I'm so grateful for mom and dad, for the way they live their lives and the way they love each other. I feel like I don't have to worry about them while I'm out here. Other missionaries aren't so lucky. One recently received a letter from home letting him know that his parents were divorcing. I can't imagine hearing something like that as a missionary, missions are hard enough as it is! So thank you mom & dad,
I love you.
I had this dream a while back, but somehow forgot to write home about it. The YSA group was being shut down, and someone super special came to break the news to me... President Monson! We were driving in the car together and I was just devastated when he told me. From that point on, the dream pretty much consisted of me and president Monson crying together in a car.
Did I tell you about the articles of faith family? When they invite the missionaries over for dinner they don't let us eat until we've first passed of an article of faith. How many of them do I have memorized right now? Three. Only ten more to go in the next 8 days. Emailing last week helped me so much. Writing it out helps me see the bigger picture, the eternal perspective. It's a de-stressor and a way for me to communicate with you, with myself, and even with Heavenly Father. I've also decided that they perfectly chose Christmas and Mother's Day to be the days we Skype home, because I've reached that point since last time where I need that again. Maybe it's just me, but I need that call home just as much (if not more) than you guys.
Funniest tracting story yet (and yes, we tract pretty much everyday of our lives here in Kentlands): We were tracting in an apartment building where there are windows to the right and above the doors, like a whole level up. So we knock on a door and hear this little dog growling at us. Oh how I wish I could record myself mimicking the puppy pitbull making his little growl/nose blow sound. It was hilarious. So sister Chapman points him out and i look up to see him and then he like blows out his nose and what do i get for looking.... a whole face covered in pitbull snot. not my kind of rain. but wait, it gets better. we walk away laughing hysterically, only to experience something ten times more awful. we knock on a door and the guy cracks open the door. i'm on the left side so i can't really see much, but sister chapman get's the perfect view. he said he was busy, and that now wasn't a good time so i pull out a VC passalong card and invite him to visit us sometime. he was acting super weird and i wondered why someone so rushed would answer the door. we walk away and she tells me that she's pretty sure he was naked. yep. gave a passalong card to a naked man. why he answered the door, i still don't know.
Chat at the VC has been awesome!!! I've been waiting every transfer to have the chance to chat, and finally it's been here! the calling system has been down, but not really (i'll tell you that story next). oh how i love love love chat. i feel in my element there and i feel like it's so much easier to find the right thing to say when somebody isn't staring at you and expecting the perfect answer right then & there. we sent missionaries to Estonia and met someone named Liz who should have been baptized this week!
and then add the fact that we're facebook missionaries and it gets ten times cooler! we were able to connect with liz immediately so we can keep up with her and continue to encourage her!.
Power of online proselyting. chat gets a lot of pranks though. we had a weird guy who repeated everything we said. here's how that conversion went:
sister chapman - hello! how can we help you?
mitt: hello! how can we help you?
me: is this your first time chatting with missionaries?
mitt: is this your first time chatting with missionaries?
me: hi, my name is mitt and i would like to meet with missionaries so i can learn more about the gospel and grow closer to my savior, jesus christ.
mitt: hi, my name is mitt and i would like to meet with missionaries so i can learn more about the gospel and grow closer to my savior, jesus christ.
and the conversation went nowhere, but i thought i was being clever :)
the calling story. oh gosh. so we haven't been calling for the past 2 1/2 weeks because it's "been broken" turns out all we had to do was switch the browser from chrome to mozilla and also turn on a little button on the phone. that's it! i feel so bad because i haven't been able to call lois or cliff for so long!!
i had SO many lessons about prayer this week. soooo many. obviously i'm struggling with something and heavenly father is trying to help me out. S Truman's workshop about prayer was perfectly created for me. something i need to work on, is praying for what heavenly father wants, not what i want. i need to align my will with his and pray with sincerity and real intent. always easier said than done. something she said that really really pierced my soul was this, "If you don't feel like praying now, then pray until you do". i can't even begin to tell you how many times this week i didn't want to pray. it's embarrassing, especially as a missionary, that prayer is the last thing i wanted to do this week on numerous occasions. have i let satan seep into my heart that much? the thing is, there is no other way to overcome my issues, than to lean on the lord in prayer. why am i so stubborn? why do i so often refuse to reach out to him? even sacrament meeting was about prayer. during the sacrament i started going through some things i need to work on and i started asking heavenly father how i will know if he forgives me? how will i know that i'm still doing my best? and then the answer came as i started reading a talk from the october 2010 conference - "he teaches us to put off the natural man" by juan a. uceda. i feel like i'm suuuuper struggling with putting off the natural man. super struggling. i even miss petty things about home like instagram, music, tv, books, and my time to be lazy and alone. the talk starts by telling this story that i related far too much to. a story of a young girl who didn't want to participate in family scripture study and had the attitude to show it. and then it starts to talk about prayer. after not wanting to pray for the past few days, the topic of prayer continuously comes up. help from above. the first talk was also about prayer. i know what i need to work on for this week.
i've had a few run-ins with some YSAs this week and it has been awesome! AHHH, i miss ysa sooooooo much. i feel like i can teach them way easier than i can kids & adults. we met chad, who we're pretty sure is a less active YSA who should be going to the seneca singles! he was AWESOME! and we were able to add him on fb! Three cheers for online proselyting. we also taught david latarte a lesson, but he's ysa so we will be passing him to the elders.
