2-22-16

This week was great! It just zoomed right by so I hope I am able to express some of the wonderful things that happened! On Tuesday we had a lesson with the Bourquin family, we taught them about temples. We showed them a Mormon Message that talked about setting our sights on the temple. After the video Sister Bourquin was in tears, she asked when we decided to share that message with them. We told her that we had planned the lesson the week before, but picked that video to share that day. She said "You girls are just great missionaries.. You definitely follow the spirit, I needed that today." As she is working toward making it to the temple, our Heavenly Father knows her needs as she was feeling very discouraged that day. He knows us all personally, and I am so grateful that I am able to be someone he can work through as I strive to always remain worthy of the gift of the Holy Ghost! I thank our Heavenly Father for the guidance and direction that he gives us as we turn to Him! 

On Thursday we had the opportunity to attend a memorial service for Sister Sadie Wells. It was a truly inspiring, uplifting service. We as a missionary choir were able to sing "As Sisters In Zion/Armies of Helaman" and the sisters sang a medley of "I Stand All Amazed/ He Sent His Son" a powerful line from that song, which was one often quoted by Sister Wells is "Have Faith, Have Hope, live like His son, help others on their way". The whole room was filled with the spirit and I don't think there was a single dry eye. There were messages shared on the great influence that Sister Wells was, as well as on the Plan of Salvation, my testimony of the Plan of Happiness has grown so much over the past 2 weeks as I have pondered and prayed, and as I felt the spirit during this wonderful memorial. I am grateful for a loving mission president and his wife who care so much about every single one of us, and that love was evident at this service. I am grateful for the wonderful example that Sister Wells was to each one of us and I know that she continues to proclaim the gospel on the other side! A few months back the mission did a 3-a-day challenge to 1. Read a chapter of the Book of Mormon every day 2. Have an investigator of less active member read a chapter, and 3. Give out a copy of the Book of Mormon. Well our zone leaders decided to bring this back in our zone this transfer! Sister Nelson and I were excited to start this challenge, day 1 I had read, we were able to read with an investigator, it was about 7 and we hadn't give out a Book of Mormon yet so we tracked a nearby neighborhood and were able to give out a Book of Mormon, and when we got home Sister Nelson was sure to read her chapter :). Day 2 we were doing our weekly planning, but because the weather was BEAUTIfUL that day we decided to go for a walk to give out a Book of Mormon, as we were walking we saw a lady running up a hill towards us, we said "oh hey maybe she wants a Book of Mormon!" Turns out it was the bishops wife, but we didn't have a dinner appointment that day so we were able to go out to eat with them :) We did give out a Book of Mormon though! I'm grateful for the inspired challenge from our zone leaders, it really is so wonderful to refocus on the importance of the Book of Mormon as it truly is the keystone of our religion. I know that we can grow closer to Jesus Christ by reading it!

Training is great. Sister Nelson is awesome. We have a lot in common and we get along really well! She is willing to learn and try new things, I'm excited to continue seeing her growth! I love being a missionary :) I love Jesus Christ and His Gospel and being able to dedicate 18 months to sharing my testimony with the people of Pennsylvania:)

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Sister Wells loved crazy socks. Her parents are so amazing, and the got socks for all of the missionaries in the mission to remember her! They really are such great people, probably the most forgiving and loving people ever.

 Sister Nelson and I in our socks :)

 Sister Nelson reading the Book of Mormon on day 1 of the 3-a-day challenge.

 Had to try on Sister Nelsons glasses too. :)

2-15-16

Sister Nelson and I :)

 Our car ride to Pittsburgh.

 Well the snow came! Me making snow angels.

So this week we had transfers! Tuesday morning we had to drive down to Pittsburgh for a trainer/trainee meeting. After the training by our mission president informing us that if we didn't do a good job we could potentially ruin this persons life(no pressure), we had lunch, and then we found out our companions! My trainee is Sister Nelson!  

So your trainer is your mom, your trainee is your daughter.. It's like mission family history. My trainer was super happy about having some posterity. But I am a proud mama! sister Nelson is awesome! She definitely hit the ground running and jumped right into teaching and was able to invite someone to baptism in her first lesson! We had plans to invite 2 of our investigators to baptism this week and the training manual says the new missionary takes he lead in doing so, after I wouldn't let her our of it in the middle of both lessons she did it! She is so willing to try new things, it's great :)  

This past week there was a tragic accident involving 4 sister missionaries serving in my mission. Sister Sadie Wells passed away, and the other 3 sisters are injured, but on the road to recovery. Though I did not know Sister Wells very well, From the few times I did talk to her I know that she was truly an amazing sister, beautiful inside and out. I know that she is sharing the gospel with just as much diligence to those people on the other side! It has been extremely hard for many, please keep these sisters and their families, and any others struggling in your prayers!  

