The petramalos wrote all the VC sisters a personal, handwritten card. Man, I miss them. I'm still really sad that I didn't get to say a proper goodbye to them. I had to send a goodbye card in the mail. they are such an amazing example. they are leaving for their tenth(?) mission in a month! off to paradise they go... HAWAII! they will be serving a military mission. the people of hawaii are lucky to have the most amazing senior couple ever. but really, all of our senior couples here are amazing. i can't get over how blessed i am to be surrounded by so many amazing people! heavenly father sure took care of me. i love when my personal study is so obviously guided by the spirit. i was reading in 3 nephi 17:2-3 where it says,
2 I aperceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot bunderstand all my words which I am commanded of the Father to speak unto you at this time.
3 Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and aponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and bprepare your minds for the cmorrow, and I come unto you again.
a humbling moment for not just a missionary, but for all of us... to realize just how weak we truly are. I am weak, and I don't understand why everything must feel so hard for me as a missionary, but he knows that, and somehow that makes it easier. Verse 2 tells me to ponder and pray, to really seek for that understanding. Again prayer comes up as something
I need to work on. perhaps i came on a mission to learn how to truly pray. i'm reminded of a girl i met at the vc a couple weeks ago, who when we asked what she learned on her mission it was that... how to truly pray.
we had Zone conference this week! our entire mission is focusing on family history, and grandma rossiter --- the kendrick's are in charge of it!!! i love seeing them often, they are so cute and it makes me feel a little closer to home whenever i see them. sister cooke got all the sisters together and we had a little testimony meeting together while the elders all learned how to shave (testimony vs. shaving.....yep). oh how i love sister cooke. the APs gave a workshop on... can you guess???.... PRAYER! told you heavenly father is trying to teach me something. president cooke related the gospel to star wars (thought of dad!) --- may the force be with you --- he related that to the holy ghost, talking about how we do have the force with us. how lucky are we as members of the church to have that constant companionship. and how lucky am i, as a missionary, to have it on a level that i probably can't even comprehend and won't even realize until i no longer where my beloved nametag. elder alca is famous! tay, you'll have to tell him that we got to watch the video they made of him and his family and for the family history stuff. made me miss having him here in DC with us. be sure to tell him hi for me!
i have a testimony of comp. inventory. we had an Impromptu companion inventory this week that helped immensely --- slash I just finally humbled myself after attacking sis chapman for no good reason. one of the hardest attributes to acquire (for sister rowley)... humility.
we had Exchanges this week, and i've decided i do not like exchanges. i was in such a frenzy, felt like i didn't know the area and felt like i didn't know what i was doing. i probably took everything way too personally, but i was already having a hard time, and then i just felt afterwards that i was doing nothing right in the area. being a missionary is hard, there is no way to truly prepare for the things you go through here. but because there is no way to prepare for it and no other way to learn it, the experiences i have here - both good and bad - are priceless. i am learning more about myself and god's love than ever before in my life. i am learning more about the atonement than i ever have, and time and time again i am reminded that this is an answer to my prayer about wanting to be married. heavenly father sent me here to learn how to be a better wife and better mother. really, heavenly father is giving me what i always wanted.
we have a new investigator!!!!!!!!!!! we are going to see her tonight! i actually met her with sister owens during exchanges! her name is sandy, and she had been on our potentials list since 2009. she had called and asked for a visit from missionaries, but i have no idea what ever happened. apparently her door has been knocked on time and time again, and finally someone met her - me! perhaps i was the one meant to meet her all along. she is ADORABLE and definitely one of the most positive people i've ever met. she immediately let us into her home and found out that she had been to church before in seattle and that she's back here and she immediately wanted the address to the church. the spirit was so strong as we showed her the easter because of him video, and she definitely recognized that we brought the spirit into her home. i am so excited to teach her more about the gospel! miracle for the week was definitely meeting her.
even though i was stressed during the exchange, i did learn some things. i learned that i need to change the way missionary work is being done here. My ideas matter and i need to forge my own path. there is no set way to do missionary work and just because things have been done a certain way in this area for a really long time doesn't mean that it needs to or even should continue to be that way. here's to being bold and making change happen! proof that exchanges make me crazy = I had left the keys in the door all night long, thank heavens nobody kidnapped us, robbed us, or stole our car.
I got to be on temporary exchanges with sister Truman at the VC this week. we're both working on projects, so we had to be in the back on the computers. Oh how I loved her. Her positivity is so amazing and something that I wish to develop myself. She just told herself from the very beginning that a mission would be fun, and it has. She's loved it so much and I'm just over here in my 7 months drowning in unnecessary sorrow. positivity. that's my new thing and my new motto.
I'm always taking things personally and I think that's what I did with my exchange. I took every question and thought sister Owens had and saw it as an attack on me and what I was doing wrong. Reminder: there is no one right way to do missionary work! BE YOU!
oh how blessed i am to be a VC sister. there are so many miracles that happen there and i am so grateful that i get to be a part of them. sister larkin and jones brought in a part-member/less-active family in for a lesson on the restoration. they are from the baltimore mission, and let it be known, i loved them instantly. the mom is less active, and her 12 and 13 year old girls are nonmbmers. the active visiting teachers were there as well (oh how important it is for us as active members to help those who are losing sight of what matters most!). we started in front of the temple and talked about how each temple is unique and how likewise, we as children of god are unique, but temples are all special, and so are we. god loves us so much. it set the tone perfectly and we were able to have a super spiritual lesson with some amazing analogies. we use a pen to teach about prophets (i'll have to teach you someday) and we use theater 1 and the lights in there to talk about the restoration. the spirit was just so strong, and after they watched the restoration video, we were able to really invite the spirit to be the teacher. we don't always have prayers before or after lessons, in fact we rarely do, at the visitors center, but i felt so impressed by the spirit to close that lesson with a prayer. the less active mom said it and my goodness, that prayer was one of the most amazing prayers i have ever heard. miracles happen, and that lesson was a miracle. we did nothing - that was all the spirit and all heavenly father. the sisters before they left wrote us a quick note and thanked us for the experience. i felt like thanking them, and mostly thanking heavenly father. it's these moments that make being a missionary so so worth it. this is why i'm here, for the little moments like that. i may or may not have used a harry potter reference at one point. sometimes it just comes out and it's probably not a good thing, but it just happened. i was talking about my favorite painting of christ - the one where he's knocking on the door and we have to let him in because there is no doorknob on the outside... then i thought it would be cool and that the kids would like me if i related it to harry potter so i said that if it was like a harry potter picture where the people are only there for a few seconds, he would never leave. he would always be there. i had good intentions in my heart, but harry potter probably wasn't the best thing to interject while talking about christ. #stilllearning
i had a really neat moment of progression this week. one of the newer sisters was struggling and i finally jumped out of my i'm a missionary i have no time for anyone else path, and talked to her and her mtc companion. and it was so good! why did it take me so long to realize how great everyone is and how important it is to not just serve here in dc, but also serve those i am serving with!
Sister egan shared her testimony in church this sunday and talked about an experience she had in boston as she was out of town for a convention. she talked about how she ran into a missionary from the ward (or maybe stake? no idea), but she mentioned how the sister missionary was telling her how much she loves her mission. it just donned on me that I need to change my attitude. a thought popped into my head: Love your mission starting today. And guess what? sunday I loved my mission.
i love you all so much, and i especially appreciate the emails i've received lately. i love hearing about everyone back home and i love hearing about the experiences you're having! i especially love all those mothers in my life, aunts and friends included. thank you for being the examples i need.
love, sister rowley