Daniel is on date!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!!?!? June 22! i facebooked sister mendenhall to ask her how it went and she replied letting me know he's going to get baptized! So so so excited for him! I so want to be there. Proof that it was right for us to pass him. again, power of online proselyting.
We had dinner with Mary Ellen and there was just so much love! I was able to tell her now much I love them and how they've been exactly what I needed here in Kentlands. Hearing Mary Ellen tell me that Rick said I have the biggest and prettiest eyes and that you can just see my soul shine through my eyes was so cool. I think I have a new answer for if anyone ever asks me what my favorite physical feature is about myself. i will forever love these two and i am so excited for their baptism on mother's day. oh how you will love them when you meet them. i have to move on now, because i'm going to start crying if i keep talking about how great they are. we're going over for dinner again with them tonight!
i hit my 7 month mark this week. 7 full months. sometimes it still feels slow, and other times i can't believe it's so fast. i still have random moments where i feel like i'm living in a dream and i can't believe that i'm actually here, serving as a missionary. brother mark lusvardi came to the vc this week to give us a special training. oh boy, was it amazing. humbling - in that these are all things i need to work on - but i suppose that is what training is for. he is the guy who is over all the VCs and he is just so great. here are some really cool statistics he shared with us: more than 5 million people watched that #becauseofHim video the church put out for easter -- 1.9 million came to mormon.org because of it -- 6,998 of those people were engaged in meaningful chats with missionaries (ME!) -- isn't that amazing?! the church is online, and it is awesome!!!
the sisters lounge at the vc is infested with ants. i swear they are coming up out of the disposal and it is awwwwwful. #lifeofavcmissionary
we met a girl named Jan from Thailand!! oh wow, she is amazing. so she's 17 and we met her at the vc. she was in the bom kiosk so we just walked up and started talking to her. it was super spiritual and we were able to bear testimony multiple times. as we were telling her the bom is true she looked at us and just said, "it's true. i believe you" we tried to get missionaries sent to her, but her english wasn't the best and it wasn't working out. we knew she was ready, so we grabbed her a bom in thai and added her on facebook - ONLINE INVESTIGATOR!! again... the power of online proselyting. the miracle of online proselyting. how else would we have had the chance to stay in touch with her and make sure that eventually missionaries reach her.
big news..... president cooke and the eyrings have asked me to.... dun dun dunn.... CREATED A WEBSITE! so this is something they implemented back in chile, where david archuleta served (who may or may not be coming here to perform in the fall). the idea is that people can sign up online for our performances at the vc and in doing so, they must provide their number, address, and email to ensure they get a ticket and also ensure that we get a list of potentials to teach the gospel to!! so many people come to our concerts without us missionaries getting the chance to talk with them. well now we will have the chance, and the missionaries in each area of where these people live will have the chance. i am super terrified to design this though, because i have NO idea what i'm doing, but president cooke insisted that i do it. i think they think i know more than i really do. but, it's going to be fun and i love online stuff, so here's to a new adventure for the next few weeks!
let it be known that ward parties in the family ward are suuuuper awkward. ysa is where it's at. i don't feel weird doing things with them, here it's just super weird. we stand off to the side looking like fools who don't know who to talk to.
we went back to an apartment complex where we met a guy that we never got the name of. we were calling him guy for so long and we finally went back and got his name! brian!! he remembered us and i actually felt bad that we hadn't gone sooner. his name is brian and he's the single dad that mary told us about. we have a return appointmentTOMORROW AFTERNOON!!! pray for him & pray that we teach what he needs most.
tracting all the time means we meet a lot of great people, but also a lot of not so great people. the other night a lady opened the door... "you need to let people decide for themselves, stop proselyting". The only thing we had said to her was hello
the Washington post filmed the opening prayer in our ward on sunday! apparently there is a national prayer day? they got permission from the first presidency to come in and film the opening prayer. it was awesome because the lady who prayed basically taught a first lesson and it was just so so cool! maybe we'll get some more mormon.org chats because of it :]
we showed Mary Ellen and Rick the baptismal font after church sunday! Mary Ellen had typed up their list of who to ask to do what at their baptism and she had put sis chapman and I as witnesses for her baptism. So sweet of her to want to include us that way! We of course told her that they have to be priesthood holders. i so wish i could have taken a picture of that, so instead this is my mental snapshot so i will always remember!
LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!! thank you for all that you do!
i'm here because of you, so thank you.
love, sister rowley
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