Week 48

Well, I just got back from DC and have about 20 minutes to write an email....so.....I apologize If I
don't respond to individual emails. 

The purpose of this email today is to share how much a mission changes you. Before leaving on a mission I did not want to change. I thought I was fine as I was, and in reality i WAS fine. But I've
come to realize that being just FINE, is not good enough. 

Oddly enough, I think the biggest thing I've learned to do is trust. Trust in gods timing, trust in the spirit, and have enough trust in myself to act on the things that the spirit puts into my mind. Toward the beginning of my mission, I didn't trust in any of it. Didn't trust in God, the spirit OR myself. But as time goes on I've found that the only thing I do now IS trust. 

There are so many things I've seen out here that cause me to have no reason to doubt that this is truly gods work. Little "coincidences" that seem to just pop out of nowhere, where in reality God has been planning for them for years. I saw a quote the other day that said "a coincidence is when God chooses to remain anonymous". I have no doubt that that is true. God hastens his work with or without us and the best decision I've made is to hop on Gods band wagon and hold on for dear life. 

A mission has taught me how the spirit speaks and how I can recognize it. It's also taught me to act on promptings that seem to have no purpose, but later I find out that there was definitely a purpose to them. The other day we left an appointment and we felt like we needed to drive and see a particular member. We pulled up outside the house and no one was home. Logic would say to hop back in the car and leave, but for some reason we felt like we should stay. So we did....for an hour....and still nothing happened. It felt really odd to be just driving aimlessly around the neighborhood, but for some reason we had to be there. To my eyes absolutely nothing happened. Around 8:40 we got a feeling like "okay, well you're good to go! You can drive home!" It made no sense, but we drove home early. And still nothing happened. 

Even though to an outsiders point of view, it probably would've looked like we were wasting an hour and a half, that's what my companion and I both felt like we needed to do at that moment. Usually I would feel bad about not using the time we've been given, but it felt right and I still feel like we were following a prompting. 

Another thing a mission has taught me is patience. Whether it's patiently waiting for a companion to get ready, patiently waiting for an investigator to start keeping commitments or being patient with myself as I make mistakes, it has all taught me valuable lessons. 

Missions really show you your own weaknesses. Heck, it doesn't just show you them, it puts them right up on a neon flashing board for all to see, but it's ok. Because, "if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them "(ether 12:27). And just like it says in 2 nephi "He shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain". So it's ok that I have weaknesses, because God gave them to me and from the, I will be humble, and then made strong. 

I've learned how important the commandments are, and why God asks us to keep them. However, more importantly I've discovered why I WANT to keep them and why I will CONTINUE to keep them. 

Now, if someone asks me to give a spur of the moment lesson or talk, I would feel comfortable doing so. This past week we were asked right before class started, to give a lesson to the 12 and 13 year olds in Sunday school. We went in there completely blind, and we were told to "choose whatever topic you feel like they need to hear". Great...hmm...where to start, well we went in there and the lesson was really powerful. The spirit was there and somehow was able to communicate to my companion and I what we needed to say in order to touch their hearts. I know it wasn't us directing the lesson, because it wouldn't have gone so well, but now I feel like I can truly rely on the spirit in order to teach. 

I've learned to just take things as they are, not stress about them and just live every moment cheerfully. There is not enough joy in the world. Too many people are focused on the negative.  Sure, if we looked for things there could be a lot to complain about, but complaining never got anything accomplished. I've found that being happy and being content makes me into a better person and it helps me to recognize the spirit easier. 

Toward the beginning of my mission I was always discontented, always looking for the things I'd done wrong, always looking for things to stress about and I would always beat myself up for the things that hadn't gone as I'd planned. But I've realized that that is not how God wants me to be. Instead of beating myself up and looking for the things that I've done wrong, I now try to look at the things I've done right and pick one thing that I can strive to improve. I'd consider this more as being "divinely discontented". Figuring out the things that God wants me to work in rather than picking and nitpicking on the things I want to do better. 

Goals that I had before my mission have now changed, my attitude toward life has changed, my attitude towards others has improved and my desire to do good has increased. 

In Doctrine and Covenants it says, 

"15 And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!

16 And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!

(D&C 18:15-16)" 

 In verse 15, the "one soul" that it talks about is yourself. As I'm crying repentance unto is people, I'm bringing at the very least, one soul unto christ. I'm bringing myself to him. 

These are just a few of the things that I've noticed as this past year. I love the change that comes as we are bringing our will in line with gods. It's amazing. 

