"What Is The Purpose of Life?"

Dear Family,

This week has been an awesome week full of service and miracles! This week, we went to Salvation Army instead of Northwest Harvest to do service. Northwest Harvest specializes in packing foods to send to food banks and Salvation Army specializes in receiving that food and giving it out to people in need. It was pretty cool to work with people and see how happy they are to get some food!

Our investigators are doing great! We met with most of them this week. Nancy and John (The ones from Kenya) are struggling to read the Book of Mormon on their own. Sister Rhode was out of town this week. And Jenny had a concern resolved.

We met with Jenny on Wednesday this week at our ward mission leader's house. We couldn't round up a translator for this lesson, so we focused very hard on teaching simply and asking her if she understands. We went over the Book of Mormon with her and gave her one in Chinese. Then we started to teach her about the Plan of Salvation. We gave her a Chinese pamphlet and an English one so that she can figure out what the gospel words mean.

She would occasionally read the Chinese one out loud. None of us understood what she was saying, but when she was done, she would say, "I understand!" The Plan of Salvation answers 3 questions of the soul: Where did I come from? Why am I here? and What happens when I die? When she read that, she asked us, "What is the purpose of life?"

We answered as simply as we could, multiple times, but she didn't seem to understand. We then asked her why she wonders that. Over time, she told us that she doesn't see the purpose in her life. She has a successful job, and a happy marriage, but she can't have children. What's the purpose of life, if you can't continue it? It is obvious that it bothered her and we all said words of comfort to her. We told her that Heavenly Father loves her even though she can't have kids. At the end of it, she seemed to understand.

We didn't get all the way through the lesson. We ended it at Earth Life and we will continue it in our next lesson. She is going to love the resurrection!

I know that Heavenly Father loves all of us. We all have a purpose in life, even if we can't see it. There are people who we interact with everyday. I hope that as we do, we will share a part of our light with them. We can make a huge difference in their lives and not even know it! Heavenly Father does, though! And that is probably why He has you here, right now, at this very moment. He knows what He is doing and it is for the benefit of all of His children.

I hope you all have a great week! I love you all!

Love,
Elder Bretton Steiner.