Holi-taquitos it's hot and humid.

Imagine, the weather in Hawaii - like tropical storms - sounds lovely right? In theory it is wonderful but in reality it makes life a little bit difficult as a missionary. Some moments I am freezing because its raining and there is wind and other times I am dying of heat because, well its really hot still. We pack sweaters and rain coats and then have to take them off when we're starting to melt, its an adventure! I don't know how I am going to fair when its time to go back to Washington or Utah - sounds like Antarctica. 

Life as a whole is going pretty good, though once again transfers are here and I am pretty sure that I only have one week left here in Laredo after 7+ months, bitter-sweet. It's like saying goodbye to my mission home. Luckily I will still be here for my birthday on wednesday and still be able to celebrate with all the people that I love, sino of course everyone at home. Twenty. That just sounds super old. 

We haven't had anyone come to church with us for almost the whole last month, and so I decided to spend time during studies in the morning to read more about the reasons that we come to church, it ended up being a testimony builder of the atonement. 

Heavenly Father has a plan for all of us and wants us to remember that plan! 

We screw up so often, I can't say that I have ever been perfect for even a 5 min period of my life. For a lesson that we were teaching this week about the sacrament we took a white piece of paper and had people scratch lines as they remembered a struggle from the week or something that they regret or could have done better and then we told them that the paper would be turned in and graded by how clean and white it was...they could try to clean it on their own before turning it in but they couldn't. We have to use the atonement, Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and therefore has clean sheets of paper for all of us, if we turn and ask him. 

This analogy may not make sense in written form but its pretty impactful when you see a ton of pen scratches on a paper. 

Now Heavenly Father gives us that paper and we destroy it week after week but each week we have the chance to go and take the sacrament and review over all the things we had done wrong and change, recommit to do better. We then can pick up our own clean sheet, and heaven knows that we all need it. Also I realized that the atonement applies to more than just what we are doing wrong. All the small worries and trivial distractions can be wiped clean from our slates and taken away when we put the Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ first. Simple and yet so difficult. 

Laredo Loves U

H mckenna Crawford