Good Morning Everyone!
Now don't get too trunky or too excited, but I found out the day that we will be reunited! It will be 18th March 2015!! So that means that in exactly six weeks time, I will be coming home in a YEAR! The countdown begins :) haha! I still feel really new, I can't only have a year left ;)
It's been a fairly slow week at the VC. It is January/February after all! But there have been many highlights. One of them is how because my companion speaks French and Spanish we can do the French and Spanish mormon.org chats that come through. It's so funny because I tell her what I want to say and she tells me how to write it and the person who is talking to us from South America has no idea that I don't speak a word of Spanish other than “Can I have the bill please?" haha. And the missionary department in SLC occasionally look at our chats (they’re all recorded to make sure that we are keeping the rules and fulfilling our purpose and not just mindlessly IMing with people) and show our VC directors the Watkins, so if the Watkins see that they'll think I'm fluent at Spanish when I'm really really not. However, I did impress Sister Garcia and the other French sisters with my French!! They were genuinely impressed, not just politely impressed haha. I didn't need much of Sister Garcia's help to write and read the French at all, I just need help listening to the French! I have no idea what they're saying when I hear it but when I see it I can do it. She is helping me read the French Book of Mormon and I'm helping her read the English Book of Mormon. I think it's good that I'm trying to learn French from her because it stops her from feeling like she is always the one being taught. It works well! Be ready to have a fluent French daughter when I come home! I'm definitely going to study French or a different language when I get home, I need to be more cultured and have more languages under my belt. Here at the VC there are so many languages being spoken. Because of my English flag everyone thinks I'm Swedish or Swiss and every once in a while I want to pretend I am because people seem disappointed when I'm just English and can only speak English. I could definitely talk gibberish and claim that it's Swiss and no one would know haha. So many people tell their children "Look at that sister missionary! She's from Sweden!" and I'm like "Mate, does it sound like English is my second language? WE CREATED THE LANGUAGE!" but usually I'm more polite than that! Can I just say how much I love the teaching centre here (the mormon.org chats and phone calls) because we teach people from ALL over the world. The French chat was with a young man in France whom we have sent the local missionaries to now. And yesterday I had an awesome chat with a girl in Jamaica who is wanting to be baptized but feels unworthy because of some serious problems from her past. You really do get some very very sincere people who feel safe because they're behind a computer screen, but then you get the very very insincere people who feel safe because they too are behind the computer screen. But the good ones make the bad ones worth it! I am beginning to teach a girl in England who has been to church a few times before but had a weird missionary teach her and stopped investigating so we'll see what we can do with her! I'm also teaching a young man from Washington state who used to be Baptist. Speaking of Baptists, there's this big Baptist convention every Sunday night here that is highly anti Mormon! They all get together and have a power point prepared with theories against the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants etc. President Center has asked us to stay away from the area while it's going on and to avoid confrontations with them. They are very very confrontational.
So we are working with our investigator D to get him to have an enthusiasm for the Gospel so that he willl want to be baptized. He is 59 so is taking it slow, but we have prayed for him so much and because he’s the only investigator we have we can focus all our time and thoughts on him. The last Sisters that taught him apparently would just go in, teach a gospel principle and ask him to be baptized and he wouldn’t really feel like the principle fit him or that they cared about him. So we taught him twice this week and really prayed to know what to teach and the Spirit was so strong in those lessons. We even sung I Am A Child Of God to him! We will invite him to be baptized this Thursday and we think he feels ready but we'll see. We prayed and fasted for him with our whole district (we all fasted for each others investigators) and we feel hopeful. We love him! He's a great guy. His fellowshippers are AWESOME. So loving and friendly. We are good friends with them already, they are called the Kaumans. They invited us out to Chilli's to eat with them and D last friday! It was so weird being in a restaurant and hearing normal music haha. He comes from the most friendliest Ward I've ever been to. We walked through the doors on Sunday and BOOM had like 5 dinner appointments and 17 hugs and 26 people telling us we're beautiful. It was one of the best Sunday services I've ever attended. All three hours were spiritual feasts. The Sunday School lesson was about Cain and Abel and the Relief Society lesson was about Christ's love for us. The spirit was so strong and we felt so edified afterwards and ready to share our testimonies with everyone we meet.
Another crazy thing happened this week! A woman named Sister Bristol had us over for dinner but because it's just her as her kids have moved out and her husband was at work she tooks us to Applebees for dinner. She was telling us all about her son on his mission in Paraguay and stuff and then about an hour into dinner she pulled out her phone to show us a picture of him on Skype at Christmas and it was DALLIN BRISTOL who was in my EFY COMPANY in 2009!!!!!!!!!!!! I looked at him on the phone and said "IS THAT YOUR SON?!?!!" and she said yeah and I was like "I KNOW HIM!!!!" so that was crazy and it's so weird that I went to EFY with him four years ago and now I'm serving in his home ward. His name and mission address was in the program and everything so it's one of those crazy coincidences that my life is made up of.
