June 12

This week I've learned a lot about myself and how to deal with stress. This came to my attention that I'm a person who gets very stressed out at zone conference when  president Stevens came in and gave me a hug and said "how is my super man doing", of course you can't give a half truth to your mission president so I honestly answered "I could be doing better president" while still in the comfort of his hug. And then he cut me to the heart with this one liner "how is your kryptonite of stress?". With that I was wrecked, I realized that I stress out a lot. Of course my district situation is more unique than most with everyone leaving this up coming week and not working anymore, but still i stress out a lot. Then the high council man who watches over our ward ,brother mace, who has become a good friend told me after putting away some chairs with him that I look like I've lost some weight. Basically calling me weak because I was struggling with some chairs, but then I realized it's true i must of lost 5kgs in these past couple weeks. So I decided to take it to the Lord, for my answers and I got my answers from two separate sources. The first is sacrament meeting where a less active Brother gibeke gave a talk about matthew 6:33 and said We all have needs physical, emotional, psychological. But we forget that we should look to the Lord for all our needs.  This really impacted me and made me want to really study out how I can call upon the Lord for help, obviously prayer; but I thought of working on something that I never really had a testimony of, which is fasting. Long story short I have never seen the blessings of fasting; mostly because the only time I truly had desire, real intent, and faith to fast was when we had a ward Fast when my dad was in the hospital and things really didn't turn out the way I expected them too (but then again when have they ever😂). So I thought I would study more up on it, I can honestly say I didn't learn any more doctrine on it than I already knew but something came to my mind as I was studying it in the topical guide. When ever fasting is referred to prayer is always included in it, and this thought came to my mind. "Of course we should always pray.....but we don't always pray to get something", that's when it all clicked. I have always fasted to attain something, and when I didn't receive the blessing I was fasting for I became discouraged. We are always taught that sometime the things we pray for are not the Lords will and we learn from the Bible dictionary that prayer is really just alining our will with the Fathers and I though "wouldn't that include fasting as well?"  So I prayed to know what to fast for, the Lord obviously doesn't want me to be stressing everyday and getting more grey hairs than I already have and I was to fast about my stress and a few other things.  I think that's when I really started to see miracles happen, when I really prayed and asked to know how to do the Lords will the Lords way rather than doing the Lords will my way. That's just something that I learned this week. 

But I love you all and wish you all the best.