Tuesday, July 28, 2015

7-27-15

This week was awesome. I feel like every single week just continues to get better and I love being a missionary. Also..THE CHURCH IS TRUE! :)
So Monday evening we went to Lancaster to do exchanges with Hermana Bills and Hermana Davis. We decided to blitz (we are all in one area dividing and conquering) on Monday and Sister Jarvis and I were walking around and found some Spanish people, but we didn't have the Hermanas! So they went back the next day and picked them up as new investigators!
Tuesday, I was with Hermana Bills and their area is the entire stake, because they are in a Spanish branch, so we went out finding, and found a ton of potentials for them! The Lord definitely leads us to those people ho are prepared for the gospel.
Wednesday, we spent ALL day doing service, organizing and cleaning their garage, at the Fergusons! As Sister Jarvis always says "Service Softens Hearts" Whether it is our own, or the people we are serving, or both!
Thursday, we had district meeting, and funny enough, we talked about serving the members of the ward, so we were able to relate our service from the day before a lot. We also went to Columbia and one of the people we saw was Nicole. Her mom was baptized back in February, and she didn't seem interested at ALL, but while teaching Jen, Nicole started asking a lot of really good questions, and we were able to help her to realized the importance of gaining your own testimony of the Book of Mormon.
 *That is one of the biggest things, is reading and praying about the Book of Mormon, and attending church. Gaining our OWN testimony of whether or not it is truth.*
Friday, at our dinner a guy, who is a Jew that believes in Jesus Christ, came over and sat in on our spiritual thought, which we were teaching the Restoration, and he totally believes it is true! So cool.
Then Saturday, MORE SERVICE!!! :) Making a roof for pigeons, moving people. Then we had a stake Meet the Mormons movie night! LOVE THAT MOVIE!!! We hear some crazy ideas sometimes of what Mormons are, we are normal people I promise! It was also really cool to see Missionaries, members, and non-members all there TOGETHER enjoying a great evening!
Then Sunday, CHURCH! We also had a great lesson with our new investigator Scott, In the lesson we showed a short restoration video, and the spirit as SO strong! I KNOW that Joseph Smith as a true prophet, and through him the gospel of CHRIST was restored! I am SO grateful or a modern day prophet!! I am so grateful for the priesthood and the fullness of the gospel of the earth! CHURCH IS TRUE! :) 
 
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Temple pix...There was a bug.




We see a ton of bunnies and I always tell sister Jarvis to catch
one... And she finally did! A little baby!
 
 
 AMISH! :)


Had to get rid of our area book after putting in all the records.. :)
Fergusons/Browns :)



  We also ran through some corn :)






 Exchanges with the Lancaster Hermanas :)


We were walking home and there was a fire
From Mission Blog:

July 2015 MLC

The Missionary Leadership Council discussed what makes a good leader.  Here are some of the things we came up with.

A good leader is someone who knows how to:
   -follow                           -desire success for those they lead           -accept responsibility
   -be humble                    -know and care about those they lead      -see the good in others
   -rely on the Lord             -have integrity        -inspire others to make changes for the better
left clockwise:   Elders May and Liston, Sisters Oliver, Jarvis, Palmer and Rosengren
        Elders Redd, Stevens, Wilson and Garduno 
Left:  Sisters Blackwell, Oliver, Jarvis, Jones, Ludwig, Talbot,and Elder Garduno
Sisters Ludwig, Talbot, Jones, Blackwell and Oliver

Monday, July 20, 2015

Temples and Chocolate

This week has been crazy. We started off by going to Hershey Park and we had a TOTAL BLAST. I love that place. It is amazing. :)
 Then we had the opportunity to go on exchanges with the Hershey sisters. I got to go there with Sister Allen. She has only been out 7 weeks and is doing really well! She has a great sense of humor about everything, and also knows how to work. She has great ideas, and is very creative. She definitely opens up when she knows you, but is very quiet when first meeting people, which I could definitely relate to her in that way and help her the best that I could to open up. I cant wait to see where she comes over the time of her mission!
 The rest of the week we really just focused a lot on finding new investigators to teach! I have never walked so much or knocked on so many doors and had so much success! So on Wednesday we were trying to find this address of someone that the missionaries used to teach and we were totally lost in a confusing apartment complex! and there was one guy that was outside so we asked him if he knew where it was and he pointed us in the right direction, we went and knocked on the door, no one answered, and we found ourselves out walking around again. Cedric was still outside though and so we decided that we should probably talk to him! (It's like we're missionaries or something) and he was so nice and open! We showed him the Because He Lives video and his only response was "Wow. That was powerful." and so we talked a little bit about the Restoration of the Priesthood Authority on the earth and invited him to be baptized right then and he said yes!!! It was crazy. We are really excited to continue teaching him and see what happens there! :)
On Thursday, we went on splits with some girls in the ward, Tara and Lauren Brown, Lauren and I went to Columbia, while Tara and Sister Jarvis were in Wrightsville.
Saturday we had all of our appointments cancel.. SO we dropped in on a few people from church and talked to them for a bit until we had to leave to set up for our Meet the Mormons Movie Night that we had been inviting EVERYONE to for like the past month. I was so excited to see who would show up and in the end it was just us, the ward clerk, and the Bishop and his family... it was a little anti-climactic for sure, but hey! The movie was still amazing! :)
Sunday was by far the best day this week though. After church Sister Jarvis and I were trying to decide where we should go because all of our plans had fallen through, we both felt inspired to try Sister Minnick, so we texted her and asked if we could go over. She texted back and told us that she wasn't home but we both still felt that we should go, so we did. Of course nobody answered their door, but we decided to tract around the area. We weren't having a ton of success at first so I thought we should try something else, So I suggested we pray. Right in the middle of this random driveway and then we go and knock on the next door! and this sweet little old lady opens the door and she says she's already going to a church that she likes and that she believes in Christ and then I asked her about how her faith has helped her through her trials and come to find out that Tessie's husband passed away 3 weeks ago and she was having a really rough day and so we were able to testify of Christ and the Plan of Salvation and pray with her and give her a hug! and she wasn't interested in our church at all, but we were still able to comfort her and assure her that God is aware of her situation and we were able to remind her how much God loves her and as we were walking away from her door I knew that she was the reason we had to go see Sister Minnick. It was just an incredible experience to know that we followed a prompting from the Holy Ghost and that we were able to be tools in the Lord's hands!
It was so cool to see how the spirit directed us there knowing that is how we could meet those people, which is something Sister Jarvis and I had discovered we had both personally been working on, was recognizing the subtle promptings of the spirit.
I am grateful for this work. I know that it can be hard, but it is so worth it to see the way that the gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ blesses so many lives.

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Lots of pictures, sorry! But DC TEMPLE!!!!


SO pretty!





 Hershey Park! Went with SIster Robinson (she is the one in that pic with me) and Sister Jarvis :) 




mmmm or nah to the kissing tower... 




 But it does have an awesome view! and cool windows! 











Cool view of the tower that I got all of the pictures from, and some fun house mirrors. 












REESES!!! :) And statues :) 



We didn't get to go to Chocolate world, but I will definitely have to go next time I am in Hershey! 




 Hands after Gardening of a few hours.. pictures don't do justice. I also got a great farmers tan that day!


  Cool light posts on Chocolate Ave :)