Heavenly Father Loves You a Lot - Sep 16

Hi Mom!
Ooh it's always the best to hear from you too! Sometimes I feel super far away and have no idea what's going on in America and at home! Haha it is true though. It's interesting to hear about life back home but man, I don't feel like I'm a part of it at all!!

Hey I totally ate the health food! The random rice syrup stuff no..... but I agree not everything! I have gotten a ton better about not wasting and eating things and just buying what I can eat. But I have like trauma from eating appts sometimes and just cannot finish my food because nobody is making me. It's really funny!

I just have to say I love Germany and I love my mission and I just love life right now! I feel like I'm just living the dream. It's the best time of my life! Im so happy, I feel God guiding us, its awesome. Not much more I could want. It's true you can worry less about me as a missionary, I'm doing GREAT! :)

Dad just told me a bit about jet skiing, so I'm actually not too informed what you did this week! Even if I did, I love hearing it twice :) that sounds awesome to have the boys home!! Boys are always going to be boys huh? Haha I bet they were a hoot.

Awh man, no wedding in December? I haven't been eating chocolate for nothing?!?!?! Hehe that's ok, whenever they are ready. Don't push off the wedding just for time with me though, I'm around way more often and weddings are a bigger deal!

I'll email Maddie about living together. I'd actually really love to! Or see if I can live in the same complex. We had fun together. Don't stress about it though, worst case scenario, I'm homeless and live with Kyle and Brittney. 🤷‍♀️

I will take care of registering for classes. How it's configured now, I can do it in advance on a pday and then it will automatically fill in my classes. Phew, that is a nice change. Also my mission president took care of my ecclesiastical endorsement, so I'm good there. The only hard part is I have to figure out what classes to take ahhhh!!

I took precautionary steps to introduce you to Sister Barker :) I love her tons and we are super good for each other, we really push each other and are super open. Love it . That's the key, fights don't happen if you're just open and honest in a loving way. [She sent a hilarious voice recording of her and Sister Barker doing an interview! Loved it! MOM]

Little Wicky is too young to get married. [Ricky Wiscovitch]

That's hilarious Dad is counting down the weeks. I actually did have to count down at the beginning of the week to make a plan for finishing all the projects I've started (I'll try to explain that a bit more later). I do not want to go home!!! I know you don't want to hear that but I don't wannnaaaaa! I love it i just love being a missionary i love smiling at people i love talking to people about whats important i love self improvement i love the scriptures i love Neukölln even if its a little ghetto i love this ward i love the Lord i just do NOT want this to end! If you cant tell ive been feeling a ton of missionary fire lately 😂 [Left this un-spell-checked because it was so funny and a big run on thought, which is exactly how she thinks sometimes! MOM]

Ohh thank you for asking me those questions! Those are really good ones to think about. I understand. We pray and plead and fast for these people and then they make bad choices. Why do it at all?

[MOM's Questions: If we can't change others, and Heavenly Father isn't willing to take away anyone's agency, what is the point of praying for others? 

Also, if we can't change the will of the Lord (and we shouldn't want to) why do we pray for the things that we want? Instead, shouldn't we always just pray to have His will be done?]

Think of why the Savior did the same thing. Before he even came to the world, he knew he was going to sacrifice a lot. He'd sacrifice a normal life to give others a chance. He healed people, he taught people, he sacrificed practically everything to allow people to heal and grow. He ultimately went to the Garden of Gethsemane in his last hours and performed the infinite sacrifice. Each of our names came through his mind, I'm sure of it, as he felt the burden of sacrifice completely overcome him.

His is the sacrifice that opens up more options. He knows how to succor (the German translation means to assist someone) his people. He gave up his life for something so much more.

But here's the thing: people STILL don't use His atoning sacrifice even though it's right there for them. Imagine how he feels, knowing he provided this great opportunity for all mankind to have eternal life, yet people still reject it. He must feel so hurt and so sad. But even so he doesn't get get upset and quit, pack up heaven and go on vacation! No! He is always there, hopeful of the future and of us changing.

So to answer your question, I don't always know why I keep praying for people that are going the opposite direction. Maybe it's to exercise my faith in Christ and to show God I'm practicing hope. In the end it makes me sad when they don't progress, but I know God loves me and accepts what I do.

Heavenly Father loves you a lot Mom. He accepts your sacrifices, small and big. He appreciates your "perfect brightness of hope" and is blessing you for it. Just because what you're wishing for isn't happening yet, doesn't mean that nothing is happening. :)

God has also promised us many, many times through the prophets that whatever we ask for, with real righteous intent, he will give it to us. That implies that He answers our prayers and is willing to give us what we ask for. He answers my prayers for people, especially by giving me ideas of how to help them. President Leimer always says "hope is not a strategy". That means we need to do something! We can ask to be a blessing to others, receive ideas how to do it then act on it. We can be angels for others on the earth! If you want to receive a stronger testimony of how God answers our prayers, I'd invite you to read Enos 1 like I did and look for HOW God answered Enos' prayers. There are 3 different ways.

I hope these were okay answers because they were great questions! :) The gospel is so rad Mom!

That makes me super sad they aren't getting along. That is sadly really immature and when I look at it from an outside perspective (that one is a pretty easy one for me to do hahah) it just honestly doesn't make sense. Forgive and forget and help your family out. It's silly things like this that just lead to bigger problems. I've seen it in so many families here. Strong wholesome relationships are centered on Jesus Christ. That means that they constantly partake of His Atonement, allowing forgiveness and healing. I'm a big advocate for forgive and forget. The more relationships are centered on the gospel, the happier they will be.

Hah I am not without fault and I am the absolute last person that gets to cast a stone at anyone. I think I've changed quite a bit, especially in the past few months. Sister Barker and I were having a conversation that if we had expectations for who our future husbands are, we need to become that person. One thing that's really important for me is a love of the scriptures. I felt I had that, but I didn't feel it was very deep. I really worked on that by making study plans and focusing on the missionary library, standard works and PMG. I can honestly say I look forward to personal study every single day! The scriptures are AWESOME! It is so fascinating and I love how they make me feel. It's honestly become addicting. Comp study is super fun too because we share ideas and study together.

I also don't know if I told you this, but Sister Barker got me into "family" scripture study every night. We do this because she didn't have regular family scripture study growing up, and that's really important to her in her future family (like our family did all those years!) . So she wants to practice! There is an alarm (love is spoken here!) and we read in the Doctrine and Covenants. I love it so much and I'm going to continue it! Never too early to start!

Okay this is crazy but I think I actually managed to write you a longer one! Wooo hoooo! That's an accomplishment.

We just had a really fun pday and visited a Jewish museum! We thought it was a memorial museum about WW2 but no. It was legit a Jewish museum. Haha it was interesting though and cool to learn about. The Holy Land is a really fascinating place. I took a few pictures of the couple exhibits having to do with the holocaust. They were pretty deep. There was this one thing called the Holocaust Tower that was pretty spine tingling. It was a closed place no bigger than our upstairs at home and the walls had to be at least 80 feet tall. It was super cold and just had a bit of light and represented a concentration camp. Super spooky. Sad stuff, but I'm glad I learned a bit more about it.

Other than that I can just simply say it with I'm happy and excited for the next week! I'm excited for what I can learn and who we get to meet and help and how we will see God's hand in our lives. It will be good.

What can I do to support the family better? I love you all more than imaginable.

I love you a million crispy red apples on a fall day!!

With love, Sister Ingalls Jr.