April 30, 2011

Hi Family!

Awesome week! Last Sunday was Easter and we pretty much forgot about the fact that a holiday was happening but LOTS of people came to the Square! Unfortunately we were only on the Square for 2 hours which is pretty typical for us. Anyway as we called our investigators during our computer/phone time we decided to give Richard and Denise one more try. We had been unsuccessful at reaching them for a month and we haven't had much time to think about dropping them. So we decided that this would be the call that determined their salvation. We called... and they ANSWERED! Yay! Not only that but they have been meeting with missionaries! Another Investigator Referral Confirmed (IRC) and because they made the 15th IRC for our zone this transfer we got to take a picture of us making a 15 - Sister Despain was the "1" and I was the "5", hard? Yes. Also our 89-year-old Grandma Flo met with missionaries too! Not sure how "there" she is but she loves those "respectable looking young men who are so polite and talk about Jesus Christ with her".

Monday night they changed our schedule so that we are actually on the Square for 6 hours. We don't know what to do with ourselves. But we were talking to this Spanish family by the Christus statue when the parents said that they had brought two of their 2nd cousins to Temple Square to show them around. Usually that is code for "Leave us alone; we are better missionaries than you" so we walked away and went to the basement to find more people. We ran into them again and struck up a conversation. The parents asked us to show the two girls (non-members) around! We took them through the displays of Old Testament prophets - Joseph Smith - Book Of Mormon display - Tabernacle - Assembly Hall - then the Temple Model asking the entire way about what they thought of it. When we invited them at the temple model one of the girls practically grabbed the card from us and said, "I want a Book of Mormon!" Awesome, you can have one. We will be teaching them until the missionaries come. They are pretty Catholic so apostasy will have to be on the menu for them.

Yesterday we got a hold of one of our investigators who has been meeting with missionaries for a few weeks now. His name is John and he had a stroke a while ago so he has a hard time talking. Maybe I am getting used to the way he speaks but he sounds almost normal now! I will just say that the gospel has cured him, sounds more "Ensign worthy". He is getting baptized May 7th! He sounded so happy too. Funny thing is his son joined the church without telling him so he started investigating around the time his son got baptized. Then we called Sandra. She was listed in our area book under my name but I had no idea who she was. I was feeling like a horribly organized missionary but we called her anyway. When I asked if I was speaking with Sandra she started speaking Spanish. That is why I don't remember her- Sister Despain talked with her. Good old Sister Despain started right up speaking Spanish and even proceeded to teach her a lesson! When they said the closing prayer Sandra started crying. Her husband just got deported (she lives in Fullerton, California - go look her up and baptize her!) and she is all alone with a 2- year-old. She said she will try to make it to church on Sunday. We will follow up! Later I got a call during Guest Services from a guy in Podunkville, Missouri who is currently meeting with missionaries. He called in to refer his best friend because he overheard a lesson and wanted it as well. It was just really neat to see how "people filled with the love of God are not content with blessing their family alone... but anxious to bless the whole human race." Funny part is his friend was sitting next to him the whole time. He was just embarrassed to call in for himself. They have the thickest accent ever; it is almost as bad as Africa. Speaking of which, a new investigator we have is from Nigeria but lives in Texas. When we asked why he went to the Baptist Church he said it was closest. When we looked up where the nearest LDS church was to him, guess where it was? Right next door to the Baptist Church. If only he had walked 20 more feet....

They are updating the "Gods Plan for His Family" movie presentation and as we were trying to get a sneak peek inside of what it looks like, the guy in charge of the construction project came out and invited us to see a bit of it. Looks like a disaster still but I hope it is good. We love taking families there because it is set up like an actual house so kids love it. But as we talked to him he told us tons of stories on his building, the sets for lots of other church movies! He did Legacy but says he can't watch it because of the guy that plays Joseph Smith - bad memories there apparently because he didn't go into any details. But cool guy. Oh and it was President Holmes' 70th birthday, they ordered tons of pizza and candy, ahh good day. Anyway that was our exciting week! More amazingness to come!

April 23 ,2011

Hi Family!

