Thursday, November 21, 2013

Week Fifteen

Dearest Family,

First off, thank you. I have felt your prayers this past week. I am very grateful for everything that you have done for me. I love you all so much! The Lord is blessing me, and I know that he is blessing you. Thank you.

This past week has been hard, but a blessing. I have come to realize, that I am a daughter of God, and that everything He has given me, is a blessing. Even when it seems like it is a curse. We are all very blessed to be here, and have chosen the right path. There are some hard times that we as humans go through, but it is to help us, and to help someone else. Everything is a blessing.

We have been able to go around our area, and experience new things! :) One of them is a new car!!! The car we had was a 2013 Chevy Malibu Cruze. It was blue, and her name was CiCi. We loved her very dearly. Well, when we were at our mission wide conference, we were told that we had to get a new car. We were devastated. We loved CiCi, and were told that she was going to stay with us for a while. It was heartbreaking. Well, we have come to find out, that we love this car so much better! I am going to attach a picture, but I will still tell you about it. The car is a 2014 Chevy Malibu Cruze. Yes, they are letting me drive a brand new car. It only has like 2600 miles on it. It is so pretty! I have come to accept the brand new car. It is very nice, and I cant wait till I can drive it!!! :D :D Me and Sister Young are very excited :)



This week we have also been able to find, teach, preach, and baptize!!! :) It was a very good week :) This past two weeks, President Van Cott, challenged us to find 8 new investigators. I am going to be honest, we were not able to meet that goal. We may get to meet that goal this week though :) We just needed a little more time :) On Thursday, we were on exchanges, which meant that Sister Anderson and I were together. We are both still very young, and were having a really hard day. We had taught 2 lessons in the morning, but coming out of them, we were not feeling to good. It was really weird. Well, everything else that day had fallen through. Things were just really tough. We were both feeling like failures, and every time we went to someone's house, we would walk to the door, or right before we were going to get out of the car, we were getting terrible feelings. Like we should not be there, and to leave as soon as we could. The hard part, was that we were going to less active members homes. It was so crazy! We knew that we should see them, but we felt so sick to our stomachs about being there. Well, we had gone through our whole planner, and seen or tried to see everyone on it. We pulled over, knowing that we had 30 mins until dinner to do something, and not knowing where to go. We decided to pray. As I was saying the prayer I was told a name to go and see. This name was Laura Neely. Well, there is a crazy thing about this name. Laura Neely lives in East Highland. My area covers West Highland. This sister wasn't even in my area!!! I knew almost nothing about her. Sister Anderson knew a little more, but not much. Sister Anderson covers East Highland. Well, me being me, I decided to push the name aside. I kept telling myself, she is not in your area. YOU CANNOT GO THERE!!! Well, after the prayer, her name kept coming to my mind. It was like someone was yelling at me. It was crazy. I had looked at sister Anderson, and was like, "well, this is really weird. I am receiving revelation for your area." I told her that we should go and see Laura. She started crying! She felt the same way too!! Only, she had heard her sons name, Robert. So, we left my area, and went to go and see Laura. Well, Sister Anderson was freaking out a little. The day before, She and Sister Mucke had gone to go and see them. The husband was there, and had told the Sisters that his family was not going to convert. He wanted nothing to do with the church. (Laura and Robert are investigators, just so you know.) Sister Anderson got very scared. Well, that was the people we were going to go and see. Another thing, I had been to that house only once, and I was the one driving to the home. I had almost no idea where I was going. So, we went. When we got there, we had a prayer, and a little pep talk to try and get the courage to go and knock on this door. We did eventually get to the door. When we knocked, the dad was the one who opened it. We asked how he was doing, and said hello, and then didn't know what to say. We hadn't planned it that far... So, Sister Anderson was like, "Is everything okay? Are you okay?" The guy just looked at us and was like, "I am fine. We are all fine." He also had a really weird expression on his face. It was funny. I looked at this man and told him the truth. I told him, "Look, we have no idea why we are here. We were trying to see other people, but everything fell through. We prayed, and.." then he cut me off. He was like "And you felt inspired to come to my home. That makes me feel really safe." We were both shocked. Well, I hadn't introduced myself yet, so I did. And we talked. Turns out, that this man works for the homicide department. (They are actually real! I just thought that they were on TV... Silly me...) That day, they had found 4 graves of people. He looked a little worried. They now have that huge case that they are working on. It is crazy. Well, We had both felt like we should let him know that you can pray, and that your Heavenly Father loves you, and hears your prayers. He said that he felt comforted. We then left. As we were walking away, Sister Anderson was like, "We were there, to let Robert (the son) know that his Father in Heaven loves him. We were there to show him that God has not forgotten about him." It was an amazing experience. Just crazy.Then we headed to dinner.

