"The Bible is a Lovestory"

This is the kinda media you find when your companion has Strep Throat and you decide to declutter your apartment. I got a good kick out of this little pamphlet thingy from Living Waters Ministry about how we're all going to be married to Jesus one day.... hmm... I love Jesus.. but I think I'll keep my Eternal Companion thank you very much.

So yeah... because Sister Forbush had strep we had to take her to the instacare and get her some antibiotics and then we were instructed to quarantine her for 2 days. Partay... not going to lie, it was actually really nice because we'd both gotten a little burnt out with being so busy the last couple weeks and we kinda needed a break. So I got to clean the apartment finally, read Saints, play the piano, write in my journal.. it was very nice haha. But we were ready to get back to work. I got to nurse Sister Forbush back to health and made her take her vitamins and drink fluids and we have a little essential oil diffuser.. it was good. We skyped into District Council and Ward Coordination meeting.

Thursday was a crazy day... we finally had time to track down some investigators that we haven't been able to get in contact with for awhile. We didn't get in contact with any of them.. so that was a bummer.. And everyone else we talked to was not very nice to us. Like come on.. if 2 cute, enthusiastic blondes stopped to talk to you, you'd at least be friendly right? Instead we got, "I'm a Catholic and I'm not interested" "I need to ask you to get off my driveway, right now" "No, your card would be wasted" ahhhh.... missionary work..

Then we had a baptismal interview scheduled for S-, who has been SUPER excited to get baptized as soon as possible and then for her scheduled appointment she happened to tell us she's in Gainesville, 1 1/2 hours away. So we pushed it back to that night and find out she needs to be interviewed by the presidency. So we get all of that scheduled and call President Clark. Then we asked her if she needed a ride to church. She told us she was going to her dad's and we were confused. It turns out she didn't reallly understand that being baptized meant you became a member of our church....? And with as many times as the missionaries had been transferred, that detail was lost in communication.. So.. she's not getting baptized this weekend. But she still wants to come to FHE and have lessons. 

A- on the other hand is doing amazing!!! We had a mini-exchange to teach her on Tuesday, and she has a little notebook that she's dedicated to her questions. And every answer we give her makes so much sense to her. She says she's never felt so much freedom and peace in her life. She feels like she has a purpose now. She asked if she could make art for the church. And she's writing a hymn for the new hymnbook. And she wants to write an article for Ensign. This lady is as golden as they come. We took her on a temple tour on Friday and she loved it. She had never felt so much peace before. She just eats everything up and is hungry to learn everything she can about the church. She watches Mormon Messages in her spare time. She's a miracle and I count my blessing every day that we get to be the ones to teach her. 

We also got to volunteer at "Feed the Homeless" on Saturday. A- came with us. She just wants to serve so bad. It was really fun! They take food from stores and restaurants that are still good but they won't sell and we prepared it and served it to probably 75-100 homeless, needy people. It was really cool.

I learned a lot about Patience this week. I realized that patience is trusting in the Lords timing. It's honestly just faith really. And when I get anxious because things aren't going the way I wanted them too or people cancel or we get delayed somewhere, that's me just being prideful thinking I know better than the Lord. He's in control and when we let him take the reigns the stress and anxiety of life goes way down. There were moments where I realized my patience has come a long way and other times where I realized I have a lot more to grow. But I'm grateful that the Lord gave me experiences to really evaluate my patience and set goals to improve. 

God is so good and I love you all so much!

Ooh you thought last week had miracles!!

Ok I'm not exactly sure what the Lord is trying to pull here in Daytona Beach but I have never been more busy in MY LIFE. We don't have time to like breath, think, or sleep... much less to weekly plan! Everyone keeps saying it's a good problem to have... but people... I'm tired. But I've also never been more happy in my life? It's quite the interesting cunumdrum.. conundrum? I don't know I can't think right now. Oh goodness where do I start?..

Ok this is gonna be a long one but it's worth it. Hold on folks. So you always hear those stories about Golden people who are super prepared and ready to learn and they just know this gospel is true? I've always wanted one. But maybe haven't had the faith or the experience until we met Amanda. Ok so our stake is doing this cool referral thing where you share a name of a person who may not exactly be ready for missionaries to go over and meet them right now, but just someone that you want to have the gospel in their life at some point. The coolest part is that members are realizing that they have a lot more prepared people than they thought they'd just been thinking about it with the wrong perspective. So last week our ward gave 22 "referrals". PEOPLE. I've only gotten like 5 the entire past year I've been a missionary. 

