Best Week Ever! This was such a good week! So many great things happened this week.
So I don't know if anyone told you...but Thursday was my birthday! :)
Just kidding. Of course you knew. But it was seriously the best birthday ever! Let me tell you about it. So first of all, I wake up and my companion had decorated our apartment. I had no idea how, because it isn't like she just did it when I wasn't looking-we are always together! This is how she did it- she purposely drank lots of water before going to bed, then prayed that she would be able to wake up. And it worked! She is so cute/hilarious. Then we were on shift in the morning, so after opening all of my presents (more on that in a second) we went to the VC. We walk into the guides room and some of the sisters had come in early to surprise me!
Anyway, it was such a great day! Definitely a tender mercy from Heavenly Father. I could not have asked for a better day. Oh, I have to mention the packages because my family all asked about them. I got a great package from my mom, but the one they were asking about was from my grandma and my aunt and family. Hilarious. So for the whole week before my
birthday I kept getting cards from them. On the inside they would say things like, "Orange you excited that it is almost your birthday?" and "Do you know why we picked this card? Because it is orange!" I had no idea what was going on. So then I get the package, which I can't open until my birthday. I am guessing it has something to do with all this orange business, but I have no idea. So finally on my birthday I open it and it was just full of all this orange stuff! Seriously anything you can imagine. Orange towels, orange plates, an orange shirt, orange pencils, orange candy, orange everything. I am sure they had a blast picking it all out. So funny. And it probably took me like 10 minutes to open the whole package! Those little jokesters. It is nice to know that someone loves you that much. Well, enough about me. Except I guess these letters are always about me, because I write them. Oh well. Anyway, one other exciting thing that happened was a couple of my friends from BYU came in! They live in Iowa now, and one of her friends was on a church history trip so they joined them for this part of it. Rebekah was on my floor my freshman year at BYU,
and we have been friends ever since. I was even her roommate one spring term when she got engaged to her now husband. And I got to go to their wedding as well. They are so great! Also, when I last saw them they were just graduating from BYU, were going to move to Iowa for an internship, and she was pregnant. Now, he has a full time job, they just bought a house, and they have an 8-month old baby! Who is the cutest thing in the whole world by the way. So crazy. And they gave me the update on all my college friends, because none of them ever write me. :) Anyway, it was really great to see them! Alright, lets get spiritual. Zone conference was this week! It is the best. This time at Zone conference we talked a lot about prayer and why it is important. We read the talk "Improving our prayers" by Elder Wirthlin in preparation, then talked about whay we learned from it. My favorite part of the talk was at the beginning. He talked about how much we loved our Heavenly Father before we came to earth and how it would have been really hard to leave
Him, even though we were super excited to come down here and have this experience. He says, "Undoubtedly our separation from our Heavenly Father was softened when He promised that as we sought after Him in prayer, He would reach toward us." Wow! Can you imagine? We are all excited, but also sad that we have to leave Him. But I can just see Him reminding us that really we can talk to Him whenever we want, and us being consoled by that. I think about my mission, or going to college and being excited, but knowing that I will miss my family. Something that brings us comfort is that not only is it not a permanent separation, we also have the opportunity throughout the experience to communicate. It is still a little hard, but it brings a lot of comfort to be able to talk each week. That is how we felt about our Heavenly Father! That really made me re-evaluate our prayers. You may think that being a missionary makes you suddenly the best ever at saying prayes, but you would be wrong if you think that. Yes, I do pray more often, but I am also a lot more tired! And at the end of the day, it is very easy to fall into the habit of just saying a half-hearted prayer like I used to. But we have to think about who we are talking about. I have started to kind of picture Him more in my prayers and pretend I am actually talking to Him about my life and my problems and things I need help with and things. It has helped. We aren't just talking to ourselves, or to the ceiling. But if we don't put anything into it, we probably aren't going to get much out of it. Well I could go on about how great the week was, but I won't. This week is going to be fun because my companion is going to a 4-day leadership conference in Olathe, and will only be home at nights. So I get to go on lots of exchanges with other sisters this week. It will be an adventure! We are also going to finally meet with Roberto this week after like 3 of not seeing him. It is going to be great, I can feel it.
Well I love you all! Thanks for all the love and support and letters (I got a bunch this week!) and prayers.
-Sister Hafen
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