Tuesday, April 29, 2014

THE WEEKS ARE GOING BY FAST


April 14, 2014

My Dearest Family,
And here we are again. Another week has come and gone. Its crazy how fast everything goes. I guess that's what happens.
Monday night we got an interesting call from some Sisters in our zone. Apparently, Heidi, a student at USC, is doing a paper for her religion class on Mormon Missionaries. She asked President Weidman if she could go out and shadow some missionaries to learn more about what they do each day. Two of the coolest people I know, Sister Foster and Sister Stephens, were asked to have Heidi come out with them. Well, because of a meeting that one of them had to be at, they asked if we could go on exchanges with them for a few hours. So I ended up working with Sister Foster and Heidi for a few hours. 1) It was a ton of fun. 2) I kind of realized yet again what a peculiar life I live. It was so cool to have an outsider’s opinion on basically everything. She asked us why we did things in our daily schedule and why we had even chosen to be a missionary for a year and half. 

So in thinking about it I came to these conclusions: Missionary life is not glamorous nor is it easy. But it’s totally worth it. I'm the lucky one. I get to see the Atonement of Jesus Christ in action. I get to live and breathe the Gospel each and every day. And I get to tell people the good news... that the gospel of Jesus Christ is once again on the earth today.

I was so grateful with my time with Heidi. She made me realize what a privilege it is to be a missionary yet again. 

Wednesday Sister Rackleff was sick. She's such a good person and wanted to go out and work. I on the other hand after hearing her coughing, was like, "No. No one is going to want to talk to us." So we stayed inside and did some paperwork and weekly planned. 

Thursday we met with Isis and she dropped us. I was heart broken. She is such an amazing person and such a special daughter of God, but isn't ready to make the decision to be baptized. I'm proud of her for how far she has come and hope to be friends with her for... basically all eternity. 

Friday we had the lesson of all lessons. We met with Laura. She's a friend of our ward mission leader and the one that wants to get baptized on Saturday. (I can't remember if I told you all about her last week.) But she has been coming to church for months, just didn't want to meet with missionaries and just wanted to learn it on her own. Well, because she has now decided she wants to be baptized, we had to teach her everything. We had one day to do it. I studied for that lesson like I was studying for a final exam. We covered everything, “The Restoration” all the way to “Obeying and Honoring the Law”. It was a really cool lesson and Laura is great. My only regret....that we weren't able to meet with her more because she is SO COOL. 

Friday we also went on exchanges. I went into a Spanish area for 24 hours! SO MUCH FUN! I absolutely love serving in the YSA, but at the same time I do love the time I get in the Spanish Family wards. We were able to teach a few recent converts (this particular Spanish area is BOOMING with interested people and baptisms) and an investigator. I spent the night in the area and the next morning went with my companion to teach an LA English class. We had one student in our advanced/intermediate class who is from the Ukraine and trying to learn English. Because of a lack of ink, we didn't have lesson plans. So we just ended up talking about the church and watching Mormon Messages and Conference talks on his laptop. It was fun. 

That afternoon we switched back. I got Sister Rackleff back who I had missed dearly and met our mini missionary, who Sister R had picked up the night before. We were privileged to have Sister Emma Goddard with us for the weekend. She brought So many miracles. While I had been in the Spanish ward, they taught one of our new investigators named George, and Sister Goddard invited him to be baptized!! He said he needed an answer from God first. But hey... I was impressed. That night we met George at the church and gave him a church tour. He really seemed to like it. And then we went to a Luau! It was a ward activity that was happening right next to the church building. We got Hawaiian food, introduced George to a ton of people, and then watched some professional Polynesian dancers. Huge success!

Last night, we had one of the coolest lessons I've ever been apart of. Let me give you the background details.... So the LA 1st YSA ward and the UCLA ward use to be covered by the same set of missionaries. Therefore, they had one phone with everyone's contact. When I was transferred here back in November each ward got its own set of sister missionaries and we got a new phone. A week ago, the UCLA sisters mentioned they had a bunch of numbers in their phone of potential investigators that lived in our area. They had tried calling some and suggested we call a few back. We called this guy named Eddie. I talked with him on the phone and he told me that he was into Scientology, but was willing to meet. We set a time for Sunday. (In all honesty, I had no idea if this guy would actually come through and meet with us on Sunday.) But we went ahead and planned for it anyway. Sunday morning roles around and we are trying to plan for his lesson and come to a realization…we have absolutely no idea what Scientologists believe. 

I knew that one of our members had a Scientologist roommate who she had talked to before about the church. This was our texting conversation:

YSA Missionaries: Hey do you know what people believe in Scientology? We have a lesson tonight with a guy who is a Scientologist and don't know.

Kristen: Hahaha is it Eddie!

We were like... what?!?! Kristen moved into the ward at the end of January. What are the chances that she would move into the same house as Eddie a former potential? The Lord literally prepares people by putting others in our path. 

Well anyways, we had a lesson with Eddie and Kristen last night. There was a really strong Spirit at the lesson and it was way cool to talk with Eddie and see how the Lord has been directing his life. He has met a ton of Mormons in his life. Before I could stop myself, I was like... Do you think that's a sign?!? haha

But he was super great! He accepted a Book of Mormon and promised to read it every night. I'm excited to meet with him again.

Its super cool to see how the Lord's hand is in everything. Someone is always watching over us and guiding us back to our Father in Heaven. Our Heavenly Father loves us. If you haven't already, I encourage you to go and watch Earthly Father, Heavenly Father on the Mormon message channel. Its one of my favorites and one I love to share with people. Father loves us. 

This church is true!
Love you all!!
Sister Mik Pillar 
Sister Shute... one of my favorite Sisters and our mini ... Sister Goddard.
Sister Shute served in Sister Goddard's ward a few months ago.
Picture from the luau... uhh i don't know a lot of those people. but George is the African American guy in the back, Dan Patten is next to him, and then Landon.

Right before we had to say goodbye to Sister Goddard. I'm going to miss her. We told her that we will let her know when George gets baptized! 

Us and Rique Carol.  She was the Relief Society President and I just LOVED her.  She was such a huge help to us.  She is moving to NY for a job, so I'm happy for her, but devastated that she is leaving.  She is literally one of the coolest people ever.  We will miss her! 



Okay so there was a movie being filmed literally a block away from us. Sister Olson took us on a tour of it. Basically we just drove by with her.  Pictures below... 





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