"Bye Felicia!!”

My last weekly email on my mission. I never thought this day would come and now that it’s here it is hard to believe I’m almost finished.  It will be hard going home because this mission might seem to fade like a dream but I know I’ll think about something pertaining to my mission everyday for the rest of my life. Here are the highlights for this past week: 

District Meeting: I was asked to give a training Monday night for Tuesday morning... yeah, I know. The ZLs wanted me to train one last time as a missionary on whatever topic I wanted. Makes it even harder when I have to come up with my own direction last minute. I decided to talk about trunkiness (term in the mission where a missionary is wanting to go home and has his bags or “trunk” packed and ready to go in his/her mind). I wanted to train on this mainly on how to overcome it. I drew upon my experience as an EFY (“especially for youth” youth camp centered on the gospel) counselor. I compared the youths’ experience of what I call “spiritual roller coaster” (where they come home after a week being on a spiritual high to come crashing back down a short time later and then repeating this process) to a missionaries' spiritual roller coaster battling trunkiness. I had a lot of fun training on this and then had the opportunity to give my departing missionary testimony. 

Live Chapel Tour: We are trying to be creative with our Facebook proselyting so we came up with the idea to do a chapel tour video. We can’t record in the chapel so we thought to just video the paintings in the building and teach principles of the gospel. Neither of us had done a live video on Facebook before and felt it would be cool to try. We did some practices the day before but once you start a live video there are no redos or cuts; whatever is filmed is filmed. So we finally had the courage to do it and the first time Sister Jewel accidentally swiped off the app while handing me the iPad which took us off of our video. We had a little panic with this. We didn’t realize that it was still recording us so when I got back onto Facebook it showed we were still live. I said something to Sister Jewel and she popped right back up and continued on like a pro. We deleted this video and then redid it so no one will ever know...except those 16  lucky people. 

Tracting: The sun was finally out on Wednesday so we did almost two hours of Tracting. We parked the car and just walked. The houses were all on one side of the street and we tracted until the very end. That was such a trek getting back to our car after we were done. This guy named Fernando let us share our message. His eyes had light to them and he was so accepting of the Book of Mormon. We set up an appointment with him but that fell through later as he got called into work. Hopefully the missionaries will still be able to teach him in the future.

 

Lessons: Had our lesson with Cole finally. We tracted into him forever ago and our appointment kept getting rescheduled. We brought Brother Holt and Brother Farnsworth to our lesson we had at the church and it went great. He is so open to learning more which is phenomenal and truly a breath of fresh air. We had another lesson with Leah and that went well too. The Spirit was so strong when her aunt was testifying to her that it is her choice to be baptized and how much this gospel will change her life if she choices it. She is great and she even said she felt comfortable around us which she normally wouldn’t in that situation. We had a lesson with Nicole on the Word of Wisdom (law of health) and that was very rocky. We knew she was battling with some Word of Wisdom struggles so we think we were a little fearful to have this lesson. We scheduled a lesson for the next day which we brought over her neighbor this time and we helped to clarify some things which went a lot better. We seriously love teaching her. 

Dinner with the Goldbergs: They are like a super member-missionary couple in our ward. Everyone knows them and Brother Goldberg hands out copies of the Book of Mormon like they are candy. We asked about their conversion stories which Sister Goldberg said we have already heard. In April 2017, Elder Rasband gave a talk in General Conference about a missionary experience he had while serving in New Jersey. He felt prompted by the Spirit to put his foot inside the door to ask if there was anybody else in their household who had a question. I reread the talk and he didn’t go much into her conversion story so she expanded on that which was really cool. (We learned that animals will be in heaven! [Revelation 5:11-14; Doctrine and Covenants 77:3]) She told us that in order for Elder Rasband to use her story she had to sign all this paperwork for legal rights and protection which was interesting. The Church is very good at covering all of it’s basis. 

Sent from ALASKA!

Sister Shelley Willden

I can be a missionary when I am home...in two weeks

Well this winter really has been very dangerous. We had freezing rain again and of course we are now pro ice skaters! A stake near by cancelled church but not our stake. I don’t think Alaskans know what bad is. They will tough out everything and anything; so different coming from a state that has “snow days” and cancels school. 

P-day: I am glad we are branching out and not spending all our time in the church playing sports. We went bowling on Monday. It was a lot of fun. We played in teams for ice cream. We had played a couple of games before we played for competition so my arm started to get fatigued. I normally start off really good for the first two games of bowling and then drastically decline because my arm gets too tired to hold the bowling ball. I have learned that that is when I need to switch to a lighter ball. By the end of the competition game we were neck and neck with our scores. I was the last one to bowl and all I had to knock down was 4 pins. 4 pins would be nothing but there is a lot riding on you when you are the last person who could make or break this and you aren’t playing your best game because of physical exhaustion. Lo and behold I got a strike!!!! That was the best reaction ever! So fun and our team won ice cream. Later that evening we had a lesson with Patrick and taught the Plan of Salvation. There is still something that we aren’t sure of on what his hold up is. He tells us one thing but I feel deep down there is something else. 

