This week has been so good. It's amazing everything that happens in the week. I decided to bring my journal and look at each of the highlights for the day this time because I always forget what happened during the week.
This last Tuesday we had a special zone meeting all about using members in our missionary work and about creating lesson plans. It was so perfect. It was definitely something I needed to hear. President Bubert has decided to hold special zone meetings every few weeks until he leaves to train all these new missionaries before President Tew comes in. I am excited because I think it will be so helpful! But it is a little but frustrating that I have a hard time applying all the new principles they are teaching us because there are just so many! I've never been able to work on so many goals at once before, but still I can't even hope to implement them all yet. I guess that's why I still have a year and a half to work on it :)
Tuesday night we had a lesson with Melvin. It went really well, better than any lesson so far. He said that if he recieves an answer he will be baptized!! It was so exciting. Unfortunately he didn't commit to a date, nor does he feel much need to work for an answer. We have another lesson with him on Wednesday, so hopefully we'll be able to make progress there. He came to conference on Saturday. He came to the afternoon session and was a little surprised at all the "business meeting" stuff that went on :) But he agreed with much of what was said. He just said it was too long for him. He's funny. He told a lady the other day that we were his nieces haha. I thought it was cute. He pretends that he gets tired of seeing us, but he really loves us ;)
On Wednesday we were contacting and found a new investigator! His name is Jeff. He goes to cottonwood (man, everyone goes there!) and he said that he believes that families can be together after this life. When we were talking he said he knew that our church had been started by a member of the free mason society and that he was a free mason. Nate (or anyone that knows) you should tell me about them. I don't remember much, but I'm wondering if it will come up tonight. We have a lesson with him tonight. I kept wanting to do Monday night lessons so I could feel like our Mondays were productive missionary work wise, but now that we have one I realized that we don't really have any member to ask to come with us because of FHE. Oh well. I hope it goes well. He didnt' seem too interested, but you never know. We'll be teachign about the Plan of Salvation, so you should pray for us that it will go well.
I learned a super humbling lesson on Wed night. It would take too long to explain the background to the lesson, but here it is: I need to forget about myself and go to work. Oh wait, I think Pres Hinckley said that first... ;) No but really. Before we left the MTC we talked about being someone's missionary. That missionary that shares the gospel with them, the missionary that really changed their life and the missionary they love and stay in touch with. I thought that was so cool and I so wanted to be that missionary. But then on Wednesday night I realized that I have the completely wrong idea about that. It doesn't matter what other people think of me (that lesson was emphasized in conference-wasn't that awesome?), it doesn't matter if I'm ever "that" missionary. It only matters that I do the work the Lord has asked me to do and I do it with my whole heart. I don't need to worry about being the members or less actives or investigators favorite. That's retarded. I just need to do the best I can and realize that conversion is accomplished only through the Spirit, and the only thing I can do is do my best and be worthy of that Spirit. It was kind of a painful lesson to learn. But it was so good for me. I hope I continue to learn it all through my mission so I never get the wrong idea. I've been trying to memorize a scripture every day when I run and one that I'm working on is Alma 38:9-12. I was working on this one this morning: see that ye do not boast in your own wisdom or of your much strength (not that I'm super strong or anything ;)). But it's a good one for me. I need to always remember it.
Thursday we had an awesome experience while contacting that really strengthened my testimony that the Spirit is guiding us. We were contacting-not knocking-but as we walked past a door I just thought we should knock there. We weren't knocking anywhere so I ignored it for a sec and then just decided to do it. So I told my comps and we went and knocked. And no one came to the door. So we rang the doorbell. And no one came. So we just left a card and kept walking. So I thought it was just a crazy thought that wasn't from the spirit. However, just a little but further on we came up to a woman watering her lawn. Right before we got there she was talking to someone else. If we hadn't have stopped to knock on that door we wouldn't have had the awesome opportunity of talking with her. But the timing was perfect. And as we talked with and she at first wasn't at all interested she began to tell us about her beliefs. And we were able to testify about the correctness of so many of her beliefs and give her more. She was really curious about conference and we invited her to watch that. We talked a lot about the BoM and she was super interested in that. And after about an hour conversation we left her with a Book of Mormon. It was really cool.
Mom, I got the package on Friday! Thank you so much! It was great and I love my dress. yes! I love that dress! ;) I haven't been able to make bread yet, but hopefully I'll be able to make it sometime soon. I don't know how all the elders found out that I wanted to make bread but the ones in my district told me yesterday that since there are only 2 more weeks of the transfer I need to hurry and make it and give them some haha.
That night we had a really good lesson with Dan. We felt that we just needed to share with him our testimonies and blessings we had received from the gospel. It was powerful and we really felt the Spirit there. We just challenged him to read the BoM every day, even if it's just one verse, to pray after each time he reads and ask Him specifically if the Book of Mormon is true, and then wait for 5 minutes after he prays and just pay attention to how he feels. He is so stuck on the idea that he has to know everything about the church and about the BoM and that he has to read it completely and then go back through and study it before he can know. I realized that I had never actually done what I was asking him to do. So this week I have been doing the same challenge of praying and then waiting for 5 minutes to just notice what I feel and thoughts that I have. It has been really good for me. You should all try it. It's harder than you would think :)
Saturday was one of the Elders birthdays so we were super fast at getting ready so we had time to go over and fill his car with balloons and leave him a cake we had made the night before. It was so funny.
