Dear Familia,
Well this week was exciting, we were hit by a tornado!! Yup, that's what I said. It was about 10miles from where we were. So we were weekly planning and it started thundering and lightening, and we're like "Ah man, we won't be able go to our appointment if it doesn't stop thundering" (we have to suspend activities for 30mins after thunder or lightening). So we are waiting and waiting for the thundering to stop, and finally it does, for 30mins, right in time to go to our appointment. So we drive the 20ish minutes to our appointment, and when we park and pray, we get out I hear the siren for the tornado going off (it goes off as a practice the first Tuesday of every month). I say to Hermana Diaz, "Um, I'm not sure what to do when the tornado siren is going off for real and not just as a warning". So we are like oh crap, and then we hear the clap of thunder and then the rain starts and it is pouring down like pelting. We text our zone leaders to ask what we're suppose to do, and then decide to just go wait for death while teaching our lesson. So we teach our whole lesson and at the very end before we pray, Hermana Diaz checks the phone and then she says to me urgently, "We need to go now!" Sensing her urgency I was like "what" and I grab the phone, this is what I see "Get indoors immediately a tornado is heading for Rockford and is expected to touchdown in 10minutes". At that moment I was walking out the door and then we are like, what're we suppose to do? Our house is 20minutes away and it is in the direction of the Tornado. Seeing the sky turning green, we decide we better head for the church which is about 5minutes away (well 5 minutes when you're trying to out drive a tornado). By the time we get to the church, the sky is pretty green and crazy things are happening outside. It's windier than I have ever experienced (I can see why Dorthy blew away to the land of Oz in the Tornado), and the thunder and lightening it happening pretty much continuously and it is loud and bright purple. It was scary and also so cool. So we get to the church and the Elders are there, well crap, we're not suppose to be in the building alone with Elders..."desperate times" I say, and we go in, well we are looking for the keys to the church that are suppose to be in a lockbox outside the door...they're not there! "Great, thanks Elders". So we start pounding on the door, while the weather gets worse and the tress look minutes from crashing down. No one is coming to the door. We call them, it rings and rings, and rings, finally they answer, "Elders, let us in the church right NOW!". So they do, and then we just waited for like an hour watching all the crazy things happening outside, then after what felt like forever, it stopped and everything was quite. We got a text a little while later that we could go home, and that no missionaries were hurt, but that a lot of areas had been damaged. We decide to leave and make the 20 minute drive home, and well we were still heading back into the storm, and the sky wasn't flashing purple lightening the whole way home and trying to blow us off the road. It was an adventure. Finally we got home safely. It was awesome. I kept saying to Hermana Diaz, "This is so cool.....but also, I don't want to die". So that was our adventure of the week.
Also this week, I learned some really cool things. I learned that the commandments are eternal principles applied to our circumstances in this life. Eternal principles meaning they're not just rules for this life, they're principles we will also be living in the next life, and that we lived before this life as well. That is why it is so important to understand the spirit of the law (meaning the real intent of the law or meaning behind it) and try to live accordingly, rather than just living the letter of the law (the action of the law). Because the spirit of the law is what brings us the blessings. The commandments are not what is going to perfect us, what will perfect us is the atonement if Jesus Christ, the commandments are there to point us towards and lead us towards the Savior and a greater appreciation for the Savior's Atonement. The commandments do not save us, they give guidelines of the way to live so we can merit salvation. This is why we are commanded to keep the commandments out of love for Jesus Christ. It is more about the spirit of the commandment- what is God really wanting from us? Because He is not just trying to micromanage our lives and exercise dominion over us. He is trying to prepare us for eternity. The commandments have eternal significance and application. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying we don't need to try the very best we can to strictly obey the commandments, we do! But we need to understand the spirit of it, because if we do, we don't need lines, we will know the path. This was the problem with the Pharisees in the bible, they made rules to make sure they were keeping all the rules, and by doing so they failed to understand the meaning behind, and reason for the rules. We need to keep the commandments, but we also need understand why God has given us such commandments and what He is really trying to teach us, and as we learn that, we won't need a cement wall to keep us in, because we won't want to go out. For example, in the mission, we have so many rules, and many times when missionaries go home and they don't have the same structure the fall, they forget the path, and they wander off. Elder Zwick said the mission is like walking on a path with walls, but when you go home, those walls are taken down and you're expected to govern yourself and stay on the path. But so many walk off, I think that's because they could live the letter of the law on their mission, but they failed to understand the spirit of the law, and therefore when he letter of the law was taken away (the walls) or changed, the were lost. I hope all that made sense. I learned a lot about this topic this last week, it was very cool, and very revelatory. I came to understand the commandments of God in a whole new way, with a deeper love and appreciation for God and what Eternal principles He is trying to teach us. If you want to know more, you can ask me. :)
Well I love you all! Keep praying for me. I'm so grateful for all your love and support. Pray for Edward, he is getting baptized on Sunday :)
Fight the Good Fight!
❤️Hermana Simmons
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