Today is a continuation of yesterday’s blog sharing some favorite snippets of my daughter Ashley’s emails she has sent home over the course of her 18 month mission with the valuable life lesons she was learning along the way – these lessons are such relevant lessons for all of our lives and I hope you enjoy reading them. They are continuing from yesterday’s blog in chronological order to help illustrate the growth that takes place over the 18 months of serving others:<\/p>\n
———FIVE MONTHS IN – (IT\u2019S THE SMALL THINGS THAT BUILD CHARACTER)\u00a0\u00a0 July 13 2015<\/p>\n
Subject line: Lose yourself \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That moment when one of Eminem’s best lyrics fits perfectly as the subject line for an LDS mission email home. #lifegoals #winning<\/p>\n
– We ran into a lot of really cool character building moments this week. I’m learning that it’s NOT the big things that build us. But the TINY minuscule things. Like when a member asked us to come help her move some furniture around… then two hours later she wanted to switch it all back again! At that very moment I had to stand back and think, “dude. am i telling her the couch looks good here just cuz i wanna get outta here!? Or am i really trying to help this woman feel good about her house and make it look good.”…. SOOOO SMALL! right!? hahah! but it’s all about our intentions and those TINY character building moments! Everything out of love<\/u>!<\/p>\n
**I love the message of that email because it is a simple example that every single one of us can relate to\u2026especially the husbands who have ever moved furniture for their wives\u2026.**<\/span><\/p>\n ———SIX MONTHS \u2013 1\/3 OF THE WAY THROUGH- (CHANGE AND AGENCY)\u00a0\u00a0 July 20 2015<\/p>\n “When you do what you’ve did, you get what you’ve got!”<\/strong><\/p>\n This week I’ve studied a lot about CHANGE! awe yes. Change. The ironic\u00a0concept that we hate in the moment, but when we look back are are\u00a0happy we did it\u2026<\/p>\n Another thing I’ve been studying about is our will. Because God loves us so much, He gave us agency and our will<\/u><\/strong>. That is the ONE thing that we have, that God doesn’t already<\/u>. So when we give our complete WILL to Him, we have given God EVERYTHING\u2026\u2026\u2026And it’s as easy as a change of mind! #2seconds!<\/p>\n ———SEVEN MONTHS –\u00a0 (BLESSINGS OUTWEIGH HARDSHIPS)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sept 13 2015<\/p>\n So this week we have been completely exhausted… have huge bags under our eyes… Every now and then we twitch a little… And the tension in our neck and shoulders from the stress is killer…. And yet somehow this is the HAPPIEST IVE EVER BEEN!!!<\/p>\n The blessings on missions FAR outweigh the hardships. I have never regretted my decision to serve a mission for two seconds.. and I know I never will! Once again.. If anyone is on the fence about serving… GO<\/u>! It truly has been the best time for my life so far. I am so grateful for my savior Jesus Christ! I know he lives. I know he loves us. He gives us new opportunities every single day, even when we disappoint him. He is our perfect example. I am grateful that he pushed me just far enough to be able to turn in my papers to serve a mission. I know that a lot of the time that is how He works. No strikes of lightning.. No earthquake shaking moments… He taps the domino just light enough for it to be able to start rolling.<\/strong><\/p>\n **Can you see why I love these weekly emails??? They have blessed my life so much to read them and be inspired by them. I hope they are blessing your lives too!\u00a0 Tomorrow I will share the final snippets of her emails with you….and tomorrow MY BABY GIRL COMES HOME!!!!<\/span><\/p>\n ~Amy Rees Anderson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is a continuation of yesterday’s blog sharing some favorite snippets of my daughter Ashley’s emails she has sent home over the course of her 18 month mission with the valuable life lesons she was learning along the way – these lessons are such relevant lessons for all of our lives and I hope you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9683,395,501,500,5203,6731,1327,46,550,410,63,91,155,1151,999,9778,3552,287,6477,1010,10383,164,9682,1160,2928,92,1811,51,29,4387,1477,10360,1744,94,4380,276,10358,722,1501,3369,233,296,4881,35,3441,351,1769,242,10359,6138,1416,145,1812,483,6807,915,4266,10365,10356,10357],"class_list":["post-7019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-18-months","tag-amy-rees-anderson","tag-appreciate","tag-appreciation","tag-arkansas-little-rock-mission","tag-ashley-anderson","tag-ashley-lewis","tag-attitude","tag-blessed","tag-blessing","tag-blessings","tag-change","tag-character","tag-charity","tag-child","tag-closer","tag-coming-home","tag-communication","tag-discourage","tag-distance","tag-domino","tag-effort","tag-eighteen-months","tag-encourage","tag-excited","tag-excitement","tag-experiences","tag-family","tag-god","tag-grace","tag-grow","tag-grow-closer","tag-grow-up","tag-growth","tag-hardships","tag-heavenly-father","tag-heavenly-parents","tag-humility","tag-jesus-christ","tag-lds-mission","tag-learn","tag-lesson","tag-life-experience","tag-love","tag-mature","tag-missionary","tag-parent","tag-parenting","tag-proxy","tag-resolve","tag-serve","tag-service","tag-taught","tag-teach","tag-testify","tag-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-two-years","tag-weekly-email","tag-weekly-letters","tag-write-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7019"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7030,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7019\/revisions\/7030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}