difficult, but not hard

Dear family, friends, and everyone,How are you all doing? I am doing great.

This past week was really good, and I had a bunch of fun with it. WE HAVE A BAPTISM ON SATURDAY!!! I am so excited for her. And Satan is working soooo hard to not let this happen. I know he does that with every single miracle that the Lord performs, but it is so apparent here. Not only are her parents against it and she has decided to do it regardless, on Saturday we were supposed to have a lesson with her, and she called saying that she had just found out that she had to go to Bucuresti right then for an emergency with her sister and wouldn't get back until Thursday and her interview is on Friday...wow. But it's ok because her determination to do what is right for what she believes and our prayers are stronger than Satan's annoying plans to get in the way. All will be well. She went to church on Sunday in Mihai Bravu and we fasted together from Saturday to Sunday.

I know that the Lord will hear and answer our prayers. And in the mean time, we're just planning on teaching her the last couple of things over the phone, which she said is perfectly fine. Phone lessons are so weird sometimes, but they work, and the Spirit can be present anywhere with the prayer of faith.

Our other investigators are doing pretty well, too. Elena and her family are awesome. We have had 3 lessons with Elena, 2 of those lessons with her kids Catalina and Marian, and they love our lessons. They are all involved and love coming to church. At Saturday's lesson we invited them to invite their dad/husband to join in our lessons, and she said that he's not very interested, but she called him on speakerphone to ask him to come to church with them the next day, and he said that he would, and she asked 2 or 3 times to confirm to us and him that he would and he said "Alright! I promise, I'll be there, no need to ask me all night" funny. And he did come! He is a great man, and he really liked church.

Their whole family stayed for all three hours, and he said he doesn't know his schedule, but if he's not working he'll come to our lessons. And I found out after church that Elder Lainhart had talked to him before church started and Gheorghe (the dad) said "I'm here because I promised them I'd come...I just hope they don't ask me to make another promise" so Elder Lainhart said, "Well, I know that you'll like church, I know this is true, so instead of promising them, will you promise me that you'll come next week, too?" He thought for a second then said "all right." It was awesome. I'm so excited for them to continue progressing and becoming a stronger family because of it.

We finally had the talent show from Bucuresti that failed last time and we had to come up with something, and so they rescheduled for Friday and it turned out pretty fun. There is a member who plays the electric violin and his pianist couldn't come, so I found out 20 minutes before the thing was supposed to start that I was now playing with him for the show...and we made something up and it was fun and the people liked it.

We also had Zone Conference this past week and it was so good. I learned so much, and it was super fun seeing more of the missionaries and hearing some of their success stories and good experiences that they are having. Always an amazing thing.

This week the VanNoy's are leaving...they are the senior couple here in Brasov, and they are now finished with their mission so they are leaving to go back to California on Thursday...a lot of things will have to change when they leave, but sometimes change is a good thing.

Oh, and something I thought you would think is fun...in English class the other day, the subject was on sports and exercise, and so we were teaching them about the English vocab for some of the sports, and I decided to teach them some of the cheers that we sing at sporting events. We sang them "Take me out to the ball game" and talked about what cracker-jacks are because they had no clue, and then I taught them the volley ball cheer "bump, set, spike it, that's the way we like it....ACE!" type thing, and they thought it was hillarious (including my companion who had never heard that before) and they asked me to write it up on the board so they could have it. So fun!

Which brings me to a congrats for Jenna! That's awesome that you did a 5k in 28 minutes! That just amazes me...and Shaley, I didn't hear about your game, but I'm sure you did amazing as always. Tamara, good job on riding your bike for 6 miles! I don't know if I could do that. And I loved the pics from Winter park...So much fun! Thanks for sending those to me.

So mom, I wanted to respond some to your question from last week about the relationship between doing hard things and being happy. My thoughts had been on that question this past week, and I studied quite a bit on it. Something really interesting is the difference between the definitions of "hard" and "difficult".

Something hard is "something difficult to do, understand, or deal with" and something difficult is "something hard to do or understand." Things might be difficult, but they are only hard if you can't deal with it, and that is where the Atonement of Jesus Christ comes in. If we rely on Him, and trust in His promise to us that we will receive of His joy, then we will be able to "deal with" anything, and nothing is hard, but just difficult.

And so we will be able to do hard things, because with the Lord, nothing is impossible, for is anything too hard for the Lord? No. But Romans chapter 4 brought a lot of neat insight about how faith helps us get through, and the way that faith is persuasive and how when one is persuaded, action is required. But I really liked those thoughts.

I know that the Lord is with us in this work. I also asked my mission president out of curiosity for what he would say, and this was his response: "As to the question you asked me to ponder, I think there is a link between those two things: doing hard things and happiness. The first thought I have is that doing hard things makes us more humble. Humility inevitably leads us closer to God and getting closer to God will bring happiness into our lives. Several years ago, on a trip home from St. George, Sora Lundberg and I penciled out a list of things that our family does - a sort of mission statement. One of the items on the list was: "Lundbergs do hard things." We are, really, no different than most. However, we do not shrink from doing what is right and that is, on occasion, hard. At the same time, though we are not always in a perfect state of harmony and bliss, we are, by and large, a happy family. I attribute at least part of that to the fact that we do hard things."

His statement about being in harmony and bliss reminded me of something we learned in Zone Conference about how we need to learn all we can, work all we can, and get all the experiences we can with the opportunities God gives us. "ignorance might be bliss, but it's not salvation" and sometimes we just need to remember that God knows us, He knows we can do these things, and He'll be with us through all of it.

Anyways, I got to go now, but I hope that you all are having a great week, I'm looking forward to a great week, and I love you all so so so very much! Always, --Sora Karina