Monday, June 22, 2015

June 22, 2015--Final Letter!!!

Hey Mom,
Wow, my last weekly email home. Don't worry, I have a bunch of inspirational and funny quotes coming your way. But first I just have to tell you about the fountain of Alexander the Great. So since they turned it back on, Center has been so busy. I really thought all of their ploys to use the statue to attract tourists was worthless until I saw the difference between not having and having a fountain. It really does draw people there, which I'm sure is good for all the businesses there. I guess you could use that as a metaphor for my mission. Remember last week when we were playing in the splash pad? Some pictures of Sister Hassell, Sister Barch, and Elder Prince ended up on a couple different Macedonian news websites. The guys in the print shop showed them to us the next time we went. "The mormon missionaries hard at work," they teased us. "This is what you're doing when you're not here?" The other missionaries had pointed out a photographer taking a picture of me sneakily as I squeezed some water out of my pants that day. When I noticed him he just smirked and walked away. That picture didn't end up online, though. Good publicity for the church, I guess. They were wearing their nametags. Our investigator told us at church that he had seen the pictures online too.

Ether 12:4, "Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God."

"I keep my body like a Canadian marathon runner. Gotta be slim."
-Zoki, showing us his exercise equipment during class

"I can't really pronounce the word, I only have four teeth."
-Blagoj

"Discouragement is a tool of the adversary."
-Elder Bednar, visiting us in the MTC

"I can't walk that fast today, Sister Riddle, I'm all filled with milk."
-Sister Hassell

"My beloved brothers and sisters, godly fear dispels mortal fears. It even subdues the haunting concern that we never can be good enough spiritually and never will measure up to the Lord’s requirements and expectations. In truth, we cannot be good enough or measure up relying solely upon our own capacity and performance. Our works and desires alone do not and cannot save us. “After all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23), we are made whole only through the mercy and grace available through the Savior’s infinite and eternal atoning sacrifice (see Alma 34:10, 14). Certainly, “we believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel” (Articles of Faith 1:3)."
-Elder Bednar, Therefore They Hushed Their Fears

"The missionaries are very good at finding nice, crazy people."
-Ana

"Sister Riddle is so serious."
-Everyone, to my companions

"Stop biting your nails."
-Blagoj, Dejon, Kate, all of the missionaries, and the guy at the print shop

"Realistically, we only really pray when we are going through a hard time. I think that's why God gives us hard times."
-Metia

Matthew 5:43-47, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?"

"So, if the Book of Mormon is a testament of Jesus Christ, why didn't Jesus just write the Book of Mormon?"
-Benjamin

"You have endured a good mission. I'm going to give you a talk that I found, it's called the Nobility of Failure."
-Elder Prince, to me a few days ago

"Mucho grande добро."
-Elder Nelson, used regularly as an expression

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."
-Mother Teresa, on one of the plaques located around the city

"I smoke. I am a sinner."
-one of our investigators during the Word of Wisdom lesson

"Where did you find this word 'отпадник'? My grandmother used that word once in the 1992."
-Zoki, editing the text for Because of Him

After telling Elder Barber his future wife got fatter every time he dropped his Book of Mormon,
"It doesn't matter, at this point I'm gonna marry a dump truck anyway." He dropped his Book of Mormon a lot.

"It's a banana, Elder Krajnc." -Everyone, all the time
"Stop saying that." -Elder Gierisch

"Why are you here? You don't even have to be here. You're a girl."
-Elder Gierisch, shortly after I arrived in Macedonia

"Are you kitten me right meow?"
-Sister Schofield

"I'm going to push you in front of a bus. It would be the best day of my entire life. No more Riddles."
-Sister Schofield

"Elder Riddle..."
-Elder Rigby

"We come to church not to hide our problems but to heal them."
-President Uchtdorf

"God does not call us to be successful. He calls us to be faithful."
-Mother Teresa

