Reaching Our Goals



 

January 16, 2022 

Dear Family & Friends, 

We survived our Covid quarantine--symptom free.  And yesterday, Saturday, I was able to go teaching with Hermanas Sonnenberg and Kelsch.  On our way, we found the street names to be very instructive!  (See attached photos.) 

I survived the quarantine by going on long walks and by doing family history for my friend Sheri.  (Sheri is blind and has asked me to work on her family history.)  If I hadn’t been able to do family history during the quarantine, I would have gone crazy.  Funny thing, on Tuesday two of our friends surprised us by dropping off dinner and some craft kits called diamond art to keep us busy. Hahahaha.  Gluing tiny little pieces of glass to fabric would definitely make me crazy! 

But family history is so interesting, I completely lose track of time.  Most intriguing of all is looking for missing family members with only scanty clues to go by.  I woke up in the middle of the night Wednesday and had to pursue a missing person for a while before I was able to get back to sleep.  On Thursday I called Sheri and told her that her family was keeping me up at night!  I read to her some of the documents I had found.  These people had difficult lives.  Some of them died young.  Maybe they wondered if anyone would remember them.  But they are remembered as promised by Old Testament prophet Malachi, “…and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers...." 

 

On Friday our quarantine ended. Yay!  So my companion and I went to visit our friends Linda & Coleen.  These sisters are members of the church, but due to poor health they aren’t able to come to church or leave their house much.  I was wanting to postpone our visit (just in case we might have Covid) but they were quite anxious for us to come.  Linda recently had a serious health problem and had asked her ministering brother* to give her a blessing.  She said she felt the Holy Spirit very strongly during the blessing and wanted to feel that way all the time.   




 

In the past they have asked us to read the Book of Mormon with them, but this time they wanted us to read the Word of Wisdom** with them.  This surprised me because they are both smokers.  But they explained that they are trying to quit smoking and wanted to be able to enter the temple.  We read together and my companion and I were both able to testify of the blessings of living this law.  My companion told them she had been a smoker in the past and was able to empathize with them about how difficult it is to quit.  I explained that our bodies are the temples of our spirits (I Corinth. 6:19) and if we take care of our bodies, we are better able to feel the impressions of the Holy Spirit.  It was inspiring to see our friend’s willingness to improve their lives, and we are keeping them in our prayers. 

 

Friday night we were able to help teach ESL again.  We had a new student who was a beginner, so I helped her one-on-one.  She is very motivated, so I hope she can reach her goal. 

 

May God bless us all in our righteous efforts! 

 

 

I love you all, 

Sister Manwaring 


 For my friends who are not members of my church: 

*In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we are asked to look after each other.  It’s called ministering. 

** The Word of Wisdom is a law of health wherein we are told what substances are healthy or not healthy for us to consume. 

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