November 18, 2011

FaMiLy!!

Hello from freezing cold Temple Square. So to clarify I am no longer at welfare square (super sad about that, I loved all the crazies there) but just Temple Square. Definitely a change of pace. There are not as many people coming so sometimes we walk around a lot but that doesn't mean that the of quality of people that come has dropped but it is about the same. We had great miracles this week.

But it started off by having Cell Phone Training! Yes you read that correctly we are finally emerging into the 21th century by having cell phones. Look out world. The second coming is about to happen. But really they are only for texting and to get in contact with other sisters. But the missionary department gave us the capability for international texting so we can text our investigators in Africa! It is a great tool that was much needed. I guess they were worried about us walking around the square talking on the phone or texting. Nothing like a 3 hour cell phone etiquette meeting to squash all desire to ever have a phone to help us know! We still are working out the kinks... and there are many. It might take a while to get used to your coat ringing.

This week Sister Tahi and I had lots of miracles! We were working on speaking during tours and now we are up to sharing principles. She has progressed a lot already. We took a group around of Hilton Garden Executives and it was an interesting tour. With the Christmas season upon us everyone is practicing in all the buildings we have. Not conducive for the spirit to dwell in. But thankfully the Bells on Temple Square or the Christmas Concert Dancers were not practicing at the Christus statue. We were able to bear our testimonies on Jesus Christ and let the spirit sink in. When Sister Tahi bore her testimony a lady started crying! Nothing like a confidence booster there. 3 of them referred to learn more!

Later in the week we saw a French-speaking lady and tried to (discretely) track her down so Sister Tahi could talk to her. But we searched in vain for a half hour but found her in the North Visitor Center basement. Obviously it was a slow morning or else we wouldn't have tried this. But she was so good, lots on concerns about churches, and not ready to meet with missionaries yet, but she left with a smile on her face and a promise to go to mormon.org. The Lord must have felt bad for us, you know running and stalking people on the square, so he gave us a tour with a wonderful lady from Australia! At first she straight up said that she didn't want to learn more from missionaries but again, just let the spirit do his work and by the end of the tour she was so touched by everything that she filled out the card with no hesitation.

We have been very blessed this week and hopefully we can keep up the faith. I just love being on a mission. I can really feel the importance of it, not only for the people that come but for myself. It is amazing to look back and see how much I have learned and how far I have come. I am forever indebted to our Heavenly Father for this experience and I find myself full of gratitude as I reflect on our day His hand in everything we did. Off to find more miracles for this next week! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I will be sure to tell you all about it from my end.

Zone Picture by Bountiful Temple

November 11, 2011 (11-11-11)

Bonjour!

Obviously the titles of my letters are very exciting BUT this means that my companion speaks French! Now enters Sister Tahi from Tahiti! I can't wait to go visit all my old companions, just hand over the Credit Card Dad, I need to go all over the world to see my friends - yes I am that popular. But we had transfer conference on Monday to find that Sister Mata'utia and I were splitting. We were so sad to split because we had so much success and fun together but we knew that it was too good to last for 2 transfers. But my assignment for the rest of my mission is VIP bus tours. I guess I didn't do a good enough job last transfer so I am doing it again. But more specifically I am now training the Senior couples to do it so we will see how this ends up. They are all really funny and energetic so this could work, I am excited to have the Bus Tours start up for the Christmas season again. Let the insanity begin! We might have a meeting this Tuesday with Church Hospitality to confirm the transition from them to us to handle all the scheduling.

Other than that Sister Mata'utia said goodbye to everyone at Welfare Square. It was so sad because we have grown to love all the volunteers that work there. One of them even called President Holmes and said that she received a revelation from God that we needed to stay at Welfare Square... yeah I guess it didn't work because I am still not at welfare square. Brother Goodrich even came up to Sister Mata'utia and I and said that he would be sad to see us go, we worked really hard and he could tell. Aww I felt special.

