Silvester!!

Well, I can't believe that it is already the new year... I am going to be a missionary for the entire year of 2015! Here in Germany they call New Years Eve "Silvester" and oh my word, are they crazy!! We didn't think that there would be anything exciting so we just went to bed- then we both got woken up to a warzone outside our window! I bolted awake and pulled up our shutters and literally like 5 feet away from our window there were a gazillion bright streams of lights- and loud bomb noises that shook the glass! Now I understand why president said we had to be home early! We spent the night cleaning and making goals and ugly dancing (which is what we call doing interpretive dancing as awkward as possible to MoTab and Lindsey Stirling and letting out all our stress- it was a blast)

But as great as that was I have to say that my favorite part of the evening was thinking about my goals for the next year. Both sister Williams and I are fresh on the mission so we each have over a year left and we both want to make this year count. We planned into our evening, an hour where we could kneel down and pray to Heavenly Father, and ask him what he wanted us to become in this next year. It was such a cool experience something that I will always remember. Something that I want to focus on this year is to magnify my calling without magnifying myself, and to really give everything to the Lord. This is a quote from Preach My Gospel that I loved,

"I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don't set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life onl to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life" Elder M. Russel Ballard

I think I have realized in these past 4 months just how much I can change- There are so many things that I can work on and so many things to improve- I could make lists and lists. However, one thing that I realized as I was making all the lists was that we all need to keep my eyes set on the highest goal in life. When I did pole vaulting in high school, our main goal was to get over the bar. However, when I focused on that goal, when all I was looking at was the bar I would knock it over almost every time. My coach would come over and usually ask one question, "Where were you looking?" I usually replied the bar and he just shook his head as usual and said, you need to aim higher. Try and kick the clouds and you will get over the bar. We all have goals in life, and it is important to achieve them but it is always more important to remember where we are looking as we are striving to achieve them. When our ultimate goal is Heaven and we are always looking up and trying to ‘kick the clouds’ Heavenly Father will help us become who we want to be. It may not be what we expect but it will always be what is best for us.

As I have thought about all these things this week we have been able to meet with a lot of people and teach the gospel. It was a fun week to talk to people about how their Christmas was and how they celebrated the New Year; but even better was being able to talk to them about the possibility of change through the gospel.

Liebe Grüße

Sister Shurts

from the scribbled notes of a sister missionary

ps check out the epic photo bomb in the sisters pic.. hehe