Week 7...August 5, 2019

Well, as much as I would love to say that Gabi is doing fantastic and everything is going smoothly, that is not the case. She didn't write a weekly family and friend email. She is really struggling. She is sad, not sleeping well, frustrated, and thinking of 16 more months is really not feeling like a possibility. She has traveled to Paris twice this week. (1 hour 15 min commute from Orleans where she lives) When I talked to her she had just finished talking to the Mission President and was feeling a little better. She could only talk a few minutes because they had to leave and for some reason her data wasn't working. So that was it and I was left to worry until I could hear from her again. Unfortunately she did call back a couple days later. Her mission president told her she could call home every day to get encouragement to stay out because at this point she didn't feel like she was going to. We had a long talk and she was pretty discouraged. When I hung up I felt strongly that we needed combined faith and prayers  going out for Gabi. I reached out to the family and friends and let them know what was going on and asked them to reach out to Gabi with their own experiences to lift her up and encourage her. This is where I feel like Gabi's mission went from us being bystanders to active participants fighting for her from home and as much as this all hurt so much, the flood of love, support, advice and prayers was a miracle in itself. My heart could not be more full of gratitude for everyone who reached out to her and emailed pages and pages of the most amazing stories, encouragement, testimony and love. My testimony was strengthened so much and my heart overflowing with gratitude. I probably emailed her 10 times myself that week, fasted, went to the temple and prayed constantly. As much as I don't want to call this a blessing, because of Gabi's suffering, it has unified, strengthened and brought so much gratitude and love.