Sister Flake's Mission Blog: Sprint to the finish!

Aloha ohana!

We had an awesome zone conference this week. I learned, or re-learned, a few important things from zone conference that I'd like to share. 1. if you ever feel distance in a relationship that is important to you, pray together, either more frequently or more sincerely. 2. express love to the people you love. Especially as a missionary, we work so hard to obtain love for people, so it is so important that we express that love! It applies to any relationship as well. 3. daily repentance does not refer to a time each day where you beat up yourself for the fact that you're not perfect, rather it's a time to recognize areas that need improvement and acknowledge that you can't change anything without the Lord's help. It was a Spirit-filled meeting that was much needed!

In connection with what I learned at zone conference, that evening we had a lesson with Jason and Chandra. Before our lesson, I prayed sincerely that my heart would be filled with love for them. Heavenly Father definitely answered my prayer, and at the end of the lesson I was able to express it to them in a very natural and sincere way. It was special. A big part of their motivation to learn more about the gospel is for their kids. They want their children to have a solid foundation of faith, and they need the healing the gospel brings for themselves. They are so special to the Lord, and now to me too! Please keep them in your prayers. Pray that they will continue to be willing to act on the message we share. Before we visited them tonight, we had sent Chandra a link to a video about family. Chandra told us she was surprised because the video was eerily similar to her life, yet we didn't know any of those things about her life. It was a perfect time for us to explain that the Holy Ghost guides us in the missionary work that we do, and even if we don't know her perfectly, God does, and we are God's servants.

We got to do a big family home evening with the Martinez family. We did an activity about how to grow the flame of their faith. We must constantly nourish our flame of faith, or it will burn out. We talked about how prayer, scripture study, and weekly partaking of the sacrament help keep us spiritually recharged, and keep the flame burning bright. Keep doing those things!😃

The Martinez Family!

I officially made spam and egg toast for breakfast one morning. I'm a true islander now😉🌴🌺

We got to be witnesses at a wedding at the chapel yesterday performed by Bishop Heaton. In contrast, the Demello family (they were baptized a year ago) were sealed in the Kona temple on Saturday. We didn't get to attend with them, but we are so happy for them😊 It made me reflect on how grateful I am for temples that unite families for eternity, not only "until death do you part". It was interesting to see the contrast between the two.

Sloan and uncle Tini's wedding💗

Today for pday we got to do a cool "hike" through a lava tube! I put it in parenthesis because it wasn't really a hike, it was more of a walk, and then exploring lava tubes. It was really neat though! There were lots of poor little goats that got trapped down there and couldn't make it out, so there were goat bones and spider webs all over the lava rocks. It's crazy how diverse Hawaiian landscape is. Sister Bjarnson told me that Big Island has 11 of the 13 different climate zones possible. Crazy huh?! I'm not sure if that's accurate, it might just be 8, but still, that's a lot.