Changes!

No, I do not know who my new companion is yet. We have the transfer meeting tomorrow. The way it works is that new missionaries arrive late on Monday night, spend the night at the Mission Home, get orientated on Tuesday Morning, go to the transfer meeting and head out to their area Tuesday night. Departing missionaries head out to the transfer meeting, spend the night at the mission home, and head out on Wednesday. So tomorrow, we drive to Raleigh. You find out on Friday or Saturday night if you are being transferred or training or whatnot. I am a little nervous - so is Sister C. We hope our new living companion is easy to get along with.

We got to have a little Cottage Meeting on Saturday. We went to the B's home (the one with the farm) and invited investigators and a few members. Had a little lesson and then food and fellowshipping. It was really fun. Only one investigator ended up showing up (one of the Elder's investigators) but he brought family. His wife is on the Mercy Ship? Anyway, grandfather is staying with them and he really misses his wife. I believe she is a member. His sons are really cute.

We also taught a great man on Tuesday. We went to lunch at a less active member's home and she was like "well I'll come out with you" when we started talking about needing to find someone to go with us. It was awesome. They were both military and bonded. He was babysitting and his wife was at work. They totally met online and he went out to the Philippines to pick her up. Her family is very religious. He really enjoyed being around them. He accepted baptism! It was a really powerful lesson. I think the reason it was so powerful for me was because I had really been studying up on the Restoration in Preach My Gospel. I was reminded of what a miracle it is that God still talks to us today. Prophets aren't only a thing of the past.

Basically, if you read the Book of Mormon and ask if it is true, believing that God will tell you the answer, then you will know. Actually, the promise is that if you ask if it is *not* true. That book is a miracle. It is another testament of Jesus Christ! Everyone should read it because it will remind us of how merciful God is and how much we are loved, cared for, protected, and guided. I know so many people don't get why bad things happen or refuse to believe in God because if there was a God, then there would be no suffering. God allows some to suffer so he can punish the wicked and those that suffer will be exalted in their righteousness. Yes, it is hard to know that they are suffering. I don't like hearing about the terrible things that happen or that I see, but I know that they are beloved sons and daughters of a Heavenly Father who loves us enough to allow agency. He loves them and knows exactly what they are going through.

I love you!

Laughing through life

Note to self - reading in character from the bible during companion study is probably not a good idea.

We were reading Acts 2:37-41 which says "Then Peter ^asaid unto them, ^bRepent, and be ^cbaptized every one of you in the ^dname of Jesus Christ for the ^eremission of sins, and ye shall receive the ^fgift of the ^gHoly Ghost." I may or may not have started being goofy and shortly thereafter both of us were literally on the floor laughing. I have been praying to find more joy in my studies though, so God answers prayers

So yesterday I had to play the organ for Sacrament meeting. Now, usually, the hymns are more along the lines of a dirge. So I said to myself, I'm going to pick up the pace. People even told me to play tempo when they found out I was playing. I was doing alright, my prelude was OK. I messed up a ton, but whatever. So we get to that opening hymn, and the chorister gets up there and I play the intro at speed, and then we are singing and she is fighting me the whole way. I would get almost a measure ahead of her at some points. I just started laughing, and then Sister G. starts laughing and I'm playing, I can barely see, my palms are sweaty from nervousness and it was quite an experience.

Church only got better because Shirly was there!!!! We have been teaching her for almost 7 weeks now, her daughter is a member and she had been to church once before with her, many months ago. She loved it! The talks were especially good. Bro F. (kind of like Mr. F hahahaha) was assigned 3 Nephi 11 and he just went through and tore it apart. His wife spoke on strengthening our families by strengthening spirituality. It was just way good. And our Relief Society lesson was on prayer.

I have somewhat to say concerning prayer. Yes, we use the language of scripture when we pray - with the thees, thines, thous, thys, etc. But that in no way means that you cannot, in your most personal prayers or moments, break down any barriers and speak to our Heavenly Father however you feel comfortable. We were with one of the members that I am very close with and her heart was broken because her Visiting Teaching companion mentioned (in a way that was not meant to offend, but to teach) that she might need to be a little more formal in her prayers. She will refer to Heavenly Father as "daddy," and you know what, she needs that! She has been brought up from a horrible place and she needs to know that she is much closer to her Heavenly Father. She shows the utmost respect for him when she says that. I've noticed that they teach that whole "daughter of a king" thing much more in Young Women than in Relief Society. Yes, he is a King, and we must honor, respect, and revere Him. But he is also our Father, and that means that he understands us personally. Someone in our ward said that we need to be vulnerable in our prayers, to lay it all out in front of him. I like that idea.