So yesterday during my personal study I was studying on the Atonement for gospel principles and as I was also thinking about the fact that it was Valentine's Day I realized that the Atonement truly is the greatest expression of love. Christ didn't have to do it, and I and nobody else is really worthy of it, but he did it out of love, because he wants all of us to return to our Heavenly Father. That is the love that I want to share with the people here in PA!  

Thank you for all of your love, support, and prayers! I am truly grateful for the Restored gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ!

My Week!

The Cranberry District

 

 

  

We made some Red Velvet cake for sister Maya on her 2 year mark :)

2 candles for 2 years! We had to light them on the stove though cause we had no matches...

Wow, this week has been full of events. We started out the week with sister Maya's two year anniversary of being a member of the church last P-day. Then it was groundhogs day, which fun fact of the day the groundhog is in my mission(he also didn't see his shadow, so spring! The weather has actually been GREAT! Like we have barely had a winter at all!)! The next day I hit my 14 month mark being a missionary, boy does time fly! Then the rest of the week was just a bunch of nerves waiting to hear about transfers. I got a call Saturday morning from my mission president telling me that I am going to be training! I am super excited but super nervous!! This is Sister Maya's first area so she is really sad to be leaving, but she gets to go to "the sweetest place on earth" (Hershey, PA) and be in a trio there. I have loved being companions with Sister Maya, I have learned a lot during our time together! Transfers are tomorrow so I will let you know next week who my new companion is!

This week we decided to make some cookies for our neighbors, most of them know who we are, but we have a new neighbor who we dropped the cookies off and he wanted to know what we do so we were able to talk with him about what we believe and give him a Book of Mormon!

One thing that I have learned this week is that attitude is a choice. We went to a dinner appointment the other day and everyone was just not in a great mood there, and it just made me so sad! I realized that yeah, sometimes things will be tough in life, but I hate being angry or annoyed or frustrated, and it's my choice when I am! I know that I like to be around people the most when they are happy! It's much better to just be happy in every situation! So that's definitely one of my goals, CHOOSE to be happy!

Speaking of being happy, I can honestly say that I am the most happy when I am focusing on others! This week we went to see our investigators James and Nicole, they were really struggling, so rather than going on with the planned lesson of the Law of Chastity (no I wasn't just trying to avoid teaching that lesson), after saying a kneeling prayer together, we read from the Book of Mormon and the spirit was able to fill the room and there was so much more peace! I am grateful for the guidance of the Holy Ghost to help us to discern the needs of these people! They were also able to receive blessings from the Elders so it all ended well, much happier :)

So we also able to have a lesson with our new investigator, Olivia! Oh My gosh! It was so great! So last time we left her with a Restoration pamphlet and invited her to review it. WELL, there are some questions in the back of that pamphlet and she had gone through all of those, marking and color coding with sticky notes the attached scriptures! She also had some great questions, which we had an awesome team up, Sister Lubin, who was a great member present to answer some of these questions with us! She also said she wants to come to church with us! We can really see her desire to learn truth, and it's awesome!

We also had a few more lessons this week with some less active members, and visited quite a few people from the ward for sister Maya to say goodbye.  Change is HARD, but I am grateful for the growth and the opportunities to learn from those changes. I am especially grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ which allows me to have peace and comfort and move forward with Faith!

My Week

So sister Maya had NEVER made cookies before! so I had the pleasure of teaching her how!

 These are the Elders in our ward... They like to take selfies on our iPads when we leave them for 2 seconds. There were at least 100 more....

We got a bit of snow so we built a snow man! The next day it was gone! The weather has been so great these last few days! It feels like spring! It was in the 50-60's yesterday!

I am so grateful to be a part of the Lords work. It's so great! It is so amazing to see the Lord work through us as missionaries. I know that there is NO way that I would be able to do any of this without Him, we just have to do our very best and he will make up for the rest! 

This week we were able to pick up a new investigator named Olivia! She is so sweet, and has such an open mind and heart which is great! She was a Bible media referral, we were able to contact her that day we got it, and she was just so thankful and surprised by how fast we got it to her! We were able to set up a return appointment, and then Thursday we were able to teach her the Restoration and set up another return appointment for next week!

We weren't able to see our investigators James and Nicole for a few days, they were dealing with a lot, and when we were finally able to see them they were able to see the difference between those few days they weren't studying the scriptures and how those days were terrible, but Nicole said she felt so refreshed when we were able to teach them again! It was so cool to see her recognize hat difference! We were also able to reset Nicole with a baptism date for February 20! We also got called 30 minutes before leaving to church to teach Gospel Principles yesterday, I am so grateful to have the set time to study each day, because without increasing that knowledge ever day there would have been no way we could teach that lesson. I love studying and learning more and more every single day! There is no way I would have been able to do that before my mission!

So my companion Sister Maya, she has been a member of the church for 2 years today, she really is such a great example! Tis the season to be stressed about transfers, I don't know what's going to happen. But I do know the Lord knows what he is doing, and so does my mission president. Transfer calls are on Saturday, and there is the possibility of a transfer here! Will let you know next week! I am so grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ! I love him! I know he loves every one of us!