Letter 2/22/15

Dear Blog,

I've had an amazing week. Really it's been miraculous. Do you know what the difference is though? I've just been doing all I can to follow the Spirit. I just trust and do. I'm actually exercising my faith. I feel like I'm fully there--fully trusting. It feels so good. I've never had so little doubt. I don't know if I can even explain. I'm sure I have SO much more to learn, but this is so amazing. It's taken me this long to really let God lead me. It's taken this long for me to understand it and I LOVE it! I just do what He says. I'm not sure this even makes sense but I love this; I love this Gospel, and I love my Savior. I love that I recieve answers to every important question in my life--in God's time. We make things so complicated sometimes but it's not complicated. All we have to do is ASK and SEEK and the answer WILL come. It just will. Because God loves us. Simple.

Love,

Sister Short

Letter 2/15/15

Dear Everyone,

First of all I have a quote for you all that was in my mom's email to me :)

 "The Lord works from the inside out.  The world works from the outside in.  The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums.  The world would mold men by changing their environment.  Christ changes men, who then change their environment.  The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.......    Yes, Christ changes men, and changed men can change the world."

I find this wonderful--you know why? Because it is focusing on the power of God to change not just what we do but WHO WE ARE. Sometimes we get stuck in the things we have to do--but God doesn't want the "bite the bullet" approach to the Gospel (for more info on this read the talk entitled The Fourth Missionary); He wants us to be blessed by it. He wants the tools he has given us to be used. He wants us to be AMAZING.

It's not easy to live up to that right? Wrong. It is. Because all of this is NOT about being perfect--its about BECOMING perfected. It's about change; it's about being polished up. Each of us is already extraordinary; each of us is already of divine origin filled with eternally divine potential. That's not in question. The question is whether or not that is enough for us. Do we choose to accept or deny that potential? To accept it we must accept Christ. To accept it we must change our hearts through His power. To accept it we must become changed beings--because our divine potential is something we must accept.

We are from divine origin. We have a divine future. We read in John 3:16-17 that God sent his son to save us. He sent Christ so that we can be joint heirs with our Savior. Isn't it simple? We accept Christ and let him change us and we accept the path that we were always meant to be on. We are children of a divine God and we are meant to grow to become like him. That is the point of it all simply put.

Love,

Sister Short

Letter 2/7/15

Dear Blog,

Here's the news (and it's interesting I think!); I'm staying in Pawhuska! (That's not really the interesting part ;) ) The interesting part is that my current companion, Sister Booms, is getting transferred to the (drum roll please!) Marshallese area! That's where I was trained! :) She will so love it! She's shotgunning in with her new companion. Sister Booms is like a linguist in the making so this will be really good :) My new companion's name is Sister Gee and she was trained by Sister Booms' MTC companion and is currently companions with Sister Booms' Trainer! It's just one of those funny knots :) 

I can't really express to you all all the Lord has been blessing us with here. I'm so thankful for His help. We've had so much help here. 

I hope you all will keep me in your prayers and know that all will be amazing :)

Love,

Sister Short

Letter 2/1/15

Blog:

Hi everyone! I hope your week has been good! 

I suppose my thoughts today are about the tender mercies of the Lord. Sometimes we start to overlook God's blessings because they aren't the ones we would choose for ourselves. For instance, I probably wouldn't have chosen for myself that really hard aerobics class in high school (I'm super weak so that was an experience), but I got to feel healthier and strong and realize I could actually exercise hard without keeling over (trust me--I thought I would). This week the Lord was really kind to us in a few ways. One huge thing was that it was like in the 60's and 70's this week--really warm! This was a huge mercy because I accidentally broke the heel of one of my boots. So I didn't freeze! That was a little thing, but it's big to me :) It would be easy to complain that my shoes broke and not even see that blessing. This week I got to study some on the difference faith makes in our expectations and then in our results. I would love to invite each of you to read 1 Nephi 17 and study the actions, outlooks, attitudes, and consequences of Nephi vs. Laman and Lemuel. It's interesting to see how many blessings Nephi SEES that his brothers don't. Each of us can take some time to study that chapter (and other chapters) and find for ourselves something simple to start nourishing our faith and seeing God's hand more clearly in our lives. (I really hope that made sense!)

Love, 

Sister Short

 Thought for the day -  comes from David O. McKay, "Jesus passed through all the experiences of mortality just as you and I.  He knew happiness, he experienced pain.  He rejoiced as well as sorrowed with others.  He knew friendship.  He experienced, also, the sadness that comes through traitors and false accusers.  He died a mortal death even as you will.  Since Christ lived after death, so shall you, and so shall I."  It is nice to know the Lord has gone through everything we have or will go through.  It is so much easier to relate to someone that has shared the same experiences we have. 

Letter 1/25/15

Dear Blog,

This week was wonderful. We set some great goals and worked hard to achieve them. God really blessed us in this.

Today I really wanted to share some thoughts on prayer. You see, I took a little "check your progress" test this morning to see how well I'm doing on some fundamentals of missionary service (revelation through prayer, revelation through the Book of Mormon, revelation through church attendance, etc.) and I saw what I'm struggling with helping those around me understand. It turns out, I am not doing so good on revelation through prayer. So, I've been thinking about prayer. Did you, for example, know that prayer is a commandment? Did you know that prayer is a 2 way communication between you and God? Simply put, prayer is us talking to our Father in Heaven. We can spill out our heart in prayer; we can ask, thank, and just talk. As we pay attention to how we feel when we pray we can recognize answers to the questions we ask. If we ask a specific question we will receive a specific answer. Sometimes it isn't easy to recognize those answers because they can come in many forms--yes, no, wait, you choose, etc. But the most telling way to recognize our answer is through the way we feel. We should pay close attention to the thoughts that come to our mind and the feelings that come to our heart as we pray. We can pray in any time and in any place. Satan may try to stop us from praying, but we can ALWAYS pray to our Heavenly Father no matter what--and we should. These are some simple thoughts about prayer--what do you talk to God about? :)

Love,
Sister Short

1/18/15

Blog:

My thought for the day is this--because God loves us we will receive answers to our prayers. Don't give up. Keep asking and SEEKING and you will find. Because God's love for us is the reason for it all. 

Love,

Sister Short

 Thought for the day comes from the January Relief Society Visiting Teaching Message.  This is a quote from Elder D. Todd Christofferson, "As we walk in obedience to the principles and commandments of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we enjoy a continual flow of blessings promised by God in His covenant with us.  Those blessings provide the resources we need to act rather than simply be acted upon as we go through life...... Obedience gives us greater control over our lives, greater capacity to come and go, to work and create."  I love this thought!

1/11/15

Dear Blog,

I just have a simple thought today. It's the theme (if not exact quote) from a talk I've been reading. It's simple:

God has given you everything and has everything, The only thing he can't have without you giving is your heart and your will. That's all he wants. He doesn't really want your time--he gives you every breath; he doesn't really want your money--he gave you the whole world. What he really wants is you. Once you give yourself, then your sacrifice of everything else he asks is right. That's the point of it all. It's simple. 

Love,

Sister Short