April 1st, 2013

Dearest Family,

 

How I've missed you this week! It has been a crazy week full of all sorts of emotions. I can't believe how long time seems to be. So much happens in a week that it totally doesn't seem like a week. More like a month. And I don't even know what to begin with.

 

Mom, I'll tell you a little bit about my companions. I keep forgetting to bring my camera, but one of these days I'll send a picture...

 

Sister Jessop is from American Samoa but she grew up in Ocean Side and only moved back to Samoa when she was 21, so it's funny that she got called back to Cali. I think she's 26. She is the youngest of 3. She is great. We are totally different and it has been so good for me to get to know her and learn to love her. She is my companion that has really bad headaches. I can't even imagine being able to work as a missionary with chronic tension headaches. It's awful. I admire her diligence so much. We're going back to the Dr. this next week because the prescription they gave her last time isn't helping at all. So pray that they will find something to help her. She is super good at talking to people and relating with them. She has been out for 5 months and is now training two of us.

 

Sister Youngberg is from all over. I don't even know where all she has lived but she said she has moved 15 times. Crazy. Her family is now in Idaho Falls I believe. She went to BYU I for 2 years before her mission. She is the youngest of 6. She is super talkative and loves to share stories about her family. She has such a positive attitude and I def am learning to love her :) Like I said, I can't beleive it's been just over a week since we swapped. 

 

This week we had a "tune up" for all the new missionaries. There are so many of us! It was awesome. I felt so much more motivated. President Bubert and the AP's spoke to us. The AP's are in our ward. They are awesome missionaries. They totally make me feel inadequate, but I'm getting over it ;) We have dinner with them every night at members homes and meetings with them on Sat and Sunday with ward members. So we're with them a lot. They are powerful teachers. At tune up they demonstrated a prayer contact which was awesome because we have been working on those. After tune up we were trying to visit less actives and contact and it was a discouraging day. I was frustrated because we had to go in early and we hadn't done many contacts (In our mission we are supposed to contact at least 10 people a day. You would think that would be easy, but we struggle. We're working on it especially this week. I guess Elder Ballard came to the mission not too long ago and promised that if we spoke to 10 people every day about the church we would have more people to teach and baptize). Anyways, we walked around contacting for few minutes before we went back to our apt. And everyone was not at all interested. We were walking through the ally behind our apt and we were just getting to our driveway but we saw a guy ahead of us. So sis Jessop said "should we go talk to him?" and I was like "yeah." So we kept walking and when we got close to him we realized he had his headphones in. I hate headphones these days. So Sister Jesson and sis Youngberg walked by, and I walked by, and then I just turned around and blurted out something. And he came over and talked to us. And we did almost the exact prayer contact the AP's had demonstrated that day. And he prayed with us. And he gave us his info and it was so awesome. The next day we were able to set up an apt with him. But it was just a testimony builder to me that the Spirit does lead us. It would have been so easy for sis Jessop to not keep walking past our apt, or for us to ignore him because he had his headphones in and usually people don't respond when they have headphones it. But we didn't and it turned out super well.

 

We had a really good lesson with him on Thursday. His name is Matt and he has zero religious background. But we def felt good about it and he seemed super open and excited and interested. So we invited him to church and set up a lesson with him on Sunday. We texted him Friday and Saturday and he said he would come to church and said he was reading the BoM. And it was awesome. Unfortunately we found out that he lives in the Elders area so we knew we had to pass him off to them, but we were going to teach that other lesson on Sunday. However, he ended up not coming to church, and not answering his phone (he told us Sat night to call him to wake him up) and not texting back about the lesson and not showing up. It was so disappointing. We haven't been able to get a hold of him and I can't believe how frustrating it is. We're still praying that he'll call/text us back or we'll run into him again.

