Hermana Miranda Madsen: Llorar con los que lloren

{to mourn with those who mourn}

{pigs in an open land fill area? I'll have to ask about some of these pics!}

This week was a rollercoaster for my emotions. I discovered that on a mission, the burdens of your investigators really become your burdens, and when you have a lot of people to visit, a lot of emotions build up and it really is hard to sleep.

I realized that EVERY person has been through trials in their lives that are very very difficult. I wish I could provide the personal service each of them need. But I can only give them to God and let Christ bear their burdens and trust that everything will work out because of the atonement. One example of someone this week whose burden is greater that I can comprehend is Nelma. She is a member, and has been since her teenage years. She has traveled the world. She is a lawyer, has the house of her dreams (and my dreams), is married, and has the most obedient, intelligent one year old daughter I know of. But Nelma has cancer, her marriage is not happy, and she doesn't have family or friends who support her. We are visiting her husband and giving him the lessons, like missionaries have for years. He wants to get baptized because he promised Nelma they would get sealed someday. But he doesn't believe that the church is true. Nelma has a super strong testimony of the church and of eternal families. So it hurts her that her husband doesn't believe. She, with her cancer, has visited the hospital A LOT, and never has her husband been there for her operations. Tomorrow she has another operation, and although she has hope that all goes well, she bore her testimony in testimony meeting as if it was the last chance she would ever have to do so.

This weighed down on me a lot this week, but I trust God to take care of her. We are going to keep working with her husband so someday he can understand and believe. But it really is all in the Lord's timing, and He will bless the faithful.

One thing she said in her testimony really struck me. She said, "I know that if the day after tomorrow is the end, that I am going to live with God and He will take care of me." Feeling the burden of this faithful woman as well as many others this week gave me a feeling of a tiny portion of what Christ feels. He feels every burden and hardship of EVERY single person on earth. He has the desire to give personal attention to each one of us. We just need to accept it and give all our burdens to Him.

On a lighter note, I called the United States this week to help an investigator whose son wants to do a foreign exchange. I called the agency to talk in English, and I could not speak properly. It was so hard to switch from speaking Spanish with the family, to trying to have a formal conversation in English. The lady on the other line was so confused at what I was saying because I kept throwing in little Spanish words on accident. Que vergüenza.