I gave this tour to an older couple who aren't members and I gave the whole restoration lesson and taught about temples from the temple pictures and the first vision picture and then at the end it turns out he is a Lutheran minister. #AWK #FULFILLINGMYPURPOSE #IJUSTTOLDHIMTHATONLYWEHOLDTHEAUTHORITY #MISSIONARYLYF. Hahahaha I was glad I found out at the end though cos I probz would've been scared if I knew at the start. But we gave them Book of Mormons and it turns out they have missionaries come to their house every now and then back in Washington state. They were so sweet though, true Christians. They BOTH hugged us at the end and looked into our eyes and said "I love you" it was so cute! Good good people. I just thought about how four months ago I would've been terrified to give a preacher a tour but now it's just all in a days work. You really do stretch and grow so much as a missionary. Now I can hear people say all sorts of horrible things about the church and it doesn't hurt too bad. I can testify and not care what people think. I love how Heavenly Father teaches you and helps you fulfill your calling, no matter what it is. I love the changes you make in yourself as a missionary. Like I've always known that prayer works, but as a missionary you learn to RELY on prayer every single day. Mighty prayer is the biggest tool we have on this earth and there's nothing more refreshing than kneeling down and telling our Father how we are truly feeling and asking Him for strength. I've felt miracles in my own heart every time I do it. This week’s fasting was amazing. I felt so so so down on Saturday because we knock doors and NO one answers ever but we hear them laughing inside and then we knock and someone says "sshshhhh" and no one answers the door and we move on and five minutes later they open the door and look out at us and shut the door again! Its so funny though! But anyway I fasted and just felt SO happy and SO positive afterwards. We haven't been called to baptize, we've been called to testify. And I can do that. Our district leader gave us blessings and it was very special. But even at Church when we were fasting, in Sacrament Meeting we sung Abide With Me Tis Eventide and I knew that Heavenly Father had chosen that for me because it's one of my favourite hymns and usually in Sacrament Meeting they sing hymns I've never heard before! It was just a great Sunday! It made me want go out there and find other people to come to Church with us and feel as great as we did!
This cute girl came into the VC all alone and so I approached her and we talked and it turns out she is 17 and just moved out to go to school here and is SO homesick and lonely. So many people come to the Visitors' Centre just to feel not alone. It's really sad. We have a few regulars who are there almost every day just because they are alone and like how they feel there. So many kids come in and look up at the Christus with their arms outstretched like they want Him to pick them up. So many babies look up at the Christus and smile, and so many kids cry and shout "JESSSUUUSSSSS" when their parents pull them away to leave. It's so tender. But anyway this young girl called Priscilla came in and it turns out she's from Longmont, Colorado where a certain Eric is from! She's from his Stake and we talked for AGES about the temple and life and happiness and the Saviour and she cried and I hugged her and told her I know how it feels to be far from home and not know anyone and she gave me a referral for a non-member friend and over all it was GREAT! I love just being in the VC to help people with so many different problems in their life.
We found ourselves a new 13 year old investigator this week. Her Mum is less active and wants her to be baptized so we are going to meet with her this week. So things are picking up. I love being around all the Sisters in the VC, they're my favourite part of the Visitors Centre. We have a lot of fun together and learn a lot from each other. It's easy to be discouraged and feel insecure though because they're all amazing, but we were talking this week and we all feel the same way as each other haha. It's just Satan trying to discourage us. But it's great how Sisters from all over the world and such different backgrounds and cultures and languages can all come together and join in one purpose and be more like Sisters than friends. Like our car is in maintenance because the other Sisters who use it curbed it really bad and its all scratched round the bumper so we are sharing our p-day with Sister Martin and Sister Brenders (from France). So they came over last night to plan with us for today as we're spending the day together due to our lack of car and we just had the best time together singing and laughing and speaking French all of us together! I'm going to miss all the Sisters a lot. We just have a very chill set of Sisters this transfer and we're growing close. The bad part about that is that when one gets sick, everyone gets sick. And sister Duval just got swine flu :{ so we are constantly santiizing our hands!
I just need to finish off by saying how great my companion is! We are quickly becoming good friends. Last night we went to bed at 10:30 obviously but had pillow talk until 11:15 and it was so special. We trust each other a lot and work well together. We laugh a TON. I quote her a ton because she says funny one-liners in broken English. It's funny how much we can laugh together despite how she's just learning English. Her most said sentence is "Sister Nicholls, you funny" hahah. She's just adorable. I was eating something this week and pulled a face and she said “You dont like?" and I shook my head to agree and she misunderstood and said “You love?" and we just cracked up a TON because of how much that escalated from a simple not liking it to LOVING it haha. We say that all the time now. She's a very special missionary and will surely be training in 10 weeks time. She is getting better at talking in lessons and when she does it’s SO powerful. I can talk and talk and talk and she says one line and the whole lesson can end after she speaks haha! But she talks more in lessons now and is just having a hard time at door approaches but we can work on that!
I gotta go now!
I love you all!
Keep emailing and writing to me because nothing makes a missionary more happy than post (except when someone rings you and says that they want to be baptized, but that hasn’t happened this week)!
Sister Nicholls
No comments:
Post a Comment