Busy week as always! We really focused on calling all of our investigators. Since being in Guest Services we get tons of phone calls, both coming in and going out so we have LOTS of people to get a hold of. And I am embarrassed to say that we have actually forgotten about 50% of them, who they are and such. Awkward! So during our weekly planning we put them all into our schedules and honestly felt very overwhelmed. But we can do it! Funny though, now that we actually made a game plan on how to do all of this, they take our "motors time" (aka computer time when we call everyone) away! Gah, so frustrating. So we had to come in on our meal breaks in an effort to get a hold of people. Something about skipping meals to keep doing missionary work makes me feel good, like I am giving my all for the cause. We go to bed tired but really happy. By the way I am not being prideful. Go read Alma 26 and then judge me. But trying to call 18 people in one hour is hard but I love it and I love how busy we are. Every moment is productive and well spent. It is so great when you have a companion who is willing to put forth 200%! So much is accomplished as we try our best to be our best!

So I have been really working on praying with faith since I realized that my prayers are... not good. Anyway, so I am working on it. And this story comes from when I was attempting to pray with faith to find the searching man we had planned for. We came out of our district meeting on Wednesday and hit the Square anxious to find people to talk to (district meetings always get us fired up) and we saw this guy reading the quotes behind the flagpole. We started talking to him and I noticed that he was holding a Bible (first thought: ANTI!) But as we talked more he had made many mistakes in his life. He was saved in 2008 (honestly what does that even mean?), and continuing to study more of God's word so he could continue to "bring himself in line with the Almighty God". He was a walking TV evangelical preacher but he was searching for a church and more truth. Bingo! Welcome to Temple Square! We ended up taking him to the Assembly Hall and then to the North Visitors Center to talk more about the Book of Mormon. It was quickly apparent that he wasn't interested in any of the kiosks but just wanted to get to the word aka scriptures. He opened up his Bible and started reading scriptures. This tour was one of learning for me such as:

1) Why we as Sister Missionaries don't carry the Bible around? Answer: Because Sister Nelson goes crazy trying to prove our religion by using the Bible. Don't worry I contained myself because when I showed him one verse and we had complete opposite ideas on what it meant I remembered, "Oh yeah, go Book of Mormon!"

2) Brevity and clarity are key for understanding and the spirit to be there. He had us sit down and said, "I am going to read to you a few verses from the Bible to help you understand" So he read the ENTIRE chapter of Galatians 3. I totally zoned out and have no idea what his point was in reading it to us. When finished he said, "What do you think of that?!" Uh.... Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God? Anyway we only share 1 verse and let it sink in, He failed at this.

3) Analogies and metaphors (when used appropriately) are great teaching tools. He acted out the process of repentance for us which was really good and I am going to use it. We kept saying Yes! Yes! You are right but we were on different levels of understanding that whatever we said was misinterpreted.

I realized that this conversation was going nowhere and we needed to end it before it got argumentative. We tried to bring the spirit back by testifying of the Book of Mormon and Christ's church restored on the earth again. He said "No" to missionaries because he felt no hope in our church. The only way to get to heaven was to "get inside that big Temple"... which is true... but he thought that you had to be perfect to go inside. When we said that we had been inside he said, "Oh... really? You two went inside? But you are just normal people." He then signed the referral card for missionaries. I am still not sure whether to be offended or not.

We had a mission training with Elder Porter from the 1st Quorum of the Seventy. We had training on not letting them get away just because they said no. Overbearing? Maybe but they said when it is filled with love it isn't overbearing.... still wrapping my brain around that. But then they gave talks like a devotional which is awesome since we don't ever have that! They talked about not getting discouraged and how the Gospel can take years to affect people's lives. The next day we got paged by the APs telling us to come down to Guest Services since Elder Porter wanted an "Office Tour". We waited about an hour for him. Then Elder and Sister Porter and President and Sister Holmes came and we gave them all the rundown of Guest Services, how we schedule the tours and keep the mission running smoothly. President Holmes said that they place Sisters in here who they trust not to ruin the image of the Church. Pressure much? He said we have about 2 seconds to uplift the image of the Church and we successfully do it over the phone. That made me feel kinda special. We have to put up with a lot of obnoxious, crude,and rude phone calls so we just kill them with kindness. It is great to be working in so many places and to see all the miracles that come with gathering the prepared people of the world. And there are many of them; just keep looking!

That was our week! Hope life is treating you all well! Until next week! Oh and Happy Easter! (Sorry holidays are not acknowledged/ forgotten here on Temple Square)

Back From Outbound!

Personal Goals

Keeping Track of Contacts... White pins are Baptisms

April 16, 2011

Hola!

