Ostia Week 11

Trials and trees

Good morning! I hope you all are doing well. I know life is busier now that school has started and summer is over. I have had a lot of fun adventures this week! Things are going great here!

We went to the Vatican museum for P-day this week. It was beautiful! They had a lot of neat things in it. The Sistine Chapel is amazing. It looks three dimensional! It was so packed with people. We waited in line outside for two hours! If any of you ever go, you should make a safety plan for in case you get separated. We accidentally got separated.

On Thursday it was Sorella Bray's one year mark! To celebrate we went to the church for pranzo. We bought arancini  and cannoli for lunch. At the church we watched all of the addiction recovery videos. Those are so intense! The church did a really good job on them. I really liked them because you get to see the strength of the repentance process in the lives of people who thought they were beyond saving. They are very powerful.

When we visited Humphrey and his family, this week, we asked them to pray and ask if what we were teaching them was true, and if baptism was the right thing for them to do. About an hour later we got a call from Divine (Humphrey's wife), she told us that she knew the church was true and that she wants to get baptized!!!

We had a lesson this week with a less active, we talked about courage with her. It is sad, because she is so focused on all of the trials that she has had throughout her life that she is unable to see the blessings in her life. I have been thinking about how everyone has trials in their lives. Trials come in all shapes and sizes, they are individual to each person. They can be hard and scary. What is the point of having trials? They help us to learn and grow. They push us forward and as we over come our trials we become stronger. There is a story about a man who Heavenly Father told, every day, to go and move this giant boulder. He tried, every day he went out and pushed and pushed with all of his might. One day he got frustrated, he cried out "Why? Why do I need to move this boulder! I cannot move it, it is to big! Why do you ask me to move this boulder when you know I can't?" Heavenly Father answered and said "look at your arms. Look at how much stronger you are know! Every day you went out and pushed against this boulder with all of your might, because you did this, now you are strong." We can come out of a trial so much stronger than we were before. Sometimes we become so obsessed with our trials that it becomes all that we can see. It is like a big tree in front of us blocking our view of the forest. Yet, if we just take a few steps back we can see a bigger picture. We still cannot see the whole forest, but we can trust that Heavenly Father can. We just need to put our faith in Him and trust that there is a greater purpose in our life. The forest can be beautiful if we just step back and see the blessings in our lives even while we are going through our difficult trials.

Have a great week!

Letter dated September 21, 2015.

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Sorella Victoria Pinnegar
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