another great week here in Omaha

I love my mission -- its been another great week -- I learn new things every day and am reminded of things I still need to learn in order to come home better prepared and polished to meet all my family and friends and more ready to be a disciple of Christ.

One thing that I had the opportunity to contemplate on was this:  I am heart broken when some of our missionaries go home early for disobedience or lack of faith and again when a few of our RM's find themselves discouraged and struggling.  One of them texted me this week telling me exactly that.  I told him I would send him a scripture a day to help keep the blues away (wow) and he was grateful.  I was reminded of an amazing scripture by my son Braden found in Mosiah 13:30 that reads:  "Therefore there was a law given them, yea, a law of performances and of ordinances, a law which they were to observe strictly from day to day, to keep them in remembrance of God and their duty towards him."  Seriously this says it all - we have to be covenant keepers, we need to study and ponder the scriptures daily, and remember our Savior in everything we do.

And I am gaining such a testimony that we must dig into our family histories and take family names to the temple -- of ancestors who are waiting and pacing back and forth for us to help them gain their salvation.  I am proud of my sister Shauna who is anxiously engaged in this great work and I thank her for names that she sends to me to take to our beautiful temple here in Winter Quarters.  I have been here for almost a year.  For most of that time I have been celebrating my ancestors who lived here, I have been wanting to know more about them.  Yesterday, I met with my dear friend who is the historian at the Mormon Trail Center.  I took in my two large family history books that my Uncle Hayle and Janet Jeffrey worked so hard on. I wanted to look up more names and see if there were things about them that we didn't know.  Sis. Latey looked me straight in the eyes and said  "Sis Cope, you are a missionary, maybe we are researching the wrong things -- maybe the ones you are hoping to find out about are not your ancestors, maybe they are their descendants.  Maybe some of them live here.  Let's put some prayer and research into that.  WOW!  THERE WAS AN OVERWHELMING SPIRIT THAT CAME UPON ME and it's as if I heard from those angel ancestors  YES!!!!!! so I am praying for a new direction -- to find that one -- whoever it is and fufill a nudge that has been upon me for a long time.

Sister Wendy Nelson wrote in her book Covenant Keepers that "we must make time to help those on the other side make covenants with God".  She says -- if you want more JOY in your life this is the answer.  I believe her and I'm going for it.

One last thought from her book:

When we let our covenants influence our THOUGHTS and WORDS and ACTIONS, we are inseparably connected to millions of covenant women and men -- from the beginning of time down through every gospel dispensation!