We were having dinner with the Skoy's, who both served missions, and Brother Skoy is our ward mission leader. When we got there, they had one of their son's non member friends over for dinner. Sister Skoy put the missionaries and the two boys at the table, and then Brother and Sister Skoy sat at the island bar. It was so great. All four missionaries were there, so the Sisters and the Elders. It was great to just be able to talk and to get to know people better we had fun. After dinner we shared the Mormon message, Men's Hearts Shall Fail Them. It is an amazing message, you should all go and watch it. We talked about how the Book of Mormon can help each and everyone of us. It was really powerful. We had said the prayer, and were getting up to leave when Graham (the non member friend) was like, "You are all so different. I do not understand what is so different about you. You focus on life, and I really like that. I just don't understand." It was at that point that Sister Skoy was like, "Graham, do you want to know more? The Missionaries can teach you." We (the missionaries) were all in shock. Here we are, sitting in our Ward Mission Leaders home, and we are getting a new investigator. It was amazing!!! We were so excited!!! When we got back home, Sister Anderson talked, and for the first time, I realized that I could do this. I can be a missionary. I do not need my trainer. I will be able to serve my God, and help those that need my help. It was amazing. One of the first Ah-ha moments I have had. It was great!! :)

Well, the next day we went and taught Graham. He has accepted a Book of Mormon, and is going to be reading it. He is so excited to learn, and just soaks up the information. After we taught the restoration, Sister Skoy asked him to teach it to us, and he summed everything up. It was amazing!! We get to see him again on the 2 of December. He has finals the next couple of weeks, so we will teach him then. We are so excited!!

The day before we had exchanges, we looked through our records, and found a former investigator that we should go and see. So we did. We went to this house, and asked for the former's, and they had moved. So we introduced our selves, and are going to go and see the family when we are done with our email! :) We are so excited!! Today we are also going to go and see another former that lives in the same area. We are going to get 5 new investigators today :) That will be more than we have gotten in the past 3 1/2 months. It is so exciting!! :D

We also had a mission wide conference this past Saturday. It was amazing! There are 220 something missionaries out in the mission right now! President wants everyone to be baptizing 2 investigators per companionship per month. He wants that to start happening in February. That means that there will be 2 wards being baptized every month!! We are all so excited!! :) He also wants us to all find 4 new investigators every week. These are long time goals. 70% of all the missionaries out are in the 12 week training program. Which means that the mission is very new. By February, we shouldn't have a ton of missionaries coming out. It will be great!! I cant wait to see how the mission is going to grow!! :)

Saturday night was also Linda's baptism. It was so good! She was so excited to be baptized, and to take that step to her Father in Heaven. It went really well, surprisingly. The baptism was spiritual and uplifting, it was focused on her, and the blessings she received, it was great. There wasn't a lot of people there, but more than our ward mission leader though. It was perfect, until we had refreshments. We had made a couple of the refreshments, and bought drink mixes for it, and it was gonna be great. Well, what we didn't realize, was that we bought kool-aid mix packets for 2-quarts of water. Did you know that the pitchers at the church are 4-quart pitchers?? Do you also know what happens when you put too much water for the mix, not good. It was so funny!! The drinks were sour, and not good at all. We felt soooo bad!! But everyone was having a good time, so that was nice. All in all, it was a great night and something that I will remember for a long time :)

It is kinda fun to be a trainer :) I am not a complete trainer, but I get to still practice. :) Sister Anderson is great though. She knows that we are both new at it, and is patient with me :) Things are going well though. I am still nervous when I make phone calls, and when we go to doors that we haven't been to before, but it is all still well :) I am learning just as much as Sister Anderson is learning. I have been able to learn how to rely on the spirit so much more! It is amazing to feel the spirit testify something to you. I am going to miss having it be so prevalent when I get off the mission. It will all be well :)

Sister Anderson is great! She is from Monterrey Utah, and is the sweetest thing ever!! She was going into theater, but has decided that it is not for her. She is great :) We have planned to do a road trip when we get off our missions! :) It is going to be great! she is 19, and when to UVU. I love her! We connect a lot, and really get along with each other :) I enjoy her :)

Sister Young is doing well. it is amazing how comfortable we are with each other. She is like a sister to me, and I really appreciate that. We are able to joke around with each other, and we love it. I am so blessed to have her!! :)

Have a great week!! You are all in my prayers!!

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