This week has been filled with miracles. Most of them are very personal and sacred to me and it just doesn’t feel right putting them in an email. But I want to start off by letting you all know how much I love my Savior. He is the center of everything. He is the center of my thoughts and my heart and my life. My relationship with Him has grown so strong this week. Through my Savior all my feelings of guilt are washed away. My pains are turned into joys. My confusion into enlightenment. My judgement into love. My fears into faith. My insecurities into strength. My anxiety into comfort and my ignorance into wisdom. I am absolutely NOTHING without my Lord. It is only through his saving atonement that I can return to my loving God. And God is more loving than our tiny human brains can comprehend. He loves us so much that He sacrificed his Son and set up a plan of salvation so that we could return to live with Him and I want nothing more than to fall into His warm embrace at the end of this short life. Christ made this possible. Because He suffered for all our sickness, pains and sins, we dont have to. He allows us to repent and be baptized. How absolutely INSANE is that!? Repentance means to “turn to” or “return to” God. It means breaking down that wall or sin that separates you from Heavenly Father so He can shower his love on us! Baptism is a “re-birth” where all your sins are washed away and you make your fist covenant with God. This allows us to have eternal salvation as we stay true to the promise you make. Baptism is such a miracle. I want everyone to feel that JOY that comes through these 2 things. It is almost incomprehensible.
I am so thankful for the priesthood (power of God ordained to men) A few days ago, I was feeling really anxious about going to NY. I really wanted to ask my elders for a blessing but thought it was dumb so I didn’t. Sunday, Elder Edmoundson felt prompted to ask me if I wanted a blessing. I told him I really had been wanting one. We planned to give one that night and in the end, the whole district ended up getting blessings of comfort. The moment they set their hands on my head, I felt a rush of peace and an overwhelming sense of love. It made me emotional because it made me feel so close to my dad who has given me a lot of blessings in the past. Elder Edmoundson gave such a powerful blessing and the things he said in it were a testimony to me that it was not his words but God’s. That blessing and hearing the blessing of all the others in my district was SO powerful and emotionally, spiritually and even physically draining. We were all exhausted by the end. They are literally my family. I know that the experiences we’ve had together will last forever and we will be close friends when we get off our missions.
Heres a taste of the week: Elder Dallin Oaks spoke to us the other night. It was so powerful to have an Apostle of Christ talk to us directly. We had a sacrament meeting where my fam and I sang “Nearer My God to Thee” and we all bore our testimonies and all were bawling and just so filled with the spirit. We were stalked by several elders who ended up asking for our emails (gettin dem abc’s) and one of them is going to Hungary and has been attacking us all week and is obsessed and is totally balding (and a ginger) and today he said “I know that my receeding hairline can be intimadating, but I promise you I’m 19” HAHA and when he found out I had redhead sisters and Irish blood, he started freaking out and was pretty much planning for our future readhead babies haha. Freaky. Some Elders that asked for my email didn’t even speak English. One of them emailed me today and told me I was his best friend here and my smile made him feel so loved and I only talked to him twice haha. It’s so weird when elders try to flirt. Every morning after we workout (I dominated in Volley ball today guys) we sing Matasyahu and Trev Hall in the shower, the other night we built the coolest fort and had a slumber party and jammed to EFY music. Me and sister Holmberg run everywhere we go… just cuz (and dont worry, I still twirl a few times a day).
Sister Hernandez cried over this gorgeous doughnut that she dropped and this lunch lady laughed at her and she was straight up about to punch the lunch lady… HAHA She is so funny. Every night we have a ritual where we all go around and say “I love you” then Sister Hernandez says “hate you” then Holberg says “Watch yo profanity” in the funniest voice hahaha. I’m going to miss it so dearly. After every meal we have this cinnamon granola for dessert and today we secretly filled a huge zip lock bag full of it for our travels. Every Night we binge eat on vending machine food. SOOO GOODDDD. But I actually haven’t eaten sugar or candy or chocolate since I’ve been here so I always get the apples or string cheese or gold fish or burritos.
OH!!!! Speaking of burritos! So! its 10:20. Were all ready for bed and just getting cozy when the fire alarm goes off. We all start moaning and dragging our feet to the hall. We open the door and the whole hall is FILLED with smoke. It smelled SO strong. The alarm is breaking my eardrums and there are girls yelling and screaming all over the place. I look down the hall to see that the microwave is the source of this calamity. I march over to it while everyone is running the opposite way and discover that there is a burrito that’s ON FIRE inside HAHAHAH! And the microwave still had a good 5 minutes to go! SO I turned it off, a little scared that it might explode then I booked it out of there. Outside the building there were a couple hundred girls freaking out. They were all in their pj’s some in towels with dripping wet hair. They were praying and crying and totally overreacting. I guess they didn’t really know what was going on. All they saw and smelled was the smoke. We all huddled up and sang hymns together and my roomies and I snuck away to go on a nightime adventure. We hid in this cool tree and pretended to be detectives. We waited for the fire truck to come and soon all the drama was over and we went back to bed, in a very nasty smelling/smoky room. Lots of girls were taking photos and video diaries of the microwave. (such a legend) I was joking with them – and telling everyone that I accidentally added a zero and that I was still hungry for my burrito. They were freaking out at me… HAHA good times.
I will definitely miss it here. The people and experiences have forever changed my life. I really can’t explain all my experiences because there is so much that goes into them and you really just had to be here haha. But I am so thankful to God for letting me have these past 3 weeks. Everyday has been constant knowledge and constant spirit and constant growth. For 16 hours a day I have been working my booty off. The only breaks I have are food and shower time. And the “Work” is SO FUN!!!!! I can’t wait to fly to NY tomorrow! I cant wait to meet the amazing people I’ve been praying for the past 3 months. I will try my best to make my emails better and include detailed experinces!!!! Sorry that this is all over the place! Thanks for your love and support! I can FEEL your prayers for me. Its almost creepy how strongly I can feel them. It’s constant. They do make a difference. I thank God for each of you every night. This week I’d like to challenge you to get outside your comfort zone and do something you’ve never done before! One big lesson I’ve learned here is “There is no comfort in growth, and there is no growth in comfort!”
Love you all! God bless!
Sister Folkman
Sister Rebekah Ruth Folkman 