So news: EVERYTHING stayed the same this transfer, same apartment, companion, assignment (Guest Services), roommates, zone, p-day. Everything. This is new for me and I don't know what to think about it. Usually something changes that breaks up the transfers but with nothing changing I am worried that it will feel forever long (permanent). Oh well, it all goes by fast and I really like Guest Services so I can't complain.

However, I hate transfers because of the "goodbyes" but that is what facebook is for... after the mission, of course. Lots of Sisters came back from Outbound as well so it is nice to see them. With transfers in Guest Services comes a lot of announcements that we have to page out (yes, if you didn't catch that before, we are still in the dark ages aka "90s with pages". Church headquarters should at least equal the latest and greatest in technology. Lies. Anyway back to my story). Then they all have to respond and when they don't we "999" them (meaning emergency or really, really important) and they respond within two-seconds.

It is also starting to get busier. We are getting lots of phone calls with people scheduling tours and motor coaches. I LOVE motor coaches! We get microphones and a large group of people. They are mostly old people who say that death will come before they will join the Mormon cult but hey, that is when the Family Search Elders across the way take over. Other than paging and tours we answer the phones; they call in for everything under the sun but the best is when they call in for more information about the Church, and maybe for us to send some missionaries over. It is the best! One guy, Howard, called in saying that he had done a lot of research on this Church and his findings have led him to Jeff Decker who is a guy with a movie and profile on mormon.org. When I asked why he needed to speak with him he said that it was confidential and could only be discussed with Jeff. We will call Howard back to make sure missionaries got in touch with him.

So I am a homeless person or better stated, desperate-need-of-the-atonement-in-my-life-person MAGNET! Seriously I didn't realize how much they find me until Sister Despain brought it up after our 10th homeless person (we have bodyguards Mom, don't worry) My companion says that she never has spoken with so many depressing people. All my phone calls are to drug addicts and people in the depths of despair. WHY ME? I have no idea how to help them and mostly I just tell them off for being lazy. We have a prayer list going for all the people we meet and it is very long. I am sure Sister Despain will be happy to leave me so she can talk to normal people again.

We do talk to nice people too. There was this family that came to the Square and we took them on a tour. They said that they came to Utah and they haven't seen one Mormon yet! Yes, they were upset about this. We told them that Mormons look like normal people and have jobs. They were shocked. They thought that we wear name tags everyday, wear pioneer clothes and only come into the city when we are desperate. I nearly died laughing but I kept my composure and we proceeded to tell them about Prophets and the Book of Mormon. They loved the thought that a Prophet could be here again so we showed them President Monson's conference talk and they were mesmerized, until their 15-month-old daughter started screaming bloody murder. Seriously Satan?! But they referred! It was so cool. They went from polygamy-hunting tourists to potential investigators! Yay, Holy Ghost!

Funny Story: So Sister Despain and I took this tour of people from the KOA campgrounds so they didn't know each other. At the tour's end they wanted to go to the Organ Recital so we took them over there. I helped an elderly lady confined to a wheelchair through the handicapped entrance and said goodbye. I looked around and I couldn't see my companion, Sister Despain! I started walking around the Tabernacle and as the seconds passed I was freaking out more and more. Thoughts of "Where is she? What will happen if people see me? What am I supposed to do alone? I have to find someone to be with right now! There is a senior couple; maybe I can be with them! What if President sees me!?" Then on the east side of the TAB out pops Sister Despain who had taken the rest of the tour group to the quiet room to watch the recital. We ran to each other with our arms out and yelled, "There you are!!" Tender. We started laughing when we described our similar thoughts of companion-seperation-anxiety. Life is going to be scary in nine months; I can feel it.

We have set new goals for this transfer which will blow the mission out of the water! We can do it... with a lot of faith and help. Some changes are happening to our mission. They are going to pay us monthly now rather than every 3 weeks with less money. No big deal but the Sisters who can't budget are freaking out. They are also assigning my zone the 8 a.m. motor coaches. Gah! So we have to take our study time two other hours during the day. That's a problem for us because we have Square time for 2 hours and if we take an hour of study time there that only leaves one hour. I told my district leader that our Square time is sacred so we received special permission to do our own thing — hallelujah. We are still working out the kinks because studying in Guest Services is very unproductive. Anyway I'm sure this is a boring letter but this week we have been so busy scheduling. It will all calm down next week!