"As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are his children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part (Matt. 7:7–11)" (Bible Dictionary).

Now, I step off my soapbox. Sometimes, I wish I had an actual soapbox to preach from...

Also, these are my scriptures of the last few weeks. President read them with me and taught me to ask questions and then to follow all the promptings of the Holy Spirit. As we do this, as we ask and follow, we become "as a child" and "as a saint"

"Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, ^bfeast upon the ^cwords of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will ^dtell you all things what ye should do. Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ^aask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark. For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will ^ashow unto you all things what ye should do." (2 Nephi 32:41)

"For the ^anatural ^bman is an ^cenemy to God, and has been from the ^dfall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he ^eyields to the enticings of the Holy ^fSpirit, and ^gputteth off the ^hnatural man and becometh a ⁱsaint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a ^jchild, ^ksubmissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father". (Mosiah 3:19)

Thank you for the package! I love those apple rings and the crackers and the nuts. I share sometimes. I haven't gotten the AZ pictures as yet, but probably sometime this week. We have interviews with President on Thursday and I am so excited! I learn so much from those interviews. We got a new district leader and he is really pushing us to become better missionaries and to build our testimonies. He challenged us to pray for all the missionaries in our district by name and I can really feel the power of that. Prayer is amazing!!!

"I love being a missionary."

Editor's Note: The videos embedded in this post were added by me. :)

Every morning and multiple times throughout the day, this is what my companion says to me: "I love being a missionary." She is going home in about 10 weeks and I will miss her terribly. We had such a great bonding experience last night as we were teaching and on the drive home. I know that the Lord has put us together for a reason and put us in this area for a reason. I have only known this Sister for two weeks, but I have learned so much from her and just love her. Because she is so amazing, I haven't had any major breakdowns. I received a letter from my MTC companion and she mentioned the trouble she was having getting used to this whole thing. While I love and miss you all and think about you multiple times every day, I know that the work I am doing is so important and I know that you love me and will still be there when I return.

Now about that lesson last night. We have been teaching the father of one of the recent convert. He is probably in his 60s and loves his son, daughter-in-law and grandkids (we teach at their house and he lives right next door). But, he has had a lot of troubles in the past - I'm talking prison, drugs, alcohol, abuse, etc. He cannot believe that God is loving or that he is worth anything and therefore choses not to fully accept the atonement in his life. The first time we taught, Sister G. bore her powerful testimony about her experience coming to know the Gospel is true and last night I had that same opportunity. It was not me speaking, but the Lord telling me what to say through the Holy Ghost. I shared some things that I really hate to bring up but I knew that he needed to hear this particular story. He needed to hear how I came to know that I was worth something to God. We even got him to pray!!!! Before, he would only pray by himself, alone, but with some encouragement and a reminder that he is the patriarch of that family and that his son and grandkids want to hear him pray, we got him to lead us in prayer. After our lesson, he was so excited. He wanted to take us out to dinner when he gets paid on Friday. Luckily, his daughter-in-law is in charge of our meal calendar and she scheduled the whole family for a dinner at Golden Corral on Saturday.

We also had the opportunity to receive a taste of our own medicne this week. We contacted this older couple and they invited us back. The second lesson basically ended up being the same argument in circles for an hour and a half and ended with his praying for us to be converted from our ways and turn back to God and the bible, "the infallable word of God." It was so frusterating! He kept insisting that we don't know the bible even though we totally proved that we do and he was so sure that the seventh day is a Saturday, so that's the Sabbath.  We kept having to calm each other down and I had to remind myself multiple times to not use logic, but to listen to the spirit. We ended up just leaving our number and praying that they actually do read and pray and come to understand what the gift we were trying to give him is.

We contact a lot, but I kind of enjoy it. We get to walk around town and meet people and sometimes they are really prepared for us. We met a woman who said that she was just so glad we came to her house and that she was looking for a way to grow closer to God. And the promise of the Book of Mormon is that a man can draw closer to God by abiding it's precepts than by any other book - or something like that. Sister G. decided I was ready to go on splits so I had the opportunity to teach this woman again with a woman from our ward (who is soooo a rockstar. Marine, masters in diplomacy, three young boys, and a strong testimony).

I love this work, I love this place. I'm not a fan of the thin layer of yellow dust (pollen) that covers everything but luckily I am blessed that I don't have allergies too bad.

Last MTC email before NORTH CAROLINA!

From Laura, with special mention of Kelli and the Michaels...

