18 Months and a month extention later...

Oh my goodness. I am back in America but I am nowhere near home! I miss Latvija with all of my heart! WOW! If someone asked me to serve again in that tiny Baltic Country I would go again in a heart beat. I wish that I could share with you all everything that I experienced, but there is no possible way. I figured that my first blog entry back would be a good one to do a top ten list with. They for sure help things stay more organized in my head...(My mission by the way did not solve my randomness, nor my inability to focus...I am still a work in progress!) sorry that it has taken me so long to get back on here...truth be told I forgot my Gmail account name and so... I had to do some searching. But I am now back and ready to rock your worlds! HA! Ten of the reasons I loved my mission:

 1) I now understand that God our loving Heavenly Father. He loves all of us so much! He would do anything for us and has given everything for us. We are his work and his Glory! We are the reason he exists and truth be told, he needs us as much as we need him! Without us he would be without a job!

 2) Go to church every Sunday to renew the covenants that you have made with our Heavenly Father. The sacrament is what it is all about, it is how we retain a remission of our sins! Go to church and start your week with a clean slate! That is a gift that was given to us if we will just go to church and do it!

 3) Whoever said repentance was bad thing was a bad person. Repentance is the best! Oh my goodness! It is a blessing from our Heavenly Father and Savior to us. We will never be perfect and you know what? That is okay! Because our Savior, Jesus Christ already paid the price for our imperfections, so we don't need to carry around that burden! We have the amazing opportunity to give it over and try again. Does this mean we will be perfect and never do that same thing again, Ideally? Yes. Realistically? No, Sorry, but that is okay. Repentance is real! We need to be using it everyday! Not repenting is like not driving the Porsche you have in your garage, if you aren't going to use it, why did you buy it? USE IT! Just like driving a Porsche feels so good. (I am just imagining here, I unfortunately have not had this experience.) Repentance feels so good!

 4)Read your scriptures everyday! Most of us have smart phones now, down load the Gospel Library and Read them on the go! You can read them during your lunch break at work, or during the commercial break. Honestly, the blessings you receive from this simple request from Heavenly Father will far surpass the plot in the T.V. show.

 5)Say your prayers! We have this amazing privilege given to us, we get to talk everyday to the man who created the Earth, ummm, hello! Wouldn't most of us rearrange our schedule if the President of the United States wanted to talk to us, or if we were told we needed to call him everyday, morning and night and give him and update of our lives. I think that most of us wouldn't miss a morning or night. So, realize that God has given us the same invitation. He loves us and has commanded us to call him at least morning and night! Most of us have become far too casual in our relationship with God. We have pushed him to the side and turned him into a burden in our lives. Prayer is not a burden it is a privilege! USE IT! we can communicate to our loving heavenly Father through, and he longs to communicate with us. Morning and Night, on your knees, just do it!

 6) A smile can go a lot farther than you think. People have told me that I am a generally happy person and that I smile a lot. I never really thought about it honestly until I moved to a country where people were not generally happy and smiling was out of the norm. I stuck out like a cow in a burger joint! I also realized that smiling can bring someone from the depths of despair to the surface of hope. Everyone wants to know that there is at least one person out there who cares. 7) All you need is love! The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about love! So shouldn't we be all about love to. Don't be afraid to tell your family that you love them! I know it might be weird for some of you. (Oh trust me it was weird for some of the Latvians when I would just bust out with "Es Tevi Milu!" I love you! They thought it was way weird!) But, you know, did anyone of them have to question if I loved them or not? No! Because I told them! They knew it because they heard it and felt it! love can make all of the difference so love yourself, love your spouse, love your neighbor! But most of all love our Heavenly Father.

 7)Sometimes, life is hard. No matter what kind of life you have, life is just plain hard! Everyone has trials and challenges. No one has the perfect life. So, just have faith, keep being a good girl or a good boy, remember your covenants and everything will work out for your good. (This is called enduring to the end.)

8) The temple is the house of God a place of love and beauty, a place where we can derive strength beyond our own! We are so blessed in American to have so many wonderful temples so close to us. The temple is in another country, across the Baltic sea in Latvija, and you know what? The members still went. They recognize the blessings that come from the temple and they know that they can't live without them. We too can learn this lesson and feel the sustaining strength of regular temple attendance.

 9)Follow the promptings of the spirit! One time, Sister Kerr and I were knocking a dome (That is what the apartment buildings are called over there. It is Russian for house.) And it was just going horribly. I had never had so many people in one dome threaten to call the cops on me!It was crazy. I kept getting the feeling that we didnt' need to be there...but the thought of going outside was killer, it was so cold! BAH! so, we finished it and went home feeling horrible. So the Next night we were planning for the next day when I said to Sister Kerr "I'm sorry about that dome, I was starting to wonder while we were knocking it if we should have even been there." She looked at me and said " I had that exact same thought!" WHAT!? REALLY!? We could have saved ourselves so much heartache and sorrow if we had just listened and talked to each other about it. The spirit knows all things what we should do!

 10) Last of all I learned to love a people and a country and a language that I didn't even really know existed two years ago. (I mean I am sure that I learned about Latvija in some geography class at sometime in my life...) There is not a day that goes by where I do not think of my family there, where I do not long for the country and the rain and the rivers. I want to speak Latvian again. (Okay if you are Latvian and reading this, I know I need to get a skype account...I am working on it!) I want to teach the Gospel all the time again! I learned what it meant to lose yourself in the service of others and I loved it! I loved my mission! I am so grateful that I went! Never did I think that it would mean this much to me and never will I forget how much it has changed and impacted me. Ar milestibu, Helena