And then, of course, it was conference. Man, I love conference! We watched most of the sessions at the stake center and then one session (Sun Morning) at a members house with our investigator Dan. I am so grateful for the habit we have always had of taking time to sit and watch conference. I'm amazed at how many people just don't watch it, or how many missionaries said it was their first time watching all the sessions. What a blessing it is to hear from our Prophet! I tried out the challenge to take questions to conference. The first two sessions I didn't seem to get any of the answers I was looking for. However, I spent time re reading my questions, and thinking about them, and then, when President Monson spoke, almost every question I had was answered. Just in his talk. It was amazing. Some answers were not what I was expecting or necessarily wanting, but it was amazing.
I loved the talk on Marriage. That was so powerful to me. So many of the principles talked about there were emphasized to me as ones that I needed to implement with my companions. I am really trying to work on that.
Saturday night we again had such an amazing experience. On Friday night and Saturday morning, as I was praying, I kept having an woman's name come into my head. It was a woman we had met contacting who wasn't at all interested when we came back by. But I kept feeling like we needed to go visit her and just ask if she needed any help. So we went by on Saturday night. She was there, but she didn't even open the door. She just yelled through the door that they were eating dinner. So we left. I thought we were just going to leave to our next scheduled thing, but Sister Jessop reminded me that we always do a 5 point knock whenever we feel prompted to visit someone. So we decided to knock the houses nearby. We had already done it once before when we were looking for this lady before, so we tried a few of the houses we had missed. We were in a pretty nice neighborhood and the first two houses we knocked were not very nice. So we decided to try that last corner house, pretty much the only one we hadn't tried yet. We went over there and it was a super awkward situation and it would have been so easy to not knock (there was a guy that we could hear under a car working and a big dog that was chained right next to the front door, and a weird front door, etc.) But we knocked. And a woman came to the door and said, "oh, you're the LDS, right? You were just featured on NPR. Not the most flattering article. But it was informitive." Anyways, we began a conversation with her and she told us some funny things that she thinks God is a woman because he (she? I dont' even know how to say this) has to multi task. But then she kept saying "You should really take a look at your religion and see if it is teaching the right things, if it is growing with the world" She told us how she had been Catholic and how it was just not compatible with how things were today. And how she had to realize that it wasn't all perfect. So she told us to really examine our religion and then come back in a few years and tell her what we found. Almost as if she expected us to realize that we were wrong. But I just felt so strongly that I needed to bear my testimony to her, and as I did I told her that although I was only 21 and hadn't had many life experiences, but I KNEW that this church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was the true chruch, was God's church here on the earth. I told her that I had received my own answer. She stopped me and asked- "how did you get an answer?" And so I told her my experience with praying about the Book of Mormon, and the long time it took me and the frustration I had and then the peace that I finally felt that confirmed to me that the Book of Mormon was true. And as I told her this she began to cry. And then she asked sister Jessop and Sister Youngberg to share their testimonies and they did. And she was so touched. It was powerful. We gave her a Restoration pamphlet and she said she would read it so she knew more about the Mormons so she could answer people when they had questions. And then we felt like we should pray with her. And we asked her if we could pray for anything specific. And she told us something very specific and she was pretty emotional about it. And we prayed with her. It was a super powerful experience.
It is amazing to me how often we feel promptings from the Spirit. But something I realized is that it isn't that I didn't have these promptings before, I did. I just didn't recognize them. So I didn't always act on them and didn't put much thought to them. Because they are just small. They are just little thoughts that pop into our heads, or a feeling that we get. And as we act on those we realize that they were from the Spirit. Even if we don't always have these obvious experiences.
Anways, sorry this email is so long. I just want to share everything with you! Haha, this is just a tiny piece of the experiences we have on a daily basis. There are also the experiences that make you just want to go home and cry haha, but that's okay, because the other ones are worth it :) And I now have an answer for the next time someone yells at us for not using the bike lane ;)
I wanted to write a lot more, but I'm obviously already making this too long. But here are a few more thoughts-I have pondered again and again about why there are so very many people who fall away from the church. We spend so much time visiting less or non actives. About half our ward members don't come to church. It is crazy! And I keep wondering why. And as I have thought about it is has become so clear to me that it is because they stop doing the little things every day. I have gained such a powerful testimony of what Nephi and Alma (and I'm sure all the other prophets-I just haven't found those scriptures yet) say about small and simple things. It is by small and simple things that great things are brought to pass. It is only through those seemingly small things that we do every day-reading our scriptures, praying, keeping our covenants, attending church every week, partaking of the Sacrament-that our faith becomes unshake and we will never lose our testimony. These things seems so small. It just takes 15 minutes a day, or 3 hours on Sunday, or just making that one small correct decision. But how great is the impact of those. I feel like that was a message touched on a lot this conference.
So my challenge to you this week is to do those things every day. Just make a promise to yourself and to God that you'll read EVERY DAY, no matter how tired or frustrated you are. That you'll pray every day even if it means you remember just as you're falling asleep and have to slip out of bed and mumble a quick prayer. To go to church every week and partake of the Sacrament. It is so simple and yet it is what makes all the difference.
I love you! Thank you so much for your love and support and letters! The more people i meet the more and more I realize how amazingly blessed I am. I'm pretty sure I grew up in the most perfect situation, with the best family.
Mom-I thought of you when Elder--- said the child who sings is a happy child ;)
Have a beautiful week! The gospel is true and it brings so much joy.
Love,
Sister Andelin
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