This week has been AWESOME!! We went to the General Relief Society Broadcast on Saturday and one of our investigators came too!! Her name is Anna I told you about her, she is the one that pays tithing, lives the word of wisdom, etc but doesn't believe in one true church and doesn't want to be baptized. We are still working with her though. Hopefully she felt something at the broadcast. She has been really interested in temples so hopefully the talk on temples by Sister Allred got her thinking about how important temples and ordinances are. The spirit was so strong at the broadcast and everyone gave wonderful, powerful talks. I really like Sister Beck's and President Uchtdorf's, everyone should read them. I liked what Sister Beck said about catching the vision of Relief Society, if everyone could catch that vision it would really help us as missionaries. And this doesn't just apply to Relief Society either, if the whole church could catch the vision of the importance of being examples and helping others it would be awesome. The more I am on a mission the more I understand the covenants we made at baptism and what that means for us as members. It means that we promised the Lord to help those around us and also to keep our standards high so we can be examples. As I understand the promise we make at baptism and how important it is and the BLESSINGS we will receive, it makes me want to try harder to keep my side of the bargain. We had dinner with the Patriarch and his wife (the Larsen's) last night and he was telling us about a blessing he gave to a girl and in it he felt prompted to tell her that charity is knowing how to help people and then doing it. What an interesting way to look at it! President Uchtdorf's talk was about service and being compassionate and how it is part of our divine heritage to serve and to be happy. So I hope we all continue to work on being charitable and being happy (it is our heritage!!!) And read Uchtdorf's talk!!!
The only thing about the broadcast was it made me really homesick. Last year I attended it in person and I was just remembering how awesome it was and that I went with my roommate. And then I was really missing Salt Lake and Utah and college. And then when they were showing the audience I saw a girl from my ward! I didn't know her very well though. But I am really sad that I won't be able to watch it with you, conference really is one of my favorite family times that we have. But everybody needs to eat an extra crepe for me!! I like mine with doubled up crepes, peaches, cinnamon, brown sugar, and lots of whip cream! And don't forget to LISTEN. This is a PROPHET of the Lord we are talking about. How can we profess to believe in prophets and the scriptures and then not listen to the prophet we have that speaks specifically for us! If we will listen to every talk with an open heart and mind, ready to learn, the Spirit will carry it unto our hearts (2 Ne 33:1) But the Spirit can only bring it TO our hearts not INTO our hearts, so do your part and listen with the purpose to learn and then FOLLOW and DO what you learned. DON'T FALL ASLEEP!!!
Then yesterday we had Zone Conference. What a great idea starting the transfer with such a strong, spiritual meeting! I had been getting kind of down and discouraged by the end of last transfer. Now I have new ideas to try out and faith to exercise!! President Thornock gave an excellent talk about faith. Faith is 3 things, first having a hope (something that you want to try out, like to know if the Book of Mormon is true), then putting that on trial (doing something, like reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it, but you have to give it a fair trial just like in court, go about it the right way with real intent) and then you will see the evidence (as you read the Book of Mormon it will answer your questions and as you pray you will feel GOOD). I can't wait to use this model to see how the Lord will do miracles through our faith!
Alanna said I haven't been mentioning food which is strange for me. Sister Hill laughed at that because she said it is so true!! Ok well we have a meal calendar that we pass around at church and the members sign up. We get dinner pretty much 5 times a week and lunch about 2 times. The rest is up to us and it is usually PB&H or pasta. The members always feed us really good and they feed us A LOT! That is where I am getting my weight from that and they give us dessert almost every time. I have eaten some really good stuff that I wish I would have gotten the recipe for. We are trying to make the meals with the members more of a missionary tool than just dinner. The ideal would be that they would invite their non member friends to dinner too, but that doesn't happen very often. Actually in other missions if you don't have a non-member there you can't feed the missionaries. But dinners are good for building relationships with members so we know who we can ask for help in fellowshipping our investigators. And we teach a lesson and it is usually oriented around helping the members be better missionaries and setting goals.
Oh so there were Elders in our ward and then they were gone, and then they were back and then they were gone, and now they are back!! We currently have Elder Richards and Elder Lundin. They seem way awesome. Elder Cloyd that was here just went home on Monday because he has been having back problems, hopefully he will come back soon though.
So remember how I talked about Preach My Gospel. Well the other day we were at the Passic's house (they are an awesome family that feeds us a lot and helps us a lot too) and Brother Passic had just finished reading the whole thing!! And he had marked it up really good. And he said that it really helped him understand how members could better help the missionaries and what missionaries actually do. And he said he wished he had the section about Stake and Ward Leaders when he had been a Bishop. And then he showed us this awesome power point about how much more effective the missionaries were when the Bishopric and ward leaders supported and helped the missionaries. So read Preach My Gospel so you can know what you can do to help the missionaries. I see the members who help us out so much and I hope that is the member I can be after my mission.
Keep being amazing!!! I LOVE you all
Love, Sister Nicole Polatis
PS I will try and write more about our investigators next time I promise and it won't be so preachy but I am just so excited about the things I am learning!!! And THANKYOU for the package Alanna it was AWESOME!
No comments:
Post a Comment