There are so many people here who's amazingness has strengthened my testimony

Jan 7 2013


     This has been a good week. New year made us kind of nervous even during the daylight, we accomplished a lot even so. We've been seeing more and more of our less actives come to church, its wonderful, and the feeling in the ward has changed. This sunday during relief society Sister Davis (who we have only visited a couple times because she is hard to meet with) bore her testimony of the importance of missionary work because when Sister Waldron and Sister VanderDoes showed up it was an answer to her prayers and she credited the change in her life and the miraculous change in her work schedual that now allows her to go to church on Sunday to the missionaries. It is humbling especially as we know we did so little, it was the Lord opening up a way for her. She later approached us telling us how she and her husband had been taking temple prep classes before things had changed and they had stopped being able to come to church and now that they were coming again they were planning on starting them again. It was so exciting. She looks so happy.
      We are still doing a lot of less active work but at this time we are also getting more investigators. It is still shaky getting appointments with them but it is getting steadier and the Lord is blessing us with more people to teach and has been helping us in our efforts to get members to all our lessons (including RCLAs where having an active member doesn't do anything number wise but it has made a huge difference for our less actives the times we have been able to manage it). We are improving at coordinating our efforts with ward members but it is still a struggle without a ward mission leader. We have been seeking to broaden our pool of members to draw from, doing our best not to burden any one family too much and we identified some active families who are getting 'burnt out' and have been seeking ways we can serve them and help them to be renewed.
      Most of our investigators said they would come to church this week but were unable. Melissa had work, so she and her kids missed, and Alisha was laid up. The good news is we had this awesome miracle with Melissa last night. We had tried to stop by earlier but she was at work, we tried again though to see how they were doing, a daily contact and see if we could make an appointment, and their pipes were blocked up really bad. She had just gotten off of work and everything was backed up only a couple inches from flooding the house and while her landlord had a Snake he couldn't come help until possibly the next day. Oddly someone in our ward had been telling us about their Snake only a while before though we couldn't remember who. After a bit of searching we found someone in our ward who was happy to come over and Snake her pipes. She was so grateful and the member didn't charge a thing, and she got a glimpse of what it means to be part of a ward family and we had an opportunity to bear testimony of service. Our ward is awesome. Another miracle is that we have an appointment to teach Alisha tonight and her whole family too. Its exciting, we may have a couple new investigators by the end of this night.
      As always we are seeking to be strictly obedient, especially in time management things and seeking continually to have the Spirit of the Lord to aid our efforts and be poured out upon all we come in contact with, members and non members alike, for all have need of divine help to overcome and to increase in righteous desire and hope and all good things that they may stand in need of.
I am begining to love my mission more which I am glad of, I have often been grieved that I do not love my mission so much as I should but I am realizing it is something that comes with time as I have seen it grow within me. The Apostles of the Lord did not desire to serve him with all their heart might mind and strength from the first, that is why they too wavered a bit at first, but as they served that desire grew in them. The three Nephites served the Lord a long time before they were asked what they desired most and chose to stay and serve until the end. I have seen these things and my increasing love of my mission and I have been comforted. I love my mission a lot. I am so grateful for this opportunity I have to serve the Lord.


