Sister Kofford in Tahiti: Is God Proud of us?

4/20/15

Bonjour friends and family! My second week went well here at Papeari. We found four new investigators which was such a blessing! They are Sam, Rebecca, Monisa, and Manarii. So if you want you can pray for them and that would be great. I still love my mission and love serving and helping others find themselves through coming to Christ but things are a little bit hard. My companion is great and I am so blessed to be with her but we are different and have found that we have different opinions and different ways of working. But I still know that I am with her for a reason and I will keep loving her and serving her until I find the reason. Even if it is just to relearn patience, humility, and charity those are good enough reasons for me. I know that it will not be easy but it is possible. With this big change in my mission I have had moments where I felt a little bit lost and did not quite know what to do. I wanted to stay busy and diligent but she has her ideas as well. I truly was a little bit broken because I wanted to remain a worthy missionary in the eyes of God. When all of these thoughts were rushing through my head, I ran across a scripture that helped me through the week. It was 3 Nephi 11:7. It is God who talks about His son. Ha I read it in French but in English it says something along the lines of, "This is my beloved son in which I am well pleased, hear Him." I thought a lot about this scripture and realised that God was always proud of His son. He loved His son with all of His heart and was always pleased with Him. Then I thought to myself that I want God to be proud of me like He is His son. And for God to be proud of us, all we have to do is follow the example of His son, Jesus Christ. I am so thankful for this example that we have and this role model that we have to follow in our lives. As I thought about Jesus Christ, I know that His life was not easy. He was persecuted, tempted, tortured, and killed. But through it all, He did exactly the will of the Father. He was exactly obedient, He was patient, He was humble, and He was charitable and loved everyone. I know that things are not always supposed to be easy. It was not easy for Him and it should not be easy for us. But it is possible. These hard times really let us find who we can become. The potential that only God knows. We all have trials and are all a little bit broken. But God loves broken things. I did a study on that this week and read all the scriptures that had the word "broken" in it. It was amazing. In life, we have to break the wheat to make bread, we have to break a horse to be able to ride it safely, we have to be broken to let God give us the opportunity to mold us into our perfect selves. I am thankful for this opportunity to improve, to change, and to become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ each day. I know that if I will continue to strive to be like Him each day, God will fix us and He will be proud of us like He was for His son. So when times get tough . . . remember that GOD LOVES BROKEN THINGS! And that He loves you and is so PROUD of each and every one of you! I love you and am so thankful for all that you do for me! Thank you for your love and support and for your prayers! I am so grateful! I hope you have a great week!

Love, Soeur Kofford