number of times by his co-workers in Utah. They said that they would try to come to church here, which would be incredible!

A little while ago, one of the sisters I live with told us the story of her decision to come on a mission. She was quite young, and a returned missionary was speaking in church. This missionary said, "If you had found the cure for cancer, you'd want to go out and share it with everybody who had cancer, right? And that's why I wanted to go on a mission - I knew the cure for 'cancer.' " That's a profound statement. If we knew how to save people's lives and make them feel better and be happy, we'd do everything we could to share that knowledge with them. As I was standing on a marshrutka this week (crossing the Dnepr coincidentally - so pretty!), I was struck with the realization that the gospel is much more than a cure for cancer - if I had the cure for cancer, I wouldn't go talking to everybody I knew, but I'd rather go to a hospital and talk to the cancer patients and doctors. But the gospel is different - it doesn't apply to just a select group of people, but to literally EVERYONE in the world. We are all children of God, and we all need this knowledge of His love and of the steps we need to take to return to Him. I'm so grateful that I have the opportunity to share this cure with everyone here in Ukraine.

- Sharisa