 

Anyways we got the number of this lady who does a member's nails. She told us to call her so we did and we were able to set up an appointment for this week. We got over and meet with her and she shares her life story with us and she's definitely in some need of peace and healing that the Savior brings. So we share with her a little bit about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon and it just made so much sense to her. Everything clicked and you could see she started getting excited. She shared more of her experiences and I felt prompted to share a scripture but I couldn't find the one that I was thinking of so I was lead to 3 Nephi 9: 13-14 and she just starts crying as we have her read it. I've seen people cry but never in response to a scripture I've shared. She said it was exactly what she needed and she felt a huge burden lifted off of her. We asked her if she came to know this was true if she would be baptized and she said yes. 

 

2 days later she came to church and she was so excited. She said that she had stayed up all night reading the Book of Mormon and she shows us all her sticky notes with questions and marked pages that she liked and she's read a good chunk of it in 2 days. You only hear about this in stories!! I was ecstatic! She sat with the member who referred her who is an amazing member missionary and showed her the ropes. She loved church a ton and everyone made her feel so welcome and you could tell she just felt home. In one of the sacrament talks a member talked about how he had to give up smoking to be baptized and usually that's like a missionary red flag especially when you have non-members in the audience. But she told us "yeah after the speaker I realized that I need to give up smoking. If baptism is my motivation it won't be too hard" Then she told us that she wants to get baptized as soon as possible. Ahhhhh. So we told her we could hopefully do it in 3 weeks. I've never done this before. This is craziness.. I'm so excited though. Ahhhh this is a dream!! This missionary thing is crazy! I know I'm not behind any of this though! God is a miracle worker and it is the coolest thing to have a front row seat to the Atonement working in people's lives.

Well.... that seems sufficiently long for a weekly.. but there's more miracles! And I'm mostly writing this for my posterity (Mom you better put this email somewhere)

Highlights:

~ We met with H- and put her on date for baptism as well! But we're going to pass her off to the Elders because she's technically in their area and we're getting super busy... Even though we love her a lot.. ugh..

~A Former Investigator randomly called us out of the blue to say hello. She's like 14 but super mature apparently and she said that we could come by again and meet with her and her mom. I've never met her but I've heard good things.

~There was this lady sitting on the curb outside the church building while we were weekly planning and we went out and talked to her. She was walking home the 6 miles from work and she lived just down the street a little bit but decided she needed to sit down... right in front of our church.. while we were there.. coincidence? I think not. She acknowledged it as well. And although she wasn't ready to accept it yet, She really just needed to know that God loved her and that He was looking out for her and we gave her a hug and told her how special she was.

~We taught a lesson on the beach!! We met up with a less-active YSA member at Ocean Walk and got ice cream and set goals with her. It was the best listening to the waves, looking at the moon, eating ice cream. Living the dream. And she brought a friend along with her who was interested in learning more!! 

~ Shayla our YSA girl finally got in contact with us again and she's still super pumped to get baptized and she wants to commit. And we got her to church on Sunday!

~We showed Joan and Vince a video about the temple and they liked it so much they wanted to watch it again. It was so cute! But they still didn't come to church.... :(

~So.... we also got flashed this week.... ahhhh... We got another referral for this member's daughter and she was expecting us but she like just got out of the shower... she told us to come in and while she was walking down the hallway... her towel dropped.... ahhhh... That's a first for me. Yikes. She was cool though and super solid! 

Ok.. I think that about wraps it up. But needless to say, God is good and miracles are real. And they happen to ANYONE. I mean who am I? I'm a nobody! But God wants to show his power to anyone and everyone we just have to believe it's possible! And all things are possible with God. In D&C 35:8 it says "8 For I am God, and mine arm is not shortened; and I will show miracles, signs, and wonders, unto all those who believe on my name." Not just some people, not just his favorites, ALL people. Pray for your miracle this week.

One year baby!!

So I was informed I hit my year mark on Thursday by Elder Moore who apparently has a better memory than me haha. I wanted to do something special but forgot... so we made up for it by treating ourselves to Hibachi!! It's so crazy!!! I can't believe it's been a year ahhh looking back it felt so long but fast at the same time. I can't believe I go home in June. it's getting weird...

This week has been good but super busy again! We've just been dashing back and forth between appointments but it's a good time. Sister Forbush is such a hard worker and I'm learning a lot from her and it's been an awesome week!

