Monday, March 17, 2014

Monday, March 17, 2014

Dear people,

Considering we were in meetings for 43.5 hours this week [we literally added them up] there is still lots to report! :)

:) Yesterday Sister May and I were lying in bed talking about all the blessings that we saw this week and this is the list we came up with- and all the things that we did :)

Knee healed--

          So I was hurt last Monday playing soccer. An elder and I kicked at the same time and hit each other pretty hard and it tweaked my knee. But 2 days later I was fine. Tender mercies!

Dan bore testimony at FHE, Dan and Newt at church, Lesson and BAP DATE--

          Our new investigator Dan, and his fiancé came to FHE and bore a SOLID testimony about the gospel and how he knows that it’s true.  People thought he was a member already. :) He also came to church 2 weeks in a row and he wants to be baptized so badly!  We had a lesson with him yesterday (Sunday) and he just said he is ready.  Newt is a member that was baptized a few years ago.  She has quite the back story but really is so excited to be able to be married in the temple.  So they will be married in June and then sealed next year :) We are going to be putting on a baptism on the 30th and a wedding in June! Stoked!

 Isabelle story changes lives!

          Sister May is a convert of 2 years and on the way to FHE we were talking about how devastated she is that there isn't a picture of her baptism and how she had been praying for help to overcome the sadness...When we got to FHE, a member of the branch, a RM of 3 months, was in charge of the lesson portion and he read a story from The Friend, called "Where is Isabelle." Basically it talks about how this 8 year old girl just got baptized, and her mom wanted a picture with the whole family and when they all got gathered around they couldn’t find her. When they found her they found her giving her teacher in school a Book of Mormon in the parking lot of the church. Isabelle made it clear that it was more important to be a missionary then to have a picture. It really was an answer to Sister May's little prayer :)

Zach brings muffins

          The elders’ quorum president brought us muffins to FHE. Self-explanatory. It was just a miracle.

Zone 10, 09, 08, 07 conferences

          We had zone conferences this week.  Let me tell you.  It was just spectacular.  There were leaders meetings before each conference where we discussed goals and so on, and we are all just PUMPED!  There is just so much good going on in the mission!  We brought brownies to the meetings.  Then in the conferences we were asked to do a workshop on "how to be a successful missionary." I must say- Sister May and I teach together so well.  We are very balanced and go off each other well.  In PMG there is a section called "how to be a successful missionary" and talks about how it’s not all about numbers. There is a large press for numbers in our mission right now to be accountable, so president wanted everyone to know that our success is not based on only numbers.  In our workshop we had two elders get up and put as many marshmallows in their mouth, each marshmallow representing a burden or thing that makes us not feel successful.  We had the Assistants to the President almost throw up- it was pretty funny :) ha-ha then we talked about how we sometimes have "too much on our plate" and we talked about how we have been given recourses to help us.  And we talked about the "adjusting to missionary life pamphlet/booklet.  It went really well.  By the time the 4th zone conference came around it was good enough.  President stressed the importance of being our "brother’s keeper" and helping others to be obedient, he stressed how staying by our companions is how we are going to keep the adversary from hindering the work of salvation. The APs talked about the importance of weekly planning and how to plan effectively and the other AP talked about the importance of looking to the future with an eye of faith. It was very insightful. We had the BEST food ever...

It was so fun to go back to Lynbrook and see the chapel there. The church is growing so much there that they are taking the Lynbrook chapel and expanding it and remodeling it! soooo stoked.  I just reminisced for the whole time!

Random side note... President reminds me a lot of Mr.  Combs, I guess good leaders do a lot of the same things :)

Lesson with Mike and his friend James

          This week we had a lesson with our recent convert Mike and he brought a nonmember friend. He is 32 so the elders will continue to teach him. It was a nice lesson. :)

Mike gets his temple recommend!

          Mike is going to the temple to do baptisms for the dead this week hopefully on Wednesday!! :) He is really excited.  He is really forever changed, and making the steps that he needs to without much prompting from missionaries.  He asked if he could do family history so that he could take his parents’ names to the temple. :) That was special. 

