I Will Never take back My Happy Dances

Yes Yes Yes to Happiness.

Also, sad days.

Welcome to the missionary roller coaster life!

Highlights:

Another transfer came and went, Sister Lewis and I will now be a dynamic duo in Urbana.

Sadlights

Sister Davis is leaving me. And Ohio. The eternal transfer back to Utah. 😱 I'll take this moment to give her a shout out. She happens to be the most loving person I have ever met. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body. She always has a smile on her face, and she always puts a smile on my face. My favorite part about being her companion was being able to listen to her powerful prayers. She has a great relationship with God and has worked hard to help others find the peace and love she feels from him every day. I'm gonna miss her but she'll go on to do great things back in the great Utah land✌🏻️😭

This week we spent a lot of time chasing people down, knocking down their doors, and reminding them what a great idea it is to come to church. There was so much focus and so many good lessons happened. We had a very spiritual lesson with Jeremiah in our chapel and it was cool for me to not only help him learn about the importance of worshipping on Sunday, but to have my testimony of that strengthened as I taught him. We were listening to a Tarzan song earlier this week, "Son of Man", and I loved the line," in learning you will teach, and In teaching you will learn". It's so true. I've learned so much from the people I have taught and my testimony has been strengthened along with theirs as they took steps of faith with me.

Learning/Spiritual experience of the week:

So the beginning of this week was great. We worked so hard on church attendance. There were so many calls, so many contacts, so many sticky notes, and we even confirmed with each of them they were coming on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. I worked hard on my life; to use daily repentance, diligence, charity, make my studies better, know what things I could share with each of them, keep my companions happy, keep the spirit happy.

On Saturday afternoon we had a really cool lesson with Jeremiah where all of his concerns about coming to church just came out. We were able to meet at the church, give him another brief chapel tour, talk about the sacrament, and address most of his concerns. When he left, he promised he would come, and Miah has never even really said a half yes to coming so I was pumped. After he left, I promptly did a happy dance. I was feeling the spirit and I knew he felt the spirit and he even told us he felt the spirit and he was coming to church and how could I not be happy? My companions were not so thrilled, they didn't believe him and were still skeptical, so I tired to infuse my happiness into them to no avail. Such is life, they were tired and life was good.

Then Sunday came, and there was no one next to us in sacrament meeting. It was very confusing. I was relieved that the week was coming to a close, and refreshed by the testimonies and the sacrament. At the same time I was devastated. Just 24 hours before, I had been doing a happy dance in the foyer because we had an amazing lesson with Jeremiah and he was so set on coming to church, and now it was just another Sunday in a pew without him. At one point and looked up during one of the testimonies I knew was Heaven sent for Jeremiah if he would have been there to listen and asked why he didn't come. Sister Davis looked over and whispered "this is why I don't do happy dances"

I thought a lot about that sentence over the course of the block, and the afternoon. I thought about all of the work we had put into our investigators lives over the last week. I thought about the spirit I had felt during my studies about church, and the times I was able to bear my testimony of church. I thought about the joy I really had felt at the end of a solid lesson with an investigator I loved. I even thought about the devastation I was feeling on behalf of all the people that didn't come. I decided I will never take back my happy dances. Being a missionary is hard. Emotionally investing yourself into someone's eternal salvation can be painfully devastating. But it can also be the most joy you have ever felt in your life. There are times when I feel sad because of others agency, but there have been so many more times where I have felt overwhelming love because of the choices others have made. I know that if we do our best as missionaries, we will see miracles. Sometimes we don't know when those miracles will come, but I know they come. So I'm going to keep doing my best, and I'm going to keep doing my happy dances. Even when life gets dark and dreary, even when people make bad decisions, we have the savior of the World on our side, how can we fail?

I think we all have moments of our lives where we fall prey to skepticism and cynicism. There is so much hate and failure in the world. We fail to look past all of the fog and see the rays of sunshine on the other side. We get bogged down in the dirty details. I have learned from my companions and from the Savior to rejoice in the little things. President Dieter F Uchtorf said,

"When we are grateful to God in our circumstances, we can experience gentle peace in the midst of tribulation. In grief, we can still lift up our hearts in praise. In pain, we can glory in Christ’s Atonement. In the cold of bitter sorrow, we can experience the closeness and warmth of heaven’s embrace. We sometimes think that being grateful is what we do after our problems are solved, but how terribly shortsighted that is. How much of life do we miss by waiting to see the rainbow before thanking God that there is rain?" (April 2014)

So don't be afraid to do happy dances this week. Seek out opportunities to do them. Rejoice in his glorious gospel, and bask in his life giving light!

Also, shout out to all of my mum's out there. I love you all and I have learned so much from you spiritual Giants!

✌🏻️Sister Reynolds✌🏻️