Week 47

What a wonderful week this has been!! First off, next week my P day will be on Wednesday. We're going to D.C. with an investigator, and we aren't going to have much time to email at all, so just a heads up!! 

Anywho, this week has been great. We went to the visitors center with a Recent Convert and we were able to look at all of the temple lights and what not. It's very pretty and the whole time I was thinking that the temple here really truly looks like a big white castle and that pretty much every person should want to go inside. Who wouldn't want that?!?! 

but yes. Also. We were at the Caldwell families house for dinner and they did the whole "get to know you" shebang and when I told her I was from Washington, she gave me this incredulous look and said, "What? hm. For some reason I had several people in the ward telling me that the new sister missionary was from Australia. Seriously, several people told me..." HA. so. it appears that I've been raised in Australia my whole life, although I feel as if the accent is missing. but ehh. 

It's really cool how on a mission I feel as if I have grown so much closer to the spirit in so many different ways, and most of them I don't even recognize. Something interesting happened the other day that made me realize it. We were planning for our day and I told my companion that I didn't feel like we were actually going to be seeing one of our investigators that night even though we had a solid appointment. We texted them and asked if it was still good to go and it appeared that everything was going to work out. However, night came and we ended up not meeting with him because he didn't get back in time for work. Its really interesting to look at all of the little things that God helps us with and we don't even realize it. I'm extremely grateful for the little promptings that we receive each day. 

Oh hey so I wanted to tell you something cool that happened the other day. So last Monday you told me about Pa and the experience you had. Well I think it was inspired that you waited until that day to tell me. That night I could tell that my companion was thinking really hard about something and that there was something that was really bothering her. So I asked her about it. 

As I was sitting there listening to her, the spirit brought back to my remembrance the things that you had told me from that morning about Pa. So I was quite confused why she needed to know that, however, i followed the prompting anyway and I then was able to tell her about her ancestors and that when she left this area that she would be alright because she had many ancestors who had passed on who would be watching out for her and guiding her. It was a neat experience! I just thought I would let you know!!

Also, that was so cool what Cabe said in his email about Pa as well!! Its neat to see him changing.:) I'm excited for him to continue to learn and grow. 

I'm also grateful for the little things people do to go out of their way to serve those around them. 

AND I'M SO EXCITED FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!!:D 

have a great next few days and I'll see you soon!! :) 

Week 46

Its been a wonderful week!!! Seriously, its been awesome.

SO much has happened. I seriously had the best birthday ever. I didn't expect anything to happen, but several sisters left a cute snowman cutout on our door. Then my companion took me out to lunch. 

An old woman gave me some mismatched socks and a bunch of cookies. I also saw the most gorgeous sunset on my birthday. 

A member family took us out to dinner and there was a free cupcake that I got, but it was super awkward because the frosting wasnt on the cupcake and they said, "well...I guess your cupcake got a little warm" and then they walked off. 

Someone made me a cake. and basically it was such a wonderful day!!

then something else happened that was really interesting. We were in a lesson with an old woman and her phone buzzed so many times with probably 5 or 6 calls in the 20 minutes that we were there and she said, "my goodness, I've been waiting for these calls all day, and now theyre all coming in!" Definitely to me showed that we were in the right spot since Satan was trying to hard to distract us!! 

But anywho, its been a good week! 

Love you all! 

Week 45

I've had a really insane, but wonderful week!! 

We are seriously so busy that I don't even have time to think! 

We were visiting a hospital the other day and reading with one of the patients there and she had a nurse that was sitting there listening to us as well. As we were reading from the book of mormon the nurse was just nodding her head and sitting there. after we finished she randomly asked us if we would go get her some food from a store, then she handed us her credit card. SHE HANDED US HER CREDIT CARD. to a complete stranger. Not something that usually happens in D.C. I think she could tell that we were The lords servants! ha ha it was kind of funny though. 

We have a man that's been investigating for a really long time and something neat happened this past week. He's completley changed for the better. He said, "My youre pushy. Im not saying its a bad thing though. If you keep pushing I might just be a mormon some day...it wouldnt be the worst thing Ive ever done!" 

Last Preparation day my companion and I felt like Grinches because we were running through the halls of our apartment complex with a tree from down in the parking garage. It was quite funny. Old people were giving us really odd looks!! ha ha but it was great and it looks so festive!!

Well anywho!! Short email this week!! love you all!! have a wonderful week!! :) 

Week 44

What a wonderful week!! I swear, the time just keeps getting faster and faster and Im not quite sure what to do about it!! 

The weeks seem to pass so quickly that by the time I have the opportunity to send an email home I'm not even sure what happened that week!! 

