Saturday, March 17, 2012

Email from March 5

(Seriously, not sure how I forgot to post this!!! Sorry it took so long! - Anne)

It's 6 degrees currently. Not so bad. 

Thanks for letting me know about the rebellion in nursery, here in Colony ward my comp and I visited nursery on the way to relief society so we could get snacks (two Sundays ago...we had permission), and we helped with the lesson and with music. The kids are soo cute. 

Happy birthday Adam!!!!!!! I love you! All the trucks in Alaska wish you happy birthday as well.

Congratulations Bunker fam on getting a wee yiddow baby named Linkin. Hope to see pictures soon :) 

So. Missionary work. So hopefully we are going to see the investigator that dropped us this week, just cuz Sister Brown is leaving and she at least wants to say goodbye. 

We had kind of a slow week and didn't see very many people other than our recent convert who is doing GREAT, and our investigator who speaks Spanish, and a few less-active people. Our recent convert had a great spiritual experience with praying for help getting over the urges to smoke this past week. She said "look i know I have the Holy Ghost and I know Heavenly Father can take away those thoughts and so I prayed and told him that and ever since, the urges have been WAY less." Oh my gosh so cool, she now has such a stronger testimony about prayer and holy ghost. We taught her that day about the temple and she is really looking forward to being able to do baptisms for the dead and also to go through the temple in a year. I found a pretty rock outside, grey with a few thick white stripes through it, and wrote with sharpie on one side "February 5th, 2013" and "Temple" on the other side. To help remind her that a year from her baptism this year, she can go through the temple. (Pssh sister brown said after I made it, "I think that day is a Monday next year" cuz this year it was a Sunday...pssh don't tell me that! The temple is closed on Mondays. This would ruin EVERYTHING. Just kidding.) THEN i took the cheap red nail polish I bought last p-day and painted in the sharpie words and then took clear nailpolish and put that over all of it to make it look real pretty. Yay. She really liked it. 

It's crazy being a new missionary and having a comp getting ready to go home. I know I will be all right but this could be really hard in the sense that I could really start missing home myself and thinking about what it will be like when I get home and where I'm gonna go to school and all this crazy stuff but I think I will be okay. Sister Brown is amazing, she was dreading going home --and she still doesn't want to-- but she is facing it, and handling it. Which is so healthy. I mean we needa stay focused on our work until the end but we also wanna be ready to go home when the time comes. 

SO. 

We hear a lot about this 1940 census coming out and how amazing it is for geneology. You excited mama? 

I sent that letter that I sent like three days after I wrote it cuz i don't break no mission rules, I don't want you to think I wrote and sent it NOT on my p-day. Bahahhaa. 

Week 6 of my second transfer. This is it, guys. 

I love my family so much. 

We went tracting and a guy answered the door, young, super energetic, invited us in, other people in the house, he laughed and said, "Well i think it is all right, this isn't my house actually," hahha, and Sis Brown and I sang "how great thou art" and this guy and two other guys and the woman of the house- a foster mom slightly distracted chasing after a 2-yr-old-- sang with us and we got two of the guys' numbers to meet with them again and gave them book of mormons and they were super spiritual, one is a worship leader at another church, he invited us to this "walk with jesus" thing in the morning (we checked with mish pres, he said it'd be okay -- if WE invite people, it could be a good thing to show WE can be invited as well--but also we must make sure that we aren't gonna be attacked or anything because of our nametag and stuff). Super open-hearted guys. We asked them if they knew there was more spiritual truth out there that God was waiting to give them--aka the book of mormon--would they want to know about it? They all readily answered yes. We ended up not going to the walk with jesus thing cuz the guy texted and said one of his friends was going through a hard time right now and they wouldn't be there for the next few days. But anyway. We're meeting with them on Tuesday at like a coffee/hot chocolate/orange juice place. Hahha he added the hot chocolate and orange juice into the description because he knew we don't drink coffee.

And we have a meeting with another potential investigator. A guy showed up to church a lil too late and talked to the Cottonwood elders, this guy lives in Sister brown's and my area, so the Cottonwood elders got this guy's name and number for us. he works at the hospital with a mormon doctor and so was referred to church that way. We called him and asked if he'd be interested in meeting with us this week, he said yes, he sounds really nice and friendly, we have a meeting with him this thursday. That's exciting. I hope all goes well. 

My current favorite scripture is John 14:27. "Peace i leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." 

The only peace you can find is through Jesus Christ. The world might try and offer you its own definition of peace. Many people think peace is only possible once there is no war. But we know that through Jesus Christ we can have peace during times of war, and that there are also times that the lack of war doesn't guarantee us peace inside. This weekend was a bit hard and I prayed and prayed all day long, please just let me have peace inside. It was all I held onto. The Savior loves me, he loves all of us, individually, and when we show faith in him and change our life to leave behind the bad stuff and go toward the good stuff, he will help us. Like in 3 nephi 9:13, he wants us to come unto him so that he may heal us. I love being a missionary. I love studying the gospel. I love leaving the world behind. I love serving others. I love my Savior Jesus Christ.

xoxoxo
sister mel ashbrook

p.s. thank you budingers for my camera that i use like every day.

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