But this transfer I am back on the Square! Weird... I haven't really been on the square in 5 months. It has slowed down a lot but in a few weeks the lights will turn on and it will be just as crazy as general conference! Sister Tahi and I get along great and I am excited to work with her. Ok well before I go one quick miracle story. So we were calling our investigators and couldn't get a hold of anyone! So we said, "Maybe we are supposed to do something else... lets do chat right now" So we logged into chat on mormon.org and immediately we get one. He is from Ghana and he found a book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet on the ground. He read the whole thing and said, "I know that this church is Christ's church restored on the earth again!" We just stared at each other for a moment and then asked him... "sorry...what?" He said that he read the Book and that God told him it was true and he is willing to leave his family, friends, and home behind to follow Jesus Christ and be baptized. Ok... is this real?! Yes it is. But he is Muslim... so we can't teach him but he has a rough road ahead of him if he wants to pursue this. We keep in contact through e-mail and keep him in our prayers. One day everyone will be able to have the gospel without being hindered by biases, religions, or opposition. Until then, we just have to keep doing our best to help people overcome their concerns. Well until next week!

Loves.

Pictures on Temple Square Fall 2011

November 5, 2011 Temple Square

Hi Family!

Happy November! So this past Monday as you all know was Halloween and at Welfare Square it was crazy! All the volunteers there dressed up and were helping with food orders. They were even passing out candy and fake tattoo sleeves. On top of all that, we had a Polish journalist walk in (unscheduled) to do a story on the Church's welfare program and film the projects that go on here. Brother Goodrich, the main guy at Welfare Square, nearly died when he realized that everyone was dressed up like witches, vampires or gangsters. Talk about uplifting the image of the Church! All of the costumed individuals found a place to hide for a half hour then everything returned back to normal.

The Square closes at 5 p.m. because of all the creepers that come out so we had our mission party from 5-9. We ate candy, pizza, candy, candy and um... more candy. Wow thought my heart wouldn't slow down - how do little kids do it?! But we watched 2 movies: Despicable Me and The Best Two Years! Everyone started screaming at the sight of the second one. I was really excited to watch it as a missionary to see how my perspective has changed. It has - fyi. It is funny to see the same personalities of those missionaries in the sister missionaries that I serve with. It was just what we all needed; all of us are exhausted.

We also got permission to attend a session at the Bountiful Temple! It was BEAUTIFUL. We drove up as a zone and I am proud to say that the car I was driving was the only car that didn't get hopelessly lost. In their defense we were driving in a snow storm (yes, the snow has arrived... dang). Other cool moments of the week were seeing Elder Holland and then Sister Thompson from the Relief Society Presidency at the Church Office Building - just going to buy some stamps and look who we bump into! We aren't allowed to talk to them though but a sighting is still pretty cool!

This week we have been really busy at Welfare Square with tours. It has been great; hopefully it stays that way because the day goes by much faster with tours. Plus we get to spiritually uplift people and teach them the gospel via service and Jesus Christ - what can be better? When we come back from Welfare Square we usually just go straight to calling people in the RC and our investigators. We had an amazing lesson with one of our investigators, Andrew, who had some concerns on why drugs were bad and what was wrong with tattoos. As we were talking with him he explained that he does drugs to see why it is wrong. He has very valid reasoning - he tries things out to understand where everyone is coming from. The lesson was amazing because we truly taught a person rather than a lesson. We try for that every time but for him it felt like a perfect lesson. MTC DVD worthy. At the end he was like, "Stop making things make sense! Fine! I won't do drugs anymore and I wont get tattoos, happy?" Um... yes. It was a great experience to share my life's thoughts and experiences to help him understand why God gave it as a commandment. Best of all he understood. *sigh* I love teaching people.

Well, this next week is transfers so we will find out what happens to us Monday. I will be entering my 12th and final transfer as a missionary. I am excited to see what miracles and experiences the Lord has in store for me as I keep trying to be as diligent as possible. More updates whenever I write you next! Love you all!

October 29, 2011

Hi Family!

For the majority of this week we were at Welfare Square, taking tours and helping people fill their food orders at the Bishop Storehouse. I really love serving here; we meet so many people. And when you help with hosting (filling their food orders) you can be sure that you are going to have a great conversation with people because they always have a story on why they are coming in and how their life is going. It is really sad to see people going through hard times but it is such a testimony builder of what the Church is all about, helping one another and supporting ourselves through hard times. We personally go to church to be uplifted by the messages that are shared but we build relationships with our ward family for support. One such story was a lady who was less active for many years. Her husband left her but because her neighbors were always supporting her she came back to church and has felt such an outpouring of love. She knows this is where she is supposed to be. So whenever people say that they don't need church to worship God, tell them to read Moroni 6 for further explanation.

