Sister Leilani Kalona Finlayson

hello my family and friends♡ I miss each one of you so much !! I love each of you as well. I have been searching every reason as to why I'm here. Why am I apart of this church? Why am I a member? Why do I decide to go to church every Sunday? Why did I decide to make covenant(s) with God? **Why do I choose to stay?** For me Ive noticed the gospel has given me structure. It is something that allows me to recognize there is greater potential in myself as well as in others. I feel like I have been stripped to the core by trials and its only been 2 months in my mission waaa hahah. Every aspect of my testimony is being tested and every detail of it is being questioned and tried by God to strengthen me and my testimony further. IT. IS. HARD. Despite these challenges and trials, I choose to stay because of the feelings I have received from God testifying of this gospel. No matter the experiences, no matter the trials, no matter the hurt, anger, shame, hatred, envy, and sorrow that we can e...

 

helloooooo from the wonderful ocean breeze, long beach !!! ☆ after just a few short 5 weeks in yorba linda I have already been transferred to long beach e !! I just wanna say I have never been more thankful to move out of mountains and be by the ocean than now because BOY it has been scorching hot. This past weekend in YL it reached 112° and I wasn't having it haha !! but an fyi we had transfers yesterday so thats why my p day is today !  my new comp is Hermana French and she is also reassigned from Cancun, MX !! sweetest thanggg ever !! we already eat breathe sleep together honestly I just adore her. Mainly because she cooks for me...just kidding haha but she is a really good cook so I'm not even mad. But another amazing thing about transfers yesterday was that I got to see the one and only beautiful Hermana Siepert !!! I. Have. Never. Been. More. Excited. Yall. Hahah a piece of home is THE BEST ♡ However!!! To the good stuff !! This transfer I found out a lot about my r...

Wow what a flipping rough week honestly! I feel like I have been challenged every second of this week and man... there were so many times I thought to myself- Well I could just go home and wait until Canadas borders open. Hahaha. But nopeee. I was never told or promised that a mission would be easy, in fact I was always told otherwise!! Haha! So don't worry, I'm staying tough out here !! We are put through so many challenges in our lives, but thats to test, strengthen, and refine our faith. Everything we go through is for our own good and all of it allows us to reach our potential and who God sees/wants/needs us to be. Unfortuneately, people (whether it be our own friends, family, companions, strangers, etc) can get in our path, scrape it up, leave a few rocks, maybe boulders ;) , create a ditch or two here and there which can cause our path to seem more difficult. But God has never sent us blindly on this path, He has given us Christ as an example and the Holy Ghost as a guide...

One thing I wanted to share with you all was my experience of God testifying to me that He does know me, my worries, needs, everything. Its such a simple, short story but before I flew out here, I journaled on August 1 (I flew out August 3) about how I was only nervous that I'd be at the airport alone and no one would be there to pick me up (🤣) It might seem silly to most of you but to me it was a genuine concern because at that moment it felt like God had forgotten about me already. Everything that was going on really made me question whether He remembered me let alone knew about my existence. I obviously told no one this silly little thing that worried me. I prayed that night that at least one other missionary would be flying with me in case I was forgotten, but when I got there, not. a. single. other. missionary. was. there. So here I am thinking, I am alone. I am forgotten. God must hate me. Oh my gosh why did I come. All of these silly little thoughts🤣🤣 But this past Thursd...