Fuori Servizio

Reason for the title: The entire day of Thursday was FUORI SERVIZIO...
Let me explain:

It started off Wednesday night, we were both feeling sad and in need
of a good cry so we ended up crying ourselves to sleep. Anyway,
Thursday morning we still felt sad, but we just tried to go about our
day and be normal, so we do studies. In personal study, I was in
Mosiah 3, which talks about Jesus Christ and His Atonement. Verse 9
caught my attention:

"And lo, he cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the
children of men even through faith on his name; and even after all
this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and
shall scourge him, and shall crucify him."

Jesus Christ. He did everything for us. He gave His entire life so
that I could be happy. Why am I not happy right now? I still couldn't
understand. I have a family, I'm a missionary, I'm companions with my
twin (not literally but almost), life couldn't get any better. I still
felt sad. Then I read a general conference talk, "Obtaining Help From
the Lord".

"Help from the Lord generally comes in increments. He can immediately
cure serious illnesses or disabilities or even allow the dead to be
raised. But the general pattern is that improvement comes in
sequential steps. That plan gives us an opportunity to discover what
the Lord expects us to learn. It requires our patience to recognize
His timetable. It provides growth from our efforts and trust in Him
and the opportunity to express gratitude for the help given.

Often we have difficulty mastering lessons the Lord wants us to learn
when things are going too well in our lives. When there is suffering
or pain, we ask ourselves a lot of questions. Some of them ought to
be: What does the Lord want me to learn from this experience? What do
I need to do? What do I need to change? Whom do I need to serve? Or
what characteristic must I improve? Pondering and prayer will help us
understand what we are to learn from the challenges we are asked to
overcome."

It goes on to talk about how not all of our prayers are answered
exactly the way we want them to be answered. I pondered this and
decided to kneel down and pray to know what God wanted me to learn
from this experience. I finished my prayer, waited and nothing.

We had an appointment with an investigator and the Spirit was so
strong, I felt prompted to ask her to be baptized: I got shut down.
But we challenged her to read and pray to know if the Book of Mormon
was true and she said she would. (Follow-up on that will come next
email.)

After the lesson, we got a call from Utah (My companion has had iPad
problems that we've been trying to fix) and had to get to WiFi to do
something so we ran to La Romana and I started to sync my area book
while Bacher talked to the tech dude. I don't know what happened, but
when I was syncing, it deleted all of the data I had put in for the
last 2 weeks... Great. Then we ran to catch a bus that was FUORI
SERVIZIO (Out of service) and ended up waiting 20 minutes for the next
one.

As we sat on the bench and waited, I looked through my emails. The
first one I read was from a friend saying that I and been an answer to
a long sought prayer... I saw there just reading it over and over. For
the first time in a long time, I felt needed.

Then I saw that I had received an email from my mom with a single quote:

"God gives us difficulties to bring out the best in us."

As I read that, I had an overwhelming feeling of peace. God knows me.
He knows exactly how I feel in this very moment. All the feelings of
sadness and failure didn't go away, but there was a greater feeling of
love and assurance knowing that I would get through this and that
there was someone that went through and overcame exactly what I am
dealing with now. Jesus Christ. As a missionary, I get rejected all
day long.  I feel like I should be immune to sadness and rejection,
because I am in Italy sharing the greatest message in the world. But
here I am, trying my best and giving my all and being rejected. Jesus
Christ felt it all and He didn't deserve any of it. I'm a
representative of Him, so I deserve to feel some of the pain that He
felt.

I guess the message I want to share is that Satan is real and that no
feeling or trial goes unnoticed. Heavenly Father knows exactly what we
are facing, but so does Satan.  They both know our weaknesses and our
strengths. The difference is that Heavenly Father wants us to humble
ourselves and come to Him so that we can make our weaknesses into
strengths (Ether 12:27), but Satan wants us to dwell in sadness and
failure. He doesn't want us to get back up when we fall down, but
that's exactly what we need to do. We need to get up every time and
keep going. If we go to Heavenly Father in prayer, He will guide our
footsteps and comfort us. It may not be immediately, but the answer
will come, if we truly search for it. Read the Book of Mormon. Say
your prayers. God will bless you. He loves you.

Con amore,
Sorella Meager