Kamusta!

This week it feels like to focus of my prayers has been asking Heavenly Father to help me fight discouragement when people cancel or I feel like me and my companion are doing our best and the numbers aren't reflecting our efforts and we just feel lost or stuck. What I've learned is that discouragement comes from the adversary and doesn't do us any good but as we turn that into godly sorrow we can be comforted and strengthened by the atonement. Heavenly Father doesn't want us to be discouraged but he does want us to feel sorrowful enough to repent or change our ways and improve and we can only do that through the atonement of Christ. 

In this area it's so hard to go finding unless you have referrals because we don't know who the nonmembers are here so if we tried knocking doors we'd spend an hour just meeting all the members of our area and not getting any work done so it's hard to know what to do once we've contacted all our referrals and have some free time. Well sister L had a great idea to contact all of the former investigators in our area book and see who's still here and if they are interested or not and it's been amazing to see the progress we've had. So many people seem to be prepared and ready to repent and it was just so cool to me to see what it's life to meet someone really prepared to hear the message of the gospel. The tricky part is helping them want to go to church and not go up on the mountain to go huntin' and stuff like that cause that's all people do here in vernal haha. I'm really excited/ stressed about this upcoming week because we have so many lessons with new and potential investigators so I hope it goes well and we can see some progress in the are instead of the standstill that it's been at for so long. Last night our district leader asked me why I think our area is finally booming and see progress and I honestly had no idea I just told him how hard we are working and that we try to implement all that we learn in training meetings so that's why I think it's going well but who knows. I just hope we can have a baptism this month in case I get transferred on the 1st so I can at least see some of the reward from all the hard work. 

The thought I wanted to leave for today was a quote from Elder Cornish in this last conference 

"Please, my beloved brothers and sisters, we must stop comparing ourselves to others. We torture ourselves needlessly by competing and comparing. We falsely judge our self-worth by the things we do or don’t have and by the opinions of others. If we must compare, let us compare how we were in the past to how we are today--and even to how we want to be in the future. The only opinion of us that matters is what our Heavenly Father thinks of us. Please sincerely ask Him what He thinks of you. He will love and correct but never discourage us; that is Satan’s trick." 

I hope everyone is doing well and has a great week! 

Salamat Po!

Love from Vernal, 

Sister Dunkley