love, sister rowley

big news email

big news of the week: WE GET IPADS TOMORROW!

i am so so excited! i'm at the forefront of online proselyting, i'm seriously so excited for the opportunity this will be for our mission, and i know that heavenly father sent me to serve in this exact place at this exact time so that i can be a part of this online work!

we got to go to the temple on friday, it's always a relief to go to the temple. more so now than ever before. life as a missionary is very busy, and my mind is constantly full of to-do lists and other people. it's when i go to the temple that my mind moves in a different direction. i went this time hoping to find an answer on how i could be a happier missionary. don't get me wrong, i'm not necessarily unhappy, but i'm also still adjusting. i don't always feel like i'm as happy as i could or should be. i prayed that this time i would get an answer as to how i could be happier. it wasn't until we got to the celestial room that my answer came. the very first thing i noticed were people. sister mendenhall who had forgotten her recommend that day had gotten a hold of president cooke and had made it into the temple. sister busath, my very best friend here who i never get to see anymore was there right across from me, and sister chapman was having a rough day. i noticed people. as i started to pray, i prayed for each of them first. that was my answer. in order for me to be happy here i need to serve and think of others first. it starts with my companion and the missionaries around me. we might not have investigators to teach right now and care about right now, but i can care about and serve everyone else around me.

we have 4 shifts at the VC this transfer, so we're there quite a bit. i still don't particularly like the calling room, but i don't hate it as much as i used to. i still don't like that we call and teach on our own, it really helps me appreciate companionships. i do have 2 new investigators online that i've been teaching. i met cliff at the VC during Festival and have been in contact with him ever since. we won't let me send missionaries yet, but he does let me call and we talk about the gospel, and i pray that even though i feel like i don't know what i'm doing half the time, i pray that something i say helps him better understand the gospel and ultimately strengthen his relationship with christ. emmanuel was someone who called in to order a free bible. i offered to have missionaries drop it by and also share a spiritual message, and he said yes! he lives in texas! he has been meeting with missionaries, reading the BOM, and even said he would go to church this sunday! i'll call him this week and find out how it was!

did i tell you that last week we helped some guy get his car out of the snow? he had been trying for at least 15 minutes, maybe even more. we were doing companion study, and as sis. mendenhall closed with prayer she asked that the man trying to get his car out would be able to do so soon. it was after we prayed that i suggested we go out with our roommates and push his car for him. and so we did. four sister missionaries walked out in skirts and pushed this guy's truck out of the snow. thinking back on it now, i see how important it is to act. to not just pray for things to happen, but to act in order to receive the things you pray for. we must first do all that we can do, and then the lord will take care of the rest.

love you all so much! thank you for your love, your support, your letters, and your prayers! i had time to write a few letters last monday, so hopefully you got those!

a holiday, a snow day, a late email

i can finally email! turns out sister rowley is very dependent on emailing home to feel stress relief and happiness in her life each week. monday was a holiday & then yesterday we had a snow day (i still think it's so weird that they shut everything down when it snows here). but, i'm here now and have a list of great things to talk about!

i met the most amazing family in the VC the other night! it was a typical slow night, and sis. mendenhall was helping another sister with her new sister training (I FINISHED MINE THIS WEEK!!! WHAT A RELIEF!). so i was just sitting on the bench waiting for people to come in (it's been realllly slow because january is just a slow month in general and then the temple was closed for cleaning until yesterday). a family starts walking in and i still didn't have a companion so i whispered to sister graff (my very first VC district leader who helped me so much) to come be my companion. and then we met the Farmer family. it really is true that Heavenly Father prepares the hearts of people. Yes, we meet a lot of people who aren't interested but we also meet people like the Farmers who are more than ready to hear and accept the gospel! It was a mom, two teenage sons, and a younger daughter - the dad was in the car with the baby. We taught them about the temple and they were all just nodding in agreement and soaking in everything we were teaching. when she asked what they needed to do to go inside the temple i was reminded of an answer someone once told me they gave - essentially the gospel of jesus christ: 1. have faith in christ 2. repent 3. be baptized 4. receive the gift of the holy ghost 5. endure to the end. it was such a great conversation and as sister graff handed them the referral card she just started filling it out with much of an explanation. it was as if the holy ghost was speaking to them without us even opening our mouths, he told them that this is what they needed to do to receive all the blessings we were talking about. they wanted missionaries! just like that they accepted the invitation to keep learning from missionaries! she walked out of the VC that night with pretty much anything she could get her hands on - a temple pamphlet, a pamphlet about joseph smith, the family proclamation, and even a worksheet about family history. we now get to use FB at the VC so i get to keep in contact with them that way as well as calling them and teaching them over the phone as they continue to meet with missionaries! i pray that they will remember the spirit they felt at the VC and that they will desire to act on the things they are taught from the missionaries.
I had a really cool personal study the other day. I was feeling frustrated with the area I'm in and started thinking that I hadn't seen any progress since it started. I was reading in Alma 55:10 where the Lamanites refuse to wait to drink the wine they were being offered, they were obsessed with instant gratification. I saw that as my answer from Heavenly Father... He doesn't work by giving us instant gratification. We wouldn't appreciate the goodness of this group if in one transfer everything fell into place. Just like we learn bit by bit, we also gain success bit by bit. I was also reminded that I can't expect myself to be a perfect missionary in just three transfers. I still have a lot to learn and that's okay. I will still have hard days because being a missionary is hard, but I am grateful that the hard days are less frequent and that I bounce back quicker too. I'm discovering that missionary work is very different than what I expected it to be. We don't teach as often as I thought I would (i don't even remember that last time i taught a lesson - not counting the ones i teach in the VC). we do a lot of reactivation work and seek for less actives. at first i felt annoyed because it seemed as though that was the work of the members, but i am slowly started to see that my purpose is to help others come unto christ and that doesn't mean i only teach and help those who are not members of the church. members need help just as much as non-members do! i actually discovered that the other night at our FHE we did for our YSAs at the VC. we focused on missionary work and invited some of the members to share their testimonies. a convert, and a girl i have grown to really love, shared her story and also mentioned that she was recently thinking of leaving the church. my heart broke. i realized then that she needs my love and help. i pray that i can be that for her, that i can know what to say and do to help her feel god's love for her. our FHE, although small in numbers, was amazing. the spirit was really there and i think everyone (including me) felt a new desire to serve the lord to the best of our abilities.

i made japanese chicken salad this week!! makes me happy to have food that i enjoy. i'm super sick of frozen stuff and i really miss having homemade meals from mom. it's hard only having 1 hour to make & eat meals. it's also hard to plan ahead a full week. (the microwave chicken method worked so great mom! i didn't have saran wrap, but i used tupperware and it worked out great!) now i just need some orange rolls :]

so we have an "I'm a mormon" exhibit at the VC and there are a bunch of videos about different mormons from all over the world. i was being an investigator for one of the new sisters doing her new sister training and we were watching a video about kevin. he's a skateboarder from draper utah. i had seen it before and was thinking oh, cool! draper! pretty much my home! and then there is the part where he talks about going to church... IT'S OUR STAKE CENTER! i got so excited! so, if you meet some kid named kevin who likes to skateboard and he would probably be YSA age (unless he's married now), who has a mormon video, that's him!

well, time is short! so grateful for everyone and especially grateful for the prayers on my behalf, i feel them and need them so thank you!
LOVE YOU ALL!

- sister rowley