My companion and I are still getting along fabulously. We have a grand time preaching the gospel together! We've decided to make it a tradition to spend every P day eve having a sleepover in our living room just for the fun of it. 

Something really funny happened htis week. On saturday morning we got a call from one of our investigators named "Jay". He informed us that he wanted to go to the temnple visitors center that very day and either he was going to drive down all by hiimself, or we could find a member and we could all go down. So we were scrambling to find a member to come, but no one was answering their phones. So I had a grand idea. I started searching through our area book and came across a random woman named Lucy who used to be taking lessons from the missionaries. I called her up and discovered that she didnt have very good english. She's from Ghana. And after trying for several minutes to communicate, she handed the phone to someone who had good english and I invited them to come to the temple visitors center. However, she didnt normally leave the house, but she said that if we wanted to come visit her then we could drop by and have a lesson with her! 

Eventually we found someone else to come to visitors center with us and we had a grand adventure visiting that. 

Thanksgiving was SO wonderful. And quite filling. We had dinners right after each other and one of the families was asian so they really wanted us to eat and eat and eat. Before we started our dinners we made sure to pray that we wouldnt get sick from so much food, and by golly. prayers work. Who knew?;) ha ha 

On the eve of thanksgiving we had exchanges with other missionaries and I got to hang out with sister Jorgensen for 24 hours. We had several really interesting experiences. First, it snowed on our exchange. Then as we were about to leave a particular house, she stopped and said, "wait....for some reason we need to visit someone in this area, but I dont know who it is..." So we headed off to a random less active family who we felt good about seeing. As we were pulling down this really sketchy driveway, a song came on the cd that was singing , "turn aaarouuuunnnnd, turn arooound" pretty much over and over in the song. So I was feeling quite sketched out, especially as we drove past a supposedly haunted house. But we had felt good about going, so we continued. And long story short, it ended up being a really awesome experience!!! But anywho....

Yup! SO thats about it for the week! love you all!! :) 

Sister Jorgensen and I on the first day of snow drinking hot chocolate... somehow we had the same face in every picture without trying to! 

Week 43

Hey I just got transferred!! my new address is

13550 Heathcote BLvd. #121

Gainsville, va 20155

 

My new companions name is sister Williams!

Man I have been having such a fantabulous week. Seriously. It's been great. My new companion is wonderful and this area is awesome. In the past 3 or 4 days we have seen so many miracles, I cant even describe how amazing it has been. 

To start off. My new companions name is sister Erica Williams. She lives in Idaho and has been out for about 3 months, but you wouldnt know it. She's such a rock star missionary and I've already learned a lot from her. You know what's really funny? We're pretty sure that we've seen each other before our missions, but as of yet we havent been able to figure out where. We were both at BYUI at the same time and we think we mightve been in a class together, or something, but again, we still havent figured out which one. We've been having some great fun and definitely having miraculous experiences. 

One of the really cool experiences we had was with a less active member named Lei. We had a lesson on my second night here and we were talking about sacrificing things in our lives that pull us away from God. I've come to realize that when we leave our commitments pretty general and let them pick something to work on for themselves, it is almost always more powerful, and they push themselves harder than we ever could and they also are more likely to do it. So we had asked Lei to pick one thing to cut out of his life and we would follow up with him the next day to see if he picked something. So the next day comes and we text him asking if he picked something. The text he sent back was AWESOME. He said, "Does smoking count??". So lei picked for himself to give up smoking and he said that its been going well for the past several days and that he isnt really having problems with it. Amazing, right??

Also, another miracle that happened was in the apartment complex that we live in. Well actually there are several cool things that have happened. A lot of the people who live in the complex are old people. We've just started teaching probably 4 people this week who live near us. There's been a ton of misisonaries that have lived here and yet in the past couple of days we've picked up at LEAST four. Theres been a ton of other people that we've talked to as well. And they are all really solid people who have a sincere desire to learn about Christ's true church. With one of them we started talking about the Book of Mormon and he goes, "you know, i've never read that! But I've always had a really strong desire to learn about religion" so of course we hooked him up with a book. 

Someone also told me something really profound the other day. As human beings we all sometimes have those thoughts about ourselves like "Oh you're not good enough" or "man, you're really awful" but....why would we be thinking about ourselves in the terms of "you or you're"? if we would be thinking about ourselves then we would think, "I" or "I'm". Yet, why do we have the thoughts about ourselves that start with"you're"? that's because it's satan. He's the one that is saying, "you're not good enough". Whenever we think thoughts like that, we can know that satan is trying to tear us down and that he's the one putting those thoughts there. THey arent coming from our own mind, theyre coming from him and we can push them out of our minds because theyre not our own thoughts. I thought that that was really interesting and it definitely makes a ton of sense. Although hopefully I've explained it in a way that makes sense. 

