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
No comments:
Post a Comment