Jan 28 2013


     I am so happy!! I have seen MANY cats so far. Pink paws and noses, and I even saw
kittens this week.
YES I SAW AND GOT TO HOLD KITTENS IT WAS AWESOME!
     This week has been amazing! We had Zone Conference this week. I LOVE
ZONE CONFERENCES! THEY ARE AWESOME! At Zone Conference we gather as
two or three Zones and recieve trainings from our Mission President,
his Councilors, Sister Neider his wife, and the Assistants to the
President (the APs, a missionary companionship chosen to assist him in
working with the missionaries and coordinating things in addition to
their proselyting work). We learned a lot and I feel revitalized and
recommitted to excellence. We have approached all our missionary
efforts with increased faith and as a result we have seen an amazing
improvement in our street contacting and witnessed many miracles
during lessons. We found a new investigator this week through street
contacting. We asked him about his beliefs and he started going on
about spirits and how we were a spirit before this life and after we
die we got to a spirit world and how God wants us to become perfect so
we can live with Him again. It was awesome and when we mentioned that
we believed and taught those same things he was shocked and immediatly
asked if we did baptism in our church because he had never been
baptised but wanted to be. We had a lesson with him bringing one of
our awesome members along and talked with him about the Plan of
Salvation. He is an older gentleman and tends to get off on random
tangents but has deep faith and understanding. He has been figuring
things out on his own and while he has figured out a lot of true
things he also has come to some conculsions that are a bit off. For
example he believes that since we have to be perfect to get to where
God is we have to be 'reincarnated' again and again (always as a
human, he doesn't believe in reincarnation into other forms) so we can
perfect ourselves. We believe this can be overcome as he learns more
about and begins to really understand the Atonement of Jesus Christ
because his belief has stemmed from the recognition of some
fundamental truths, just in absence of understanding the Atonement as
the solution he came up with his own solution to the obstacles between
us and returning to God. Its really exciting.
     Melissa and her family have also been progressing well. We stopped by
early in the week and she had started reading the Bible and read the
account of the Fall and was confused and was starting to really
dislike the Bible as it seemed to blame the Fall all on Eve and that
her choice was the source of all evil. She was a bit frustrated and
had some questions so we promised to explain them and set up our next
lesson with her (it is still hard to set up regular lessons with her
as her work hours are so crazy). We taught the first half of the Plan
of Salvation with Sister Swanson (her daughter's primary teacher)
there to help. It was a wonderful lesson and the two of them really
connected. Sister Swanson was able to explain it in a way that Melissa
really got and as we started talking about the Atonement she made a
quiet comment to herself that indicated she was starting to understand
the reason why we do the things we do. She is starting to understand
why we sacrifice, why it is so important, why it is worth it. We had
been worried because her first times coming to church all the talks
and lessons had focused on Sacrifice and Faith. Now it is starting to
all come together. On Saturday I fasted for her (and a couple other
people) and on Sunday she got very sick and needed to go to emergency
care. I had the strong feeling that what she need was the priesthood
and we ended up explaining the situation to our ward mission leader
who said he would go and see what was going on and figure out what
needed to be done (we were stumped as to who to call and what to do,
we are SO grateful to have a ward mission leader again!). I wondered
why she had gotten so sick so soon after I had fasted but Sister
Waldron pointed out something I had not considered but I believe is
true. She said that it had probably happened to again open up ways for
the ward to serve her (Melissa has no car and needed a ride and
priesthood blessings are always a service), that all these hard things
were happening so that she could see the power of God and gain
strength because she was going to have to make some life changes to
truely accept the Gospel of Christ and the Lord was preparing her to
make those sacrifices. This is truely a marvelous work.
We have also been working a lot with less active members this last
week. We have planned a Ward/Missionary activity for this coming
friday and are doing our best to personally invite not only all our
investigators but as many less actives as we can and also having all
our member visits focus on it and inviting members to invite their
friends (and if they say all their friends are members already we ask
them to invite them anyway to help them feel more wanted). The
response has been amazing. There are many members and non-members
alike who have shown a great desire to come and there is building
excitement. Many members had volunteered to help as well. This ward
suffers a lot of feeling divided and we in part planned this activity
(just a simple movie night with popcorn) to give the ward a simple
activity to build ward unity and from what we have seen so far it
promises to yeild an abundant harvest in both that aspect and reciving
new investigators. It is fantastic.
     I love how much Melissa and her kids love reading the scriptures. They
love the Book of Mormon so much and it speaks to them. There are so
many people here who's amazingness has strengthened my testimony.
I love you a lot mom  Sorry I can't always write a lot.   Alyssa