 Highlights:

~J- and V- are doing good!! They'd been hearing things about the word of wisdom so we finally sat down and explained it and it made a lot of sense to them.. they just love their coffee.... ugh. but they also love us a lot... so we're just gonna keep serving them. But V came to church and loved it! So that was really great! We'll get J there. 

~We did a musical number for Zone Training Meeting and Sacrament meeting. I sang and Sister Forbush played the flute and it was amazing!! We'll be singing at Zone Conference this week! 

~We had like the coolest miracle ever! So we ended up having our missionary coordination randomly on a Friday morning and towards the end this young mom came in and asked for Elder Colson. So recently she moved into a member's home that passed away and they left the couch and in between the couch cushions she found the card with the church address on it and she felt like she needed to come by and we could help her. She just had premature twins. She is searching for a place to belong. We taught her the Plan of Salvation on the spot and it made so much sense to her. She loved it and she wanted to come to church. It was just crazy that all of our paths intersected at the same time. I know the lord wanted us to find her. 

~ We taught this awesome lady named Traci who has been doing family history with the Colsons and it led her to want to know more about our gospel, just out of curiousity ;) When we got there she said she wasn't interested in converting.. but by the end she just said she wouldn't make any promises. I think she'll come around. 

~ We also taught this lady named S- and they met her at Subway a little while ago and she's really awesome. She's in tune with the spirit. We taught the Restoration and I had to ask her if she'd been taught it before because it just seemed to be second-knowledge to her. She said that she felt the man who baptized her wasn't a man of God and she said that she would want to be baptized again. She already believes that the Priesthood has been restored and it was amazing.

~We had our second lesson with this lady C- and it's always a little rough with her... She is really smart and has some very solid misconceptions about Christianity... She doesn't think that we'll be resurrected and Heaven will consist of us being married to God forever. So she has a TON of questions every time we go over and it's difficult to teach her sometimes... but surprisingly she's been keeping commitments and I can tell she has a genuine desire to learn but she has just had a lot of crap happen in her life so it makes her defensive... but she has potential.

The Lord is so good. I'm so blessed to be here in this beautiful area with wonderful people! It's crazy, and even though I've been out a year I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing... But I know that the Lord does and that's enough for me now. I've learned I don't have to do it all on my own. I love you all and pray that you are all doing amazing things!

Knock it off Dick!!!

Hello Hello from Daytona Beach in the Deland of promise! It's crazy over here let me tell ya but it's honestly been the best first week of a transfer ever. Wowza Sister Forbush and I are jiving and it's
amazing! We are both Davis High School graduates and so it makes is super nice because we can talk about all the fun people and places from home haha! She is seriously the sweetest human in the world and I love her so much already. We are going to be great friends. And she is way less stressed than I was when I first lead out an area. I was a mess. Oh boy I'm glad I've come a long way since then.

So Daytona is an interesting place because we're over a Family ward and a Young Single Adult Branch. And the Family ward is OLD. Like everyone keeps saying how Florida is the retirement capital and I'd never really seen it till now. In College park you'd walk into a place and you would see 20-somethings everywhere and here you see senior citizens everywhere. It's a super weird dynamic but I love old people haha.

Some highlights from the week! 

~I saw the ocean!! Our area touches the beach and the first night we had dinner with the Bishop who lives in a high rise and their view is the ocean. It's amazing. I missed the coast.

~Our teaching pool is amazing! Well it will need a little weeding because there was like 25 people in it... but a lot of them are amazing and pretty solid!! 

~ I met Joan and Vince who are this super sweet older couple and they are my grandparents haha. They've been taught for a little while and hadn't been ready in the past but now are and we were able to commit them to baptism for February 23rd. Joan LOVES her coffee though... So pray for her. And Vince came to a baptism the Elders had so he's getting excited. They still need to come to church though.

~We are also teaching this cute part member family who's children want to be baptized. So we were able to put one of the sons on Date for May. It's a blended family so the father is a little hesitant about his son getting baptized without being prepared so we're working on that. They also need a lot of prayers. The parents are named Leather and Alfredo lol. 

~  So Vince was talking about how the last owner of their house died in it and every once and awhile things will fall over or the door will slam and Vince will just yell "knock it off Dick" So I thought that was hilarious.