First of all, thank you Michaels for the wonderful cookies! I can't wait to share them with my District/class tonight! They are going to go crazy!!!! And a huge thank you to everyone sending me mail and Dear Elders - it is so nice to hear about anything and everything from back home. Also, thanks for sending me my tea and chocolate chips - they were gone so fast! Everyone loved it :)

The most amazing thing happened last night. Every Tuesday evening, we have a devotional with all 2,000 missionaries and someone comes and talks to us. Every once in a while, one of the Apostles comes and last night was one of those nights. Usually, about 15 minutes before it starts, we sing a few hymns together, which is usually my favorite part. We were on our last hymn and suddenly everyone starts to stand up. Elder Holland had walked into the room. When that happened, we all forgot to sing for a few measures, then remembered that we were singing and sang so loudly and beautifully for the rest of the hymn. It was like we had to prove that we could sing. I started laughing.



Pic by Ashley because, why not?

There were a few main points from his talk that I want to share. First, he basically said that we are not allowed to come home and go back to who we were. If we are expecting those we teach to change and come unto Christ, then we have to do the same thing in our lives and how dare we think that our actions won't affect them. A lot is expected of the missionaries. We don't have a symbol of our church (like the cross) but if we did, it would be a picture of two missionaries. Missionaries are referenced in sitcoms and books and people know who we are and so we have to live up to those expectations. One of the things that he said - and this is not the first time I've heard this at the MTC, but probably only the second - is that we are the Lord's investigators. Just as we are teaching others, he is teaching us. If there is one person we convert on our missions, it should be ourselves. Then Elder Holland likened us to the Apostles. We are doing the same thing that they do in building the Kingdom of God on earth only without the same authority and Priesthood keys that they have. While we are missionaries, we are apostles - little 'a.'  Then came the amazing part. He read the first few chapters of the book of Mormon with us. It was like being in the best English class and Sunday School class combined. He pointed out all kinds of things. In that first chapter we see that prophets exist, they pray, have spiritual manifestations, dreams, get records, have spiritual promptings, call people unto repentance, receive revelations. Not only that, but anyone has access to that kind of power if they want it. Nephi didn't just take is father's word for it, he prayed about what his father, the prophet saw, and Nephi saw it too. Elder Holland called us out on reading the Book of Mormon. It is through reading scripture that we can gain the holy ghost to be with us always. One more note on this devotional, he told us that we need to teach "after the manner of the working of the Spirit" (Moroni 6:9) rather than just with or by the Spirit. We teach simply, directly, with the spirit, individualized lessons, persuasive, provocative (call to action), and cleanly (worthy of the spirit). Just something interesting to ponder on. Teaching like the Spirit, not just with the Spirit.

On Monday I had a bit of an adventure off the MTC campus. My companion, Sister W., was supposed to have a doctor's apt. And through many miscommunications (not on our part, but ont he MTC staff's part) she did not make it, but was able to reschedule (miraculously) for the next day. So we didn't get to leave like we expected, but that's OK, because after dinner, we had to go to Instacare (the same one that Ashley had to go to when she snapped her ankle moving me in). She was having her cereal course (I've taught my district well) and started coughing. We didn't think much of it until about 20 minutes later when she still was coughing and ended up barfing. We went to the front desk since the medical clinic was closed, they called the doctor, he said to just calm her down, it wouldn't get any worse, but if it did to call him back. She kept coughing and crying and throwing up and it was not pretty. Eventually they just sent us to Instacare. She vomited one last time in the waiting room and then seemed to calm down a bit. They said that it might have been an allergic reaction, but she wasn't eating anything that she hasn't had at every meal at the MTC. It was weird to be outside - we don't leave except to go to the Temple which is just across the street.

I have little patience in general, but especially with people who go over their allotted time and then get mad at us when we are late for our next meeting/class or don't like it when we have to get up to use the restroom because we didn't get a break. It's part of public speaking - you need to know how to end on time.

We leave for NC on Monday. Our flight isn't until 7, but we have to be ready to go, in the bus at 4am...wooohoooo (sarcastic). We have an hour layover in Georgia. We have been getting a few letters from some of the Sisters in NC. When we arrive, there will be 14 sisters in 7 areas. It was so wonderful to get little notes from them. Some send pictures. They gave us advice and words of encouragement and excitment. I can't wait to meet and work with them.

I had a CD made of my pictures, I'll be sending that home ASAP.

Um, I think that's all for now. Love you!!!

PS Kelli, I have been getting your Dear Elders - I only have your Tarzana address, so my letters back are going there. My District enjoyed your jokes. Also, I wore your hat and everyone loved it.