I also called a man who recently lost everything and is looking for a place to live. I talked with him about being physically set (house, job, food) before we are able to sit down and be spiritually fed. He paused and said, "You are the first person who actually understands what I am going through!" Wow. Yea, Welfare Square! That is what Sister Mata'utia and I have focused on this whole transfer, and I love when the Lord gives you people who need what you have really come to understand.

Welfare Square is slowing down but sometimes it is CRAZY. We sometimes have back to back to back tours and we have no time for anything. By the end we are dead.

Friday the International Missionaries came to Welfare Square. The MTC always sends them to the Humanitarian Center but after taking a tour, decided to switch to Welfare Square. It was so much fun! But they were more camera-happy than listening. That’s ok, the MTC people came up to us after and thanked us for a spiritually uplifting tour.

Oh oh! I forgot to write about this last week: The apartment complex next to the main Sisters’ apartments had a HUGE fire. I was sleeping and having wonderful dreams when I heard our doorbell going off. It took me forever to register what was going on. But I heard the door open and a sister yell "SISTERS, GET OUT OF YOUR APARTMENT; DA IS ON FIRE!" DA is our main apartment complex. My first thought, “I don't care. They are 1/4 mile away, not my problem.” But I stumbled out of my apartment and we watched the apartment NEXT to DA burn for about an hour. President showed up and cancelled our sacrament meeting since we had been up for over an hour at this point. It took us all at least an hour to fall back asleep. But nothing happened to the apartment complex-which was a miracle because there is a tree that touches both apartments and it was on fire. But if another fire happens over there, tough! I am sleeping through it.

That's my week! Until next Saturday!

October 22, 2011

Hi Family!

This week was gone in the blink of an eye, but we did have some cool experiences too! One of our investigators in Puerto Rico who speaks perfect English finally got in touch with the missionaries! She is awesome. She even stayed up till 2 a.m. watching On the Way Home and Together Forever... yeah, she must be golden if she still wants to investigate after watching those movies.

We also got in touch with a lot of old former investigators who ended up not getting baptized. So that is our goal get them back on the path, since they are not with missionaries anymore and get them wet! We have a new mission focus, baptisms, shocking I know. But in the past it has always been call them till they meet with missionaries but to help us remember what is the most important thing, which is getting them on the path to the temple, they need to be baptized! We called a recent convert in Liberia who has moved away from the Church and is trying to have us get the Church established there. I told him that the only way to get the Church established in his area would be for him to do lots of missionary work himself. So we are helping him out by calling his referrals so we will teach them and maybe we can be like the Sister here who spoke Swahili and a congregation put her on speaker whenever she called... yeah that would be cool. But we are helping him get a good spiritual uplift when we call by reading the Book of Mormon together. It just is so sad to see how these people struggle, yet they are pioneers paving the way for others to have the gospel.

Funny phone story: I called this lady and her phone connection was terrible. She couldn't hear a word I said but she heard “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” and “missionary.” So she asked when we were coming over. Why can't everyone be like her? Sure feels good to be a harvester again. Puts it into perspective on how people are genuinely seeking truth. All we have to do is go by the spirit and be there when our Heavenly Father needs us.

Took a man around today who is looking into the church. He is so worried about not knowing enough and is trying to understand EVERYTHING. We told him that it must come line by line. We took him to watch a clip from one of the Apostles and he picked President Uchtdorfs talk "The Road to Damascus." I was praying that he would pick that one; and it totally met his needs and concerns. He loved the analogy of how revelation is like a puzzle, we put it in one piece at a time and then take a step back to see it all come together. Hopefully he ponders what he felt here.

But everything else is going well! Still doing our time at Welfare Square and loving every tour we take, except when they come every hour and half hour... then you just start walking in a daze and forming complete sentences is not possible. Dinner breaks turn into naptime. Wouldn't have it any other way! Until next week!