To Vanessa

Hello everybody!

This week has been CRAZY!  We have gone on so many adventures and met so many new people.  It has been really cool to see how God is in the details of everybody's lives and how much He cares about His children (us).

To start off, this week, we met up with this one guy and he was...um...interesting.  While meeting up with him, we went on a walk and he gave us these bags that were tan and they have green stuff all overthem (for the environment) and he works for the environment.  Not only that but he gave us wooden pens and glass water bottles and he was like "it's not plastic!"  and he told us how he was Vegan and how he does intermitten fasting and then he proceeded to say that he sold his bike and that he goes everywhere "immer by füß" Which means "always by foot..." so he doesn't even take the trains because he cares so much about the environment and being healthy.   It was really funny.  I mean, I care about the environment but......not THAT much. 

Not to mention, yesterday we tried to go visit a returning member (inactive) and well when we got there, she wasn't there so we called someone and it turns out that she moved out so...that was really sad...But that wasn't the worst part.  The worst part was we had a meeting at 6:30 and we only had 30 minutes to get home so we ran onto a train hoping that it would take us home and well....it went the opposite direction....🤦‍♂️ so...as a result, we got off the train and sat on a little metal bar and then joined the meeting.  Now, it wouldn't have been so bad if it was warm outside...but...IT WAS FREEZING!!!!  It was probably -10°C so I couldn't feel my toes, my face or my fingers.  They were all numb and on top of that, my companion left her book of Mormon on the train and we had no idea where we were.  BUT despite all of that, we ran into a man who stopped us and in our total exhaustion and freezingness, we talked to this man and he seemed so genuinely interested in learning about the church (again) and I felt the spirit so strong that this man needed the Gospel in his life and that he really was genuine about meeting with us.  It was so beautiful to see how even in all of our suffering, the Lord had lead us to a man in a place that we didn't even recognize and in the moment that we finished on the meeting...in the cold, we ran into a man who wanted to learn the gospel.  It was just so beautiful.

And this leads to the thing that I learned this week.  This week, I have been reading in the war chapters and in Alma and in chapter 57 it talks about the Sons of Heleman and how "not one soul of them did perish; yea, and neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds" (25) and the thing that stuck out to me was yesterday I was wondering why God would let me suffer so much to do his work and as I read this verse, I was reminded that as we put our faith in God and do His work, He is not going to take us away from the battle scars that will come.  He is not going to take the pain and exersion away but what He will do is deliver us and yesterday, that is exactly what He did.  I will still forever have "battle wounds" as I do His work but that doesn't mean that He wont deliver me from death (spiritual, physical, mental...whatever)  He did deliver us, we found our way home and slept in our warm beds but He didn't take the cold away in that moment.  Or the pain or the stress.  But in a way, I think that all of those things are what made the miricle so beautiful.  And the miricle made the suffering worth it.  Just as it did for the 2000 strippling warriors.

Anyways, just remember that God won't take the battle scars away but he will deliver you from your trials.

I love you all!!!  

Sister Bingham

My dear niece, 

You are catching the vision. The devil will do everything to get in the way of God's success. I am so proud (pleased?) that you see how He used the weather to shorten the number of people at the station or how he had you get lost, double back, loose a book, etcetera etcetera... He who knows all things put you where you needed to be.

Keep the Vision. I will give you Elder Talmage's poem in my next letter. You'll love it. God bless you and keep you. Remember the Savior is before you, behind you, to your left and right.

Wenn Sie die Kinder Gottes so sehen, wie der Vater sie sieht, werden Sie die Vision erfassen.

We love and pray for you.

Sent from H. Nathan's Phone

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The formula for success

When you want a thing hard enough 

to work day and night for it, 

to give up your peace, your sleep, your time for it, 

if only the desire of it makes your aim strong enough, never to tire of it, 

if life seems empty and useless without it, 

and you all you do is dream and scheme is about it, 

if gladly you'll sweat for it, fret for it, plan for it, 

if you'll simply go after the thing you want 

with all your capacity, strength, and sagacity, 

faith, hope and confidence, stern tenacity, 

if neither poverty nor cold, nor famish, nor gaunt, 

nor sickness, nor pain of body or brain 

can turn you away from the aim of your want, 

if dogged and grin, you besiege and beset it, 

YOU'LL GET IT.

Vaughn J. Featherstone

Sent from H. Nathan's Phone

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