~ I had a lot of impromptu singing moments lol. We were at a lesson with Carolyn, who we're teaching, and Elizabeth who is her friend who she referred and 2 other members. And Carolyn finds out Elizabeth sings and so Elizabeth just starts singing Amazing Grace. Then Sister Forbush mentions that I also sing and that we should sing together so I harmonized with her to Amazing Grace and Carolyn recorded is lol. Then at the baptism they didn't have any filler in the program while they were getting changed and so the Bishop was like "And Sister Grant will be doing a musical number for us" So I got up and sang a couple numbers and the bishops wife played. 

~So we had this crazy lesson with this lady named Christina. She was getting kinda riled up about the whole modern prophet thing and was kinda accusing us of worshiping a man. We were trying to explain how the prophet speaks for God and how God has always used men as his mouthpiece and her son comes in from the other room and says "Mom I have to contradict you. Moses was a man and he spoke directly to God on Mount Sinai. So God does speak to man." It was crazy and we had this really intense discussion. There were some other things they weren't quite understanding but the Son kinda just came in and argued our point about prophets for us and it was awesome. 

~Church was a circus. So the Family ward starts at 9:00 and the YSA starts at 10:30 and we were trying to balance our time between both. So we went to a half hour of sacrament and then went to half of Branch council, then half of Gospel Doctrine class, then half of the other sacrament meeting, then we had a meeting with our new ward mission leader then went to the last half of gospel doctrine for YSA. It was crazy and I'm exhausted.. Apparently the missionaries in the past haven't focused a lot on the YSA but we're gonna change that. 

Good things are in store for this area! If you haven't looked at the new Come Follow Me manual definitely look at that and get studying! Ask yourself what you are seeking to know about the Savior through the New Testament. When we ask, seek and knock we will FIND. Love you all!!

I'm going to be a dad!

That's right! You heard it! When you're a "Dad" that means your the next companion to a missionary who just got out of training. So I'm getting a brand new greenie! Who's actually from Davis High. She graduated the year after me and he name is Ashley Forbush and I don't think we've ever met... But we have mutual friends.. So we'll have a lot to talk about. Oh yeah. And I'm going to Daytona Beach serving in a YSA branch and a family ward so it's the best of both worlds and I'm so psyched! I'll be close to the beach and I can proselyte to whatever age group I want... ;) But I am really sad to leave Canoe Creek. I love this area with my whole heart. And the kids! ugh. They are all my babies. But the Lord just likes to keep me moving around. This is my 5th area. And I'm guessing I'll probably have one more after Daytona too.

Well this week was pretty amazing because CHRISTMAS!! Wowza it was the best ever talking to my family. We opened presents together over Skype and it made it feel a little more normal. And we read some scriptures and sang Silent Night because my mom is a jerk and wanted to make me cry. ;) But it was really good to see them. It felt like I never left. But yeah the rest of the day we had to member meals for lunch and dinner and in between we studied and gave Christmas cards and candy canes to people that were working on Christmas at the gas stations and Walgreens etc. Then we visited Rosie our crazy Grandma in the rest home. She was very salty because she read our text wrong that we'd sent the day before and when we said "tomorrow" She thought we weren't coming until the next day.. ugh she's a drama queen. But we brought her a stuffed stocking with candy and random stuff so she couldn't hate us.

The day after Christmas was ROUGH. Oh goodness we did not want to get out of bed or do anything... It was worse than not being home on Christmas... But we pulled through it and luckily got to go to the temple with Marilyn for reals and she brought some family names which was the coolest thing ever. She got baptized for her Grandma who she was named after so that was special. And we got her a leatherbound triple complex and she was so excited about the leather haha. She's funny. 

Alex got baptized!! Woohoo!! It was such a special day! Well... a little dramatic because their extended family is dramatic... but overall a good day. Alex said that when he was baptized he felt "warm" It was so sweet. And we gave him a couple ties for Christmas and he chose to wear one of ours instead of the one his wife got him hahaha. ;) 

Anywho.... This is already a significantly long email.. and If you made if this far I'm proud of you. 

Oh let me tell you how Elder Rogers freaking punked our district!! He's going home this week and after district meeting on Thursday he told us that he was actually going home on Friday, the next day. So we were shocked but he had a good alibi and how his companion was going to be in a trio with the Zone leaders and all that. And then he leaves our missionary facebook chats. And when we called the Zone leaders for transfers, His companion was with them so their alibi was lining up. We get to church on Sunday and there he is just grinning from his pew. I was about to punch him. I'm so gullible. It was a good prank to pull on me.... But still! I was salty.

But I love you all! I need to go pack... if you have any encouragement let me know... I hate packing.. But I love the Lord and I know his wisdom is higher than mine so therefore... I will pack.