Elders saved us from our dead car

          Elder Jolley and Elder Hernandez saved us from our dead car this week.  It was raining and we were at the car wash getting our car ready for "inspections" on our car and after we got the car vacuumed we got back in the car and found that the car was dead.  We called the elders and they jumped our car (we had to drive under the car wash to jump it so that the rain wouldn't hurt anything) then when the jumping didn’t work we walked to the car across the street, and got it towed that night. That night we got lost on the way home and ended up in Bethpage State Park,.  I was laughing SOOOOO hard. It was so funny.  We got a lot of rides as well all week- we just got the car back today.  It ended up being just a dead car battery but because it has to be authorized by the mission office and just barely got authorized, so we got it back.

Linda brought us snacks 

          We hadn’t eaten for hours after the zone conference and a member of our ward brought us a snack without us asking. It was heavenly...

Institute provided by Owens

          Our senior couple does institute each week- and it was so nice.  I have to admit, I was so distracted with all the things that we had to doI struggled to pay attention. Haha!

We updated less active list

          We wanted to get that updated. The miracle there is that the Owens let us use their computer all the time.  It really is so helpful because we don’t have to make sure we are working against a clock or anything at the library.

Awesome zone service at bishop store house

          As a zone we went to the church to do the bishops store house. It made me really think about the blessings we have. The church is great to set it up so that everyone has the necessities they need. Putting together the food orders was a great experience.

Got to have a revelatory meeting with Joe!

          Joe is our Branch mission leader that is awesome! He is a RM who served in LA on his mission. We talked about getting people callings in the ward and about some of the goals that we are going to set next quarter.

Made an awesome Prezi presentation.

Free drinks from security

          We were doing a visit at a hotel [They have this weird student housing thing with the Marriott] and the security loved us so much and the person that we were visiting, he gave us free drinks! Cranberry juice for the win! :) It was cool!

Miracle cookies!

          We were asked to bring a dessert to "munch and mingle." I personally like "linger longer" better ;) just kidding, but we didn’t have time to buy anything so we sifted through the house and found cookies from a box and we had all the things that we needed to make them. :) What a blessing.

Relief society lesson was amazing!

          We were asked to teach RS on the sacrament from the Joseph Fielding Smith manual and it went really well. The spirit was there. We didn’t have time to do more than read it before we presented and the lesson was great!

Branch correlation was good!

          The branch is getting on board with some of the goals we are setting, we are being able to work together with the missionaries and members more! :)

New member to church!!

          There is a new member at church! Her name is Valerie! Just a gem! She gave such great answers at church! Crazy!

Visitor at church!!

          You won’t believe this, Heather Foutz [same age as Camille Wight] was in our YSA branch today!  She is from the 20th ward/Goddard ward in Boise!  She went to Capitol and was choir president with Kent Carollo! :) She was telling me how she lost a ton of weight.  I actually remember her, she doesn’t remember me-but let’s be real I am much younger than her. It was fun to talk about people from home we were both so excited :) She is singing opera in Manhattan and is dating a person from our branch and met at BYU.

Next week starts the tons of exchanges, though it is a lot of work mentally I am looking forward to getting to know the sisters. :)

The 5-5-5. This is our yearly goal.  Last year as a mission we had 325 baptisms, 4000 attend sacrament meeting weekly on average, and 400 less active or recent convert temple trips. So the area seventy, mission presidency, and stake presidents set the goal through inspiration to: 500 baptisms, 5000 attendance at church and 500 less active or recent convert temple trips. So we are breaking that down by the quarters, and working with our units to set goals. This first quarter is almost over and we crushed our goals with 1 (going to be 2) baptisms, an increase of 12, at church, and 2 (going to be 3) temple trips! Our goals were 1-10-1! :) What a blessing. We are working to set new goals for the quarter, and working with our unit leaders. The big push is to help the units see that when we unite we will be blessed. President has made it clear that anything we do "needs to be done right" so we are making a really professional Prezi power point and going to share that with the branch council. That will be finished by next week. We are presenting it to President Nulty on Wednesday.  We have talked about giving our template for other missionaries to use since it has taken us so long it will help other people be more time effective.  I might just send it home for you to see. It looks so great!

Today we got in a small car accident. Super frustrating. Everyone was safe and nothing more than car scratches. We don’t know what the consequences are from the mission stand point, but I don’t think anything too serious.

Sister JaLynn Freeze :)