Here is a great post that Annie shared on Facebook about a tender mercy with Elder Simms. We are so grateful for his willingness to serve and for his testimony. We pray for him on a daily basis. And I included my favorite picture, so far. I am also including a couple of photo collages that Annie made, from when Elder Simms left for his mission. I already shared the pics of him and Nathan, but I love the way she put the photos together.
"I've been updating my blog and remembered about a tender mercy I wanted to share from September. As we were helping Jared make the rest of the preparations for his mission, one of the remaining things he needed was $160 in crisp bills for his Visa entry process when he entered Paraguay. We ended up waiting until the last minute and were unsuccessful in finding what he needed. We were basically supposed to find pristine uncirculated bills that didn't have any marks or folds. Alex went to at least 15 different banks on this seemingly impossible task to find these pristine bills. Since Jared was headed out the next day, we just had to send him with the best we could find. All of the bills had a fold down the middle, and I was worried that they would be rejected. At that point, I was just hoping and praying that they'd be good enough or maybe that God would be able to miraculously remove the fold. I believe in a God of miracles, so it wasn't impossible. Anyway, there was a bit of a miracle, but it wasn't in the way I expected. It was better! When he arrived in Paraguay, it turns out he didn't even need the money at all. The church had been working with Paraguay to allow entry for the missionaries without that fee (or handling it some other way). Instead they had a representative from the church who was helping them with the entry process, basically an advocate for them that they were who they said they were and serving a mission for the church. So Jared not only made it through that process without any problems, but also was able to keep the money.
As I was thinking about that whole experience, I couldn't help comparing that to us. I feel like sometimes we're like the bills that aren't quite pristine. We worry that we might not be good enough. Sometimes we want a miracle to help with those imperfections. And maybe sometimes we get those miracles, but not in the way we intended. When the imperfections are still there, we might doubt God or why He's not removing those weaknesses. But often, He had a much better plan all along. We just needed an Advocate (the Savior) who knows us and can help us make it through whatever obstacle we were trying to get through. And even though those weaknesses are still there, we now can be used for a greater purpose than we had in mind because we had Jesus on our side.
Jared is doing great, by the way. He's serving in Ciudad del Este and his companion is Elder Ponce (from Peru). He's already experienced some other miracles and noticing how the Lord is helping him with the work."