Chapel Tour: We accidentally tracted into members last week for exchanges. We got a referral from them to try by their friend Lynette. She said she was having company over then and we scheduled a time for us to come back. Later she texted us and said she couldn’t meet then either and then rescheduled. We turned our appointment into a chapel tour and a lesson! Her thought process with a lot of things matches a lot of what the Church teaches which was cool to see. We had Sister DeKay come with us which was beneficial. She was suppose to come to church yesterday but texted us saying something came up. Hopefully we can still teach her because she is so prepared at this time for the gospel. 

Nicole: We had a lesson with her this week which went well and we offered to have her receive a blessing. We set up for the bishop and one of her member neighbors to come and give her a blessing. They wanted to get to know her a little bit before but that then took over an hour which it should have been just half that time. It went well though and I am so grateful we are able to teach her. She is so prepared for this Gospel and I can truly see her thirsting after it. It is a true blessing to be an “instrument in the Lord’s hands” to be apart of someone else’s conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Danica: We finally had our first lesson with Danica, the 10 year-old who wants to be baptized. She doesn’t have much religion background so we definitely need to make sure she understands what she is getting herself into. Getting baptized is a commitment. That doesn’t mean you need to know everything there is about the Gospel; just the basics for your salvation. You still need to be aware of the promises you are making to God, though, so you can actively keep your promises. We have children at the age of 8 get baptized because we believe that is an age where you are accountable to make your own decisions. Even attending the children’s baptism a few weeks back made me realize that the kids didn’t know everything as they were still acting in faith. If you don’t know everything, you know enough. There are more promises we make with God later in the temple but that comes later on in life allowing us time to gain more understanding of still just the basics of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Have faith but also have an understanding of what promises you are making with God. 

Facebook: We spent a lot of time talking about different ideas we can do with Facebook now that we have the ability to proselyte online. The ideas are endless and it is cool that we are given the ability to be creative with spreading the Gospel. We drove down this street and saw that someone drew an inappropriate image on the frosty fence. We thought to change the negative image into something that could be positive. It was a day later that we did this and we are sure many people have driven by this fence and had seen what was on it before we changed it. It was cool to be doing something like this; something that would have never crossed my mind prior to serving a mission. I like that I am learning how to spread the gospel online because that is something I can keep doing when I go home. This allows me to be a better member missionary when I am no longer a full-time missionary.

Sent from ALASKA!

Sister Shelley Willden 

President Monson passed away...and it is almost my turn

In the mission we have terminology that equate mission life to real life. We say your first area in the mission is your “birthplace”, your trainer is your “mom”, your trainee is your “daughter”, and so on. So we are born into the mission and we die leaving the mission. Eagle River and Mount Baldy is where I come to “die”. It’s just something funny we, missionaries, do. As most of you know, President Monson, our prophet, passed away this week. It has been a cool teaching moment to explain to people how a prophet is called and how Jesus Christ is still the head of this Church. There is order to our religion and that is because it is the same Church that Jesus Christ established almost 2 centuries earlier, and now has been restored. We continue to see miracles happen in the area and it makes me not want to leave. Here are the highlights:

P-day: We went hiking at Thunderbird Falls again. We went with just the sisters in the area. It was us, the sisters of Colony, Lazy Mountain, and Cottonwood. Wasilla couldn't come. This is my fourth time hiking the trail but this time was the most fun by far. The waterfall was iced over!! The falls were still flooding down water but we were able to walk up to sit on top of it because of all the ice. Later that evening after dinner we walked out and I slid down the stairs because of the frozen rain that left its wonderful gift for us. (Can you hear the sarcasm?) I liked the ice on the hike but not when we have to walk in it for our day to day activities. That fall came with another gift: a ginormous bruise on my backside. At least it only hurt for the first two days and is on in the process of healing. 

Zone Conference and Interviews: We had our zone conference this week. We were told at 9:30pm the night before that Sister Jewel and I are to give a training on the language of prayer. Our zone conference started at 8:30am in the morning. You can see why someone might be a little frustrated, but we did it and President Toone was in the back fist pumping basically saying we nailed our training :). That made me happy! It was Sister Jewel’s 21st birthday that day so she even prayed before we left how thankful she was that the zone was coming out for her birthday celebration and them just calling it “zone conference”!!! :D. Her birthday present was getting a smartphone! 162 missions are getting smartphones this transfer. In just a week we have seen how this tool can help further the work of the Lord. I was told the day before that I would be having my exit interview with President after zone conference as well. An exit interview is a departing missionary interview where we talk with our mission president about our mission and go over some logistical things in preparation for returning home. He began with a prayer and I started tearing up. We talked about all sorts of things and even about school when I go home. It took an hour and he had me give the closing prayer. I have done a good job at not being trunky (mission term where you basically have your bags packed [old term trunk] and are ready to go) but I got emotional during the prayer. It is hard to leave the mission where this has been your life for the last year and a half. Big changes are coming and it is hard to let go. I still have over two weeks left but I am just being reminded of the time coming to an end. It is crazy that at some moments in my mission I am so ready to go home and just want this to all be done and over with but my last transfer on the mission has been the busiest and now I don’t want to leave. 

