I am LOVING Pittsfield. The work here is dang hard and we're seriously working so hard to figure out how to make this place better. We've literally tried everything and nothing seems to be working. It's hard as heck, let me tell ya. But Sister Morgan and I are doing good. It's fun to figure out what the Lord needs me to learn from her.
ALSO - I met the challenge the zone leaders gave us and finished the Book of Mormon in 6 weeks! It felt SO good and I learned A TON!
Okay so instead of giving you the run down of the week I really just want to talk about the brother of Jared and hopefully that's okay. I was studying Ether earlier this week so I'm in chapters 2-6 and I really can't get over how much I love this story. The Brother of Jared is preparing his people to cross the ocean and because of their faithful prayers, the Lord provides them with divine guidance on how to build vessels to travel by. The Lord requires the Brother of Jared to do all he can to solve the problem on how to achieve light in the vessels on his own. When the Brother of Jared finds a way to illuminate light in their vessels, he prays to God and asks Him to touch the stones with His fingers, giving each stone light. I love the statement, "Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this" (Ether 3:5). The Brother of Jared almost encourages the Lord to help him out and I LOVE the faith that this shows! However uncertain or inadequate we may feel about our own ability, we should have no uncertainty about the power God has. How cool is that?! So, the Lord illuminated each stone and because of the Brother of Jared's faith, God straight up shows Himself to him. Great faith can lead us to see God's presence. As we continue to show God our faith, He continues to show Himself to us. Okay, this is my very favorite part. Earlier in my emails I talked about what our own wilderness might be and what our promised land is. So keep that in mind. The Jaredites are traveling in these tight vessels in the ocean for 344 days. Imagine the sickness that must be ALL OVER this small boat. Imagine the INSANE amount of discomfort and sea sickness the Jaredites must have felt while traveling across the ocean for this long of a time, with little stones in each vessel giving them some light. God decides to send furious winds and storms as they're traveling. These storms cause the vessels to be completely engulfed in the waters. I think that in life we feel this way a lot. I feel like we can have trials thrown into our face, left and right, to the point where we feel like we are absolutely drowning in water with no hope left. BUT these storms and winds that the Lord sent were the very things that lead the Jaredites to their promised land. Despite all that they were feeling and going through, they PRAISED and THANKED God for that storm and they didn't stop thanking or praising Him. It's hard to really comprehend the fact that this shows us that we need to thank God for our hardships and trials, but we need to trust Him and believe that these trials will lead us to where we need to be and what we need to become.
LOVE YOU ALL A TON.
xoxo, sister beal
PICS- Service at the food pantry we do every week. - We made our deer meat for dinner which was low-key traumatic after actually killing one but lol it's fine.
- We had to go to St. Louis, so we got FRIED RAVIOLI!
- A member is letting me borrow his guitar while I'm here so I've been LOVING it. I play it any chance I get haha it's the best.