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
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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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