Service: It snowed a lot on Wednesday of this week so we spent some proselyting time shoveling people’s driveways. We chose to shovel Nicole’s driveway before she wakes up and goes to work. We were just about done when she came out of her house. We don’t do service to receive recognition but it felt great to see her so thankful. We helped with her neighbor’s driveway who was out shoveling and then did a member’s while we were on their street. 

Returned Appointments: In our zone we are having a little competition to see who can give out the most copies of the Book of Mormon and have return[ed] appointments meaning that we don’t just have to receive a return appointment from a potential investigator, but we must actually follow up and have the returned appointment. We are in the lead for the latter. We have had so many lessons this week and it has been awesome. We had two lessons on Wednesday with dinner in between. We brought the Tovars with us to Patrick’s lesson which went great and they were a big help and had our first official lesson with Leah which was amazing. She teared up a bit talking about her relationship with her mom and we equated that to her relationship with her Heavenly Father. Oh she is so elect (meaning she is so prepared for the gospel at this time). We had a lesson with the Hinckleys (which doesn’t count for the competition since these are new member lessons, but I wanted to add it here because it went so well). We had Brother Stewart and his eldest son come as members present and they helped a lot as we read from the BOM teaching about prophets. We helped them understand about calling prophets with the example of how President Nelson is now our acting President of the Church. For exchanges Sister Fa’anunu and I taught this family that the elders tracted into and the mom was so much engaged and with conviction said she would read the BOM!!! The member we brought, her name is Dixie, is preparing to serve a mission and after we left she was like, “that was amazing! Are they always like that?” We didn’t have the heart to tell her no so we replied, “not always”. We were glad her first experience with teaching lessons went well and she now has more excitement to serve a mission. Nicole’s lesson, which also doesn’t count towards the returned appointments because she is a progressing investigator, went well though. We taught the Plan of Salvation and she loved it. Our last lesson was with Scott who is pretty devoted to his faith. We had tracted into him a couple weeks before and were just able to meet with him now. We brought Brother Walser with us and that lesson was amazing. He wrote down so many questions he had about the BOM, mainly scriptures he found online that were different to him. The Spirit was so strong as we were testifying of Joseph Smith and about the BOM. We hope we can still continue to teach him!! 

Sent from ALASKA!

Sister Shelley Willden 

Will you be baptized?...Of Course!

I have less than a month before I come home! I don’t know where all the time goes. It has been getting pretty cold lately so this week I wore double layers. That seemed to help a ton. Here are the highlights:

Last P-day with Sister Johnson: For her last p-day we went to take pictures at the Nature Center in Eagle River but it was very cold outside so we didn’t stay for too long. We did some shopping and later did her funeral. Sister Jewel and I changed the lyrics to White Winter Hymnal to words about Sister Johnson and sang it to her at her funeral. We each then wrote advice to her on pieces of paper. This is just something fun Missionaries do when missionaries are going home. One of the programs we made was accidentally left in the Relief Society room so some of the members happened to see it...oops. Once they understood what it was they were laughing but I can see how some people might actually think a missionary died. Sister Johnson, may she Rest In Peace in paradise of California. 

Bri: Some of the elders tracted into Bri during a zone/district tract Saturday and scheduled an appointment for us to come back to share the #Lighttheworld video with her after district meeting on Wednesday. We came back and she was super nice. We talked to her a little bit about eternal families and she seems interested in learning more and mainly having gospel conversations. She taught us a little about what Catholics believe. Hopefully we can teach her more in the future. 

Baptism: So on Thursday we saw on Facebook one of the members had posted a picture of their twins who were getting baptized on Saturday. We used that as an opportunity to invite Nicole, one of our investigators, to come. She came and it went great! Three kids ended up getting baptized which was cool for her to see and the talks given were directed towards the kids so it was definitely easy to comprehend and spoken very simply. We had a lesson with her right afterwards which we finished teaching the Restoration. When we asked her if she would be baptized, she said “of course”! Later that day we were trying by some of the part-member families after tracting and got in with the family that had moved in not too long away that we miraculously found. After we shared a video with them the mom brought up that her 10 year-old wants to be baptized! So we set up a lesson with them for this Wednesday!! So exciting!!!

5 Hours of Church: I don’t think I’ll ever complain about having 3 hours of church again. Because we are covering two wards we go to two hours of Eagle River Valley and 3 hours of Mount Baldy. After Gospel Principles class (which one of the part-member families stayed for!) this guy asked us to talk with him in the hallway. We just thought it was like a referral or something but he gave us $100. He said he was a missionary once too and knows how tight we are on money. When we asked him his name he said he better not give it. That was super sweet of him to do that! 

As happy as I am to be going home soon it is hard to leave when such wonderful miracles are happening in this area. I love teaching the gospel and seeing people’s desire to change their life  to follow the Savior, Jesus Christ, increase. Being an instrument in the Lord’s hands to further His work is a true blessing. We just get a taste of happiness of what our Heavenly Father feels for His children. 

Sent from ALASKA!

Sister Shelley Willden