“'Peter, do you love me more than you love these fish in this net here, and these boats, and these oars?'
And Peter said, 'Yes, I do love you, more than these.'
And a second time, Jesus says, 'Peter, do you love me more than you love these fish, and your nets, and your battered old boat?'
And a little distressed at that, Peter said, 'Yes, I do. I said I did. I do.'
And the Savior probably took a deep breath and smiled and looked Peter right in the eye. And though He didn’t verbalize it, apparently He was conveying to Peter, 'May I now say to you for the third time, do you love me?' And Peter is very very sensitive about threes right now.
And Jesus says, really in effect, 'Okay,' for the last time, 'do you love me more than these? Than what you do? And what you’ve just been doing?'
And Peter says, 'I do. I do love you. More than anything.'
And that is the moment that Peter became the great apostle. Forget the denials, whatever they were. Forget the cut off ears. Forget the impetuousness. Forget the confusion. Forget not knowing more than to come back to fish. Right here, face-to-face, again from the honesty of his heart he said, 'I do love you, more than anything.'
And to that, the Savior of the world said, 'Then feed my sheep! I have asked you before to leave your nets. And I’m asking you again, and I don’t want to ask you a third time. When I said, ‘Leave your nets,’ it was forever. When I asked you to follow me, it was forever. When I asked you to be an apostle, it was forever. When I asked you to be a Missionary, it was forever. When I asked you to see this through to the end, it was because it’s not over ’til it’s over. Now forget your nets, and forget the fish, and jettison your boat, and throw those oars away for the second time, and feed my sheep. We’re in this ’til the end.'
And that’s the day Peter strode into eternity, and became the man within hours, within days at the very least. When people plead that they could be taken into the street and left on their cot in hopes the shadow of Peter would pass over them. That’s the Peter that he became with that little confrontation on the shore. And the issue is for all time and eternity, 'Do. You. Love. Me? Do you love me?'
Elders and Sisters in this MTC congregation, do you love Him? You cannot get there from here. You cannot be what you have to be. You cannot say what you have to say. You cannot become the Missionaries, the witnesses, the emissaries, the bastions and sentinels of truth that you’re supposed… You can’t do it, unless you love Him. It is the first and great of all the commandments, the greatest of all commandments, the first commandment.
You need to decide tonight whether you’re on a coarse that’s committed to the idea that you really do love God. You really do love the Savior. And if you do, and I know you do, and I pray you do, and we’ll all do this together, we’ll all march into the future together, but when you do, and when you say that, and when you believe that, then you’re call is to feed His sheep, forever.
Now, can you understand why you must never and may never and can never come back? It will never be the same again. Peter, you can’t go home. You can’t go back to fish. You can’t go back to Galilee. You can’t go back to boats. It’s over. It is a new life, a new day, a new time. This Mission marks that hour in your life. You cannot go back. And if you do, you will break my heart, and you will break the heart of God himself. If you turn your back on the gospel of Jesus Christ, which you have pledged your life, or at least these next two years or eighteen months, to teach. But my point is that it isn’t just eighteen months, and it isn’t just two years. And I stand here at 49 years and counting, and say, I pray that it’s never ever ever over for me. And I pray that it’s never ever over for you.
And if you are ever tempted on your Mission, or after, to leave this faith, or commit a transgression, or to walk away from the covenants you’ve made, and the honesty of your heart – not assuming that you’re going to be perfect, and knowing that we’re all going to have to repent every day of our lives about something – but you’re coarse needs to be true. You need to stay the coarse. You need to see it through. You can’t go back. You’ve left your nets, and you’re going to feed sheep. You’re going to be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, for time and eternity.
Boy, that’s weighty to put on the shoulders of a 19 year old sitting in Provo, Utah. Or a 21 year old, or whatever you are. But that’s about what this adds up to be. 'Do you love me? Well then, feed my sheep. And do it forever.'
May you do so, successfully, and with God’s love and mine. And the Holy Spirit to attend you, because you cannot possibly succeed without it. God bless you, on the greatest venture of your life, that should shape and will shape, if you allow it to shape, every great experience you’re ever going to have for the rest of this life, and as much of the next one as I know anything about. In the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen."
-Jeffrey R. Holland, MTC talk

I'll have more to say at my homecoming talk when I get home, but for now, like I said to Elder Prince, I came here because I thought it was what God wanted me to do. So I did. I came, and I did it, and now I'm leaving.

Love,
Sister Riddle

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