Dear Family and Friends,
Another wonderful week of missionary work!! This week has been full of highs and lows. Being a missionary just brings you the happiest times and the worst times. I've really started thinking a lot about how much I LOVE being a missionary and how hard it's going to be to stop being a missionary in a year’s time. It's been on my mind a lot this week as I'm approaching that year mark in a few weeks time.
So everyone stood us up. We had our full area day on Saturday which is where we don’t go to the VC that day but can spend our whole day in Morningside and we had lots of appointments scheduled and after the appointments it would've meant that we had like 8 new investigators (because to consider them new investigators they have to have had an appointment)!!! Which is a crazy amount to have in the history of our area! So we were really excited and then they all fell through and we got 1 new investgiator instead of 8. But we were really happy with our 1 because we'd set the goal for 4 new investigators in February and we'd found 3 but COULD NOT find a fourth! We worked so hard and we had until Sunday evening to get the last, and worked and worked and worked and about an hour before we went home on Sunday evening we found our new investigator!!! We walked away from the house with the highest of fives and the biggest of fist pumps ever! It's a less active family with a 10 year old son who hasn't been baptized and their Grandma just died and he's been asking questions that they can't answer so we will answer them for them! They seem like a sweet family.
I've been a lot more bold this week. In the white handbook it says something to the effect of "the period of time you have to serve the Lord with all your heart, might, mind and strength is extremely short." and that has been manifest in how fast it’s going so I'm starting to internalize how I have just a few seconds with each person and how it's my duty to say the things that will bring them closer to Christ because if I don’t who will? So usually I get scared and just try to not make things awkward but this week I've worked on actually saying the things that come into my head that will help the conversation be more spiritual. For example, we went to Sacrament Meeting across from the VC on Sunday and this man walked in smoking looking like a complete hobo so naturally all the missionaries run to him because that's a missionary's dream! Turns out he was a hitchhiker and the people that picked him up were LDS and dropped him off at the chapel haha! We convinced him to come to the VC! He came in and told us how God doesn't exist and how loving someone like a God is just like going through a middle man to love oneself. It was deep and different but I asked him how he ended up in St George and he told us this story of how he travels the world backpacking but got to St George and just suddenly run out of money so is stuck here for 3 months at least and I just said to him "It's not a coincidence that you got stuck in St George. I know that there is God, and I know that He is your Father, and that He has brought you here for a very special reason. As you learn more about this gospel, you will find greater peace and be able to find out that special reason for yourself". And another time when I just said something like that was when we knocked at this door and it was two teenage girls about 17 years old who are Baptists, and they were polite enough but told us that there was no need for more of God's word because the Bible has it all. Usually I'd be scared but I wasn't even scared and just bore solemn testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and basically said to them why can't we have more of God's word? That Christ who you said yourself you love and worship has given us another book so we can learn more about Him, what is so wicked about that? There is nothing evil in this book, it simply is another testament of the God you worship and love. And guess what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THEY TOOK ONE :)))))))))))))))))))) Don't worry I wasn't irritating or argumentative at all, I just stood up for the Book of Mormon because what they thought was a complete misconception.
One of the little miracles of the week was that we were sent to this house to find a woman who has been less active for a while, and who answers the door?Someone I was teaching in Washington who suddenly moved and we lost contact with!!! So that was exciting!!! The Visitors' Centre had a few fun stories this week! J from Washington came in to the VC to see me and she just cried and cried the whole time. It's been four weeks since I saw her but she has lost about 20 pounds and couldn't afford to lose that. She was telling me how she's bulemic and wants to commit suicide and no one cares about her and her boyfriend physically abuses her and she has no family and nowhere to go. Seriously, being in the VC you are just an emotional landfill for people to come and dump all their problems on to you. It was a big emotional dumpage and I just cried with her. She's a broken woman and it feels like there's nothign I can do. I told the Washington Sisters and they've spoken with the Bishop about it. Another young man came into the VC and started telling us about how he was in a car crash and can't remember anything except his mission and so he's kinda stuck in the real world but feels like he should be a missionary and he was just crying talking about how much he loved his mission and his investigators and doesn't want to be back home with his family. It was a real emotional dumpage and Sister Allen and I just stood there crying with him for a long time. It was a really intense conversation because of all the emotions he was sharing with us! Another old man came in the VC crying and just asked if there was any Elders there cos he needs a blessing. We all scrambled around trying to find someone that might hold the Priesthood haha and eventually we found an Elder or two lurking and loitering around. The old man was just crying and saying that his family is going through some trials. It's such a blessing to help people even for just a few seconds and it hurts me that I'll never see them again and never be able to know how things worked out for them!