Anywho....What a wonderful week!! Love you all!! have a good week!! :) 

Week 42

Hey! This week has been so good!!

 

Vikki Eddington was BAPTIZED!!!! It was such an amazing experience. Her husband, who is an inactive member, came as well as her two children who are not members!! After the baptism we went with the family out to dinner at an Indian restaurant!! It's been so cool to see the change in Vikki and also to see the family slowly being brought closer together!!! She's so rock solid!!

 

Also...does anyone know someone named Shari Quinton?? Someone out here was roommates with someone by that name....Shari is probably 38 ish now... ha ha

 

a funny thing happened this week...well...not exactly funny, buuuut our battery was dead on our car, one of the mornings before we were going to head out. We called a member of the ward and she told us that she had cables but she didn't know how to jump the car. But...thank goodness for the auto-maintenance class I took once upon a time, because I successfully jumped the car. Ha ha most definitely a miracle that I could remember how! ha

 

Also, transfers are this week and we aren't quite sure whats going to happen, but I will let everyone know by Friday whether or not I'M leaving or staying!

 

ANywho, love you all!! have a good week!!

 

oh p.s. I did a musical number with my companion at vikkis baptism, but we recorded one of our practices so that you could hear it. There's mistakes...sooo....oh and also...tell Kemi that I'm sending her my "biker jacket"....and I told dad about some popcorn I'm sending home and another video that'll be on a flash drive...so ask him what I meant by those.. haha

Week 41

I've been having a good week!

Lately I've really been learning the importance of "friendshipping". There are parts to a person conversion in the gospel and that's the doctrinal portion and the fellowship/friendship portion. When you think about it, the best way to share the gospel with people is to just invite them into your home on a purely social basis. Become really good friends with them. They'll unconsciously recognize that they really enjoy being in your home.

They wont know it, but they'll be feeling the spirit everytime that they're there. You'll be able to show them what it feels like to have good, clean fun. If you look at society nowadays, if someone is looking to have fun with friends, they go to a bar. If they get together, they get drunk. If they want to have a really "Good" time, they'll get absolutely wasted. They're all looking for fun and ultimately for happiness. When you invite people over, you have the wonderful opportunity of showing them what it feels like to have fun that they will actually remember and that they wont regret later.

Almost right off the bat, people notice that Mormons don't drink alcohol, coffee, and other manner of substances. As people are invited into our homes and get to experience first hand what a Mormon does all day, you'll be able to figure out who is interested in the gospel and you'll be able to help them out along their journey of coming to find true happiness.

A convert changes their lifestyle in so many different ways leaving old habits, friends, and all manner of things behind so as to fully immerse themselves in the "Mormon" lifestyle. Having a friend during that time is so important. Someone they can come to for questions, someone who is currently living the lifestyle they want. The key to the gospel is the spirit, but best way they can feel that is in our homes!! Make friends with people and invite them over:) Invite them for dinners, social gatherings, ice cream etc. Then, it'll be really easy to invite them to church activities and gatherings, then to church, then to hear from the missionaries.

Lately my companion and I have been teaching this to people and I've seen that it works like a charm!! This past sunday we had a member of our ward invite her friend to hear her give a lesson in church. They friend showed up! Miracles have been happening like crazy!! :)

On a funnier note....a member this week told us that when her mom was growing up, she had a sibling that told her to go check out the antique store down the street. So she walks into the building and starts picking up stuff and checking it out....only to find out that her brother had tricked her, and that the "antique store" was actually a persons house and she'd just walked right into it! ha ha

Anywho, love you all!! :)

Lafrance Family

Fitt Family (I lived with them for a month when I got to my second area!) 

Week 40

Sorry this is really short!

Hey everyone! The past week and a half have been going really well! We've had several really odd things happen, but it's been good!

We had several really cool lessons happen. Last Monday night we had a family home evening scheduled with a member and her friend. It went so well! At the very end of it the nonmember friend said, "that was so much fun! We'll have to do it again sometime!"

We also had another lesson in a members home with their nephew who was not a member. It went amazing and the spirit was really strong in the room!

Today I went to the temple and my "companions" for the day were two older women in our ward! We had a lot of fun. It was a really spiritual experience like it always is!

Halloween was dry weird! It was really good, it just felt different. We got to pull our zone together and watched "frozen" and "despicable me 2". It felt quite awkward....but it was so much fun!