We had a lesson with Dan on Friday night. And it did not go as planned. I had a really rough night that night. We had contacted so many people during the day (we rode our bikes-hooray!) and lots of them were so rude. However, we had some cool experiences while riding. We were looking for a referral and we were riding all around and we passed some guys fixing a sprinkler system. And we rode passed them and then I felt like we should turn around and go back and talk to them. So we did. And one of them seemed super interested. Unfortunately he didn't live in our mission, but he said he would be moving soon so he gave us his number and he took a BoM and said he would read it. So that was awesome. And then Sister Jessop had a similar experience when we rode passed a lady and asked her if she wanted a card and she said no. But a few minutes later Sis Jessop stopped and felt like we should give her a Plan of Salvation Pamphlet. So we turned around and gave her one. Hopefully she will read it. So many of the people we talk to we won't ever hear from again, but hopefully the things we give them will affect their life and they will find the church. They need it so desperately. Anyways...Friday night our lesson was not good. I don't know what went wrong, I was really trying to follow the spirit and ask inspired questions and teach based on those. But there was another non member in the lesson (he was a former investigator-both of these people, Dan and Joe are caretakers for a member in our ward so we always teach them at the members house) and he was like-"holy cow it was intense! I felt like I needed to pray for peace." And I felt awful. I felt like a failure as a missionary. It was so frustrating! And we went home and I cried for the first time since being out here. I was so frustrated because I was trying my best and something obviously was wrong. I think we had lost the spirit earlier for something stupid that we shouldn't have done at a members house and everything went down hill from there.

 

But I learned so many lessons from it. I learned that I have to ask for forgiveness and forgive myself and move on so it doesn't affect the rest of the day or the next day and doesn't decrease my ability as a missionary. I learned that I can't rely on the praise or good opinion of other people, only that I need to turn to my Heavenly Father and do everything I can so He will be happy with me. Obviously that is something that takes a life time to learn. It was a very humbling experience. I hope that I will never make that mistake again in the exact way. I also learned how quickly the Spirit can leave when you even break the smallest of rules and it doesn't even seem harmful. That is something I think we really need to learn as a companionship. The Spirit is so vital to missionary work.

On Saturday we were able to go and help out at the combined military base doing easter baskets for military children. It was really cool. This is the funniest thing that has happened this week: One of the ladies we were working with was standing next to me and I noticed her looking at my name tag with a puzzeled expression. I few minutes later she said, "So what was your name?" And I said, "I'm sister Andelin" and she sat there for a minute, looking super confused and then said, "So are you a nun?" And I could hardly keep from laughing. But I said no and explained to her that I was a missionary. It was so funny.

 

Yesterday we had dinner with the Bakkers, a member family in our ward. They were super nice. They planned an easter egg hunt just for the 6 missionaries and it was hilarious. I haven't done an easter egg hunt in years :) And then they had little baskets, one for the elders and one for the sisters. It was great.

 

We also contacted into a super nice man named Harry. He goes to Little Cottonwood Church (you should look it up on googlemaps. It is HUGE!) and he was really nice and we talked to him for about 10 minutes. He said he thought what we were doing was great, but he already had his faith. So he said he didn't want to hear a message or take a card. But we talked for a while longer and he said how he didn't agree with the fact that blacks couldn't join our church for so long and we didn't even respond to that because I hate talking about that. But I kept feeling like I should give him a Book of Mormon. So I finally did. And we had just been talking about the Spirit, and how he prays every time he reads the bible that the Spirit will testify to him. So I told him that I felt like I needed to give it to him. And he said, if you feel like you need to give it to me I'll take it. And you know what? I'll read it front to back and I'll pray that the Spirit will tell me if it's true, just like the Bible. And then we left. It was awesome. If he does that he will so be converted. No one can read the BoM and really pray about it and not get an answer. So I hope he will do what he said he would.

 

Okay, I need to get off. Things are going so well. I am so happy! This is where I'm supposed to be. I am learning lessons here that I need to learn and I don't know if I could learn them any other way.

 

I love you! Thank you so much for your support and love! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. Aren't you excited for Conference? I've never been so excited for it in my life :) Watch it with questions.

Have a wonderful week!

 

Love,

Sister Andelin