These two young men came in from BYU and were sitting looking at the Christus for ages so I went and spoke to them and we just ended up sharing our testimonies of the Saviour and when I was done they just were speechless and said "Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that with us Sister Nicholls. You have a beautiful testimony of the Saviour. You are just glowing. That was exactly what I needed to hear" and then they leave, and it's amazing how you can know you were sent to this VC, on this day at this hour in this room for that one person who needed to hear that certain aspect of your testimony and then they're vanished from your life forever. It's a privilege to help people even if just for a few minutes. There's nothing quite like it.
I've also been on the phone a lot this week with the young woman who I spoke to in the MTC that was on the edge of despair. She finally picked up her phone and we have regular appoitments most days reading from the Book of Mormon together and each time she cries and ends the phone call with somethign along the lines of "Thank you so much Charlotte, you are helping me more than you know. You are such a blessing to me, I love you" while she's crying, we feel like we know each other even though we've never met. She’s so sweet and she is getting the courage to go talk to her Bishop and start the repentance process and come back to church. She's only 2 years older than me! She's a blessing to me and there is nothing sweeter than being able to help lead someone back to Christ. It's moments like that when people thank you so sincerely for saying exactly what they needed to hear even though you've never met them before that I just never want to stop being a missionary. The spirit that I feel every single day is priceless and brings greater happiness than I could've imagined. Missions are the best!
As you can tell from my pictures we have been being trained to give tours at Brigham Young's winter home! It's been exciting! We actually need to know stuff to give tours there haha. So we've been following the Senior Couples around and watching how they do it. Yesterday myself, Sister Garcia, Sister Allen and Sister Archambault went and Sister Allen trained us on how to do it. It was so funny because after she told us what to do, Sister Achambault and I gave the tour. Can I just say how much I love Sister Allen and Sister Archambault!! And of course my very own companion. But anyway Sister Archambault has been out for like two weeks but you'd think it has been like 10 years she's so good. So we did the tour together for Sister Allen and Sister Garcia who were posing as non members and it was SO FUNNY because we just started making up all this stuff about every single mark in the wall and the floor and the keys on the piano and just elaborating on everything and making it so fancy and ridiculous we had such a fun time! I'm starting to get it down though. I am reading a lot of books on Brigham Young so soon I might know more about him than I do about Joseph Smith! It's so nice getting out of the VC every now and then!
Yesterday was just the best day EVER of my whole mission maybe. Well maybe not the best but it is definitely up there. We signed up with Sister Allen, Archambault and Phagwah to go and clean the St George Temple for a few hours. We turned up at 11am and were given some white scrubs to wear and got to work. The woman taking us around took us up to the fourth floor - the SOLEMN ASSEMBLY ROOM!!!! HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN IN THERE!?!?!?!?! NOT MANY!!! BUT THIS SISTER MISSIONARY IS ONE OF THEM!!! I'VE CLEANED THE VERY ROOM WHERE THE VISION OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS TOOK PLACE!! AHH it was amazing!! The five of us were left alone in there so I suggested we kneel down and pray and we did and it was so powerful. Tears were shed by some and the Spirit was felt by all. It was one of those special moments that you'll never forget. Then we were taken down to the sealing rooms and we all cleaned like 6 or 7 sealing rooms while singing hymns and Primary songs. It was such a sweet experience and one I will never forget. We just laughed and sung and prayed and it was the best. After we were done the head security man took us on a tour of the whole temple! The finale was taking us up to the tower of the Temple! We climbed these winding stairs up to the very top and through a trap door and were out onto the balcony round the top of the spire! It was an amazing view! We were so privileged to be able to see all those places! People were waving to us from the ground! It was soooooo cool! St George is beautiful from that view! And it has been like 75 degrees the last few days so we're tanning up nicely and it certainly felt hot from the top of that spire! AHH it was just an amazing tour! So wonderful!
I am so privileged to be a missionary in the best mission in the entire world. We have the finest missionaries! Even this week in the VC there was this baptismal interview that went really bad and they needed a Portuguese missionary to translate and one of the Brazilian Elders just felt like he needed to turn up to the VC for some reason so came just when they needed him!!! And while he was in there, his companion was waiting for him and some visitors started asking him questions thinking he was a VC Elder haha!!! So he took some poeple on a tour and just used very vague words for all the historical facts hahahahaha it was SOOO funny!! President Center had to come at the end of the interview because it didn’t turn out too well and we were all talking to Sister Center and LAUGHING because she's the best and when they had to leave she always says LOVE YOU ALL and President didn’t say it because he's not allowed to say it to the Sisters but Sister Center said “You're allowed to say it because I'm standing right here!" so he said "Okay...LOVE YOU ALL!!" hahahaha and we all went AWWW LOVE YOU TOO and it was so cute! WE LOVE THEM!!!!!!!!!!
I have to go now!
I LOVE YOU ALL!
Sister Nicholls
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