For Halloween ... we stayed home in the evening and did our weekly planning. We ate Little Caesar’s pizza and made cookies for our sick zone leader. Side note about our zone leaders: we work really closely with them - President just started doing these meetings once a month with the STL's and ZL's to discuss the needs of the zone... our zone leaders are awesome and so so nice and respectful, but not creepy or flirty at all! It's awesome. Anyways, President printed out all of these graphs and numbers and stuff and said... "I'm not trying to condemn you... but explain to me how last month there were 17 on date for baptism and only 3 got baptized....." we looked at each other and felt so bad ... but our zone's struggling! Those 3 baptisms were ours and theirs ... and we're in the heart of SLC where there's tons of people to talk to. It also really impressed me how much President Hansen knows about the missionaries ... I always thought there was so many missionaries; he couldn't know I was struggling or having a hard time with my companion, etc., but he totally did. He has such a good feel on what's going on in the mission. He does know every missionary and what they need. It was really cool to see.
I absolutely love this area. This week we had a night where literally all of our appointments cancelled so we went out and walked the streets downtown contacting people and visiting some names in the apartment complexes. It was so fun and I loved it .... I really feel like I was sent to this mission specifically for THIS area. Literally, downtown SLC- working with the YSA. It's my DREAM! I wanted to go to NYC or something ... but this is better because of the temple and all those resources. Plus it's so close; I can come back and visit! Bunny (her Grandma Shields' nickname) wrote me about how she used to teach at West High (I walk past there every single day). I haven't written her back yet - sorry, but it's coming. And it made me so happy. I love this area and it's so fun. I'm so so grateful! And I love the city, and even the ghetto.
So we had this idea ... to ask the members that we bring with us to lessons to share their testimonies in sacrament meeting about how their testimony has been strengthened through missionary work, etc. We texted like 15 people. And most of them did it! Testimony meeting was so good yesterday! I had no idea the kind of impact teaching with us has on members... especially YSA. One guy named TJ- we asked him to come with us because he's semi active... he works Sundays and honestly I thought he had no interest in the gospel at all. At the lesson he barely said anything and acted like he didn't want to be there. Then after the lesson we were telling him he should pray to find a new job. He seemed like a punk so we kinda forgot about him ... well he got Sundays off and came yesterday. He got up and bore his testimony about how he didn't realize how much he missed the gospel until he came to that lesson. He remembered the chapter we read in the Book of Mormon with the investigator that day and said that lesson was for him. He said we told him to pray to get Sundays off, he gave it a shot and it worked! I was in shock, haha. And some other girls got up and said how teaching with us helped them overcome temptation and made them decide to live the Word of Wisdom and stuff ... we didn't even know they had Word of Wisdom issues! It's just so cool how the Spirit plays a role in everything- even the members we randomly text and ask to come with us. It was an awesome testimony meeting!
All is well in Pioneer YSA. Have a good week!
(Heidi didn't explain anything about most of these photos - maybe she'll fill us in later)
 |
| The planner on the left is at the end of a transfer .. the one on the right is at the beginning! Notice the arrows - they represent transfers. Sisters go to the big gray arrow (I have two to go); elders go through all of them. |
No comments:
Post a Comment