April 9, 2011

"Temple Square Guest Services, this is Sister Nelson!" I say that about 100 times a day, but what is bad is when I forget which phone is ringing and say the wrong opening line on the phone. So if people call "inbound" that means they want a Book of Mormon or a DVD from the Church which I answer by saying, "Thank you for calling The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is Karly". We have to be careful about using our first or last names for security reasons and we CANNOT mention where we are located. Yes, if you couldn't tell I think I've broken this rule, on accident, of course, about ten times. Oops. Oh well, people in our society today don't pay attention to what anyone says so no biggie.

General Conference!!!!! Here is the procedure for every Sister missionary on Temple Square about a week before:

1) Stare at closet in frustration because nothing is cute.

2) Ask every Sister missionary within sight opinions on potential outfits.

3) Try on 50 outfits and ask opinions from everyone what they think.

4) Ditch everyone's opinion and wear what you want to wear that they didn't know you wanted to wear but randomly had this brilliant idea/revelation from God about what you could wear to make you as good looking as possible for people we cannot date let alone touch for the next 18 months.

5) Wake up 2 hours before we have to be on the Square to get ready for the fastest flying 14 hours of our missions.

So that is General Conference in a nutshell. I am pleased to say I did not follow the above procedure but simply went shopping for new clothes. Hello, this could be the photograph in the Ensign magazine we are talking about. Big deal!

But anyway conference was great! We set a mission goal of 6,000 potentials (member referrals)! Needless to say Saturday was great weather, tons of people; our goal seemed in reach. Sunday was a snowstorm, cold, nobody on the Square. Uh-oh. We only study in Guest Services for four hours each day and when we were free we literally ran up the stairs (after praying, of course) and talked to people. I really love conference because everyone is more willing to have a spiritually uplifting conversation with you. This inevitably leads to discussing someone who could benefit from knowing more about the Church! It is a game that we must play so, believe it or not, everyone getting potentials from members is an art that I honestly am still working on. We spent hours role playing it to get ready for conference. But anyway, just keep that in mind if any of you go to Temple Square.

We met cool people though! Sister Despain and I contacted this man that was 100-years-old! He was hilarious and even pretended to die during our conversation with him. We saw lots of old friends! It was nice to see everyone. It is weird to see people I know because I feel like life has stopped and I think that theirs should as well but nope not at all. We worked really hard through the rain and snow and called ourselves the Willie and Martin handcart pioneers all day. I was getting really nervous about reaching our goal because the way we tracked our referrals was to put stickers up on the walls decorated to look like Temple Square so when the stickers ran out we reached our goal. But they weren't running out and the box was far from empty. We talked to anyone that moved (kinda felt bad but we just tried not to think about it). After Conference we had our mission meeting that was open to the public (and none of you attended; how dare you!) and we got 6,455!!! Miracles seriously because NOBODY was on the Square.

Because we reached our goal we got to sleep in till 9 a.m. (amazing!) and we had a mission dinner/movie-watching extravaganza from 5-8! We watched a real movie too! It is called Secretariat about a race horse. It was really good I would say you should go see it but I am sure it is old news by now. So yeah, you should all go watch it!

Quick miracles because this letter is forever long: Took a spanish couple through God's Plan for His Family and they referred and they also gave 10 potentials to call!! So great! I love having a companion that speaks Spanish, I am failing at learning that language but at least I now know that saying, "El Libro de Mormon is verde" is a lie because it is actually "azul" but more importantly it is "verdad" as any Spanish speakers can translate that for you all. I got an inbound call from a man from Iraq asking for a Book of Mormon. Cool huh?! He wants to know more about Jesus Christ. He said he isn't Muslim so we can send it to the missionaries. It is still dangerous though because he could die. Lastly our investigator told us about a dream she had where she was invited to a really fancy party. But she had another commitment somewhere else so she went to that instead. She said the entire time she felt like she missed out on something important in her life and lost the opportunity. She interpreted it to mean that she needed to keep learning about this Church. Now she just needs to break the news to her husband.

Oh...and we passed cleaning checks (yes, that is a miracle). Ok, gotta go! Transfers are on Wednesday so I don't know when I will be writing you again but honestly it will probably be on Saturday... or Wednesday since I most likely will not leave Guest Services. Bye!

Conference April 2011

Stephanie Williams McKnight saw Karly on Temple Square

during the Priesthood session of conference.