Look Not Behind Thee

When you get down to the last few weeks of your mission, the desire to write detailed and super long emails grows less and less. I don't even really know what happened this week! Missionary work is just a lot of work, and we've been doing a lot of tracting. Sister Stettler is REALLY getting the hang of missionary work, and I am so proud of her!

Sister Carey is getting baptized on Sept 24th, and I can't wait! She is someone we've been working with for awhile now. YEARS ago she was excommunicated, and she's been trying to re-find truth ever since. A year ago the missionaries tracted into her, and they started working with her, and then for some reason they lost contact with her... then when I got here, we started working with her again, and she's been solid ever since! It's so awesome to see the process of repentance not only in my own life, but in the lives of others.

A few days ago, Sister S and I were on our morning run, and I had a cool experience as we were running. We're about 3/4ths of the way through our 2 miles, and we had to tackle this huge hill, that is basically like the last thing anyone wants to run ever. I told myself that I was going to run up the whole thing, and I wasn't going to stop. As I'm going up this hill, in my brain I'm giving myself a pep-talk: I WAS NOT going to give in! I can make it! Don't stop running! .... then I remember a squished frog I had seen on my way down the hill at the beginning of the run, and I was curious to see if it was still there. As I turned around to look for the frog... I found myself slowing down... then all of the sudden I was walking. What?! No! I wasn't going to walk up this hill? What just happened?

and then I related it to Lot's wife.

Genesis 19:

15 And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.

17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.

26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

In Luke 17:32 Christ warns "Remember Lot's wife."

Jeffery R Holland says: "It isn’t just that she looked back; she looked back longingly. In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future."

"So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind." (https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland_remember-lots-wife/)

We must always be looking towards the future in faith... we need to trust in the Lord's promised blessings, and learn from the things of our past... whether good or bad. Don't look to the past... you're not going that way!

Have a good week! Love you all!

Love, Sister Kirkby

Pics: Sister Stettler and I went to the museum for Labor Day! 14 million year old sloths make good friends