Week 5: Arizona Mesa Mission or Arizona Gilbert Mission? IDK

February 27, 2017

Hey!

What a WEEK! I feel like I'll be saying that every week ha-ha. We do so much every week and it's so hard to condense it into these emails!

AZ Sunsets

So I know that like 90% of the people on my email list don't read all of my emails so I'll tell this story right off the bat. Remember that kid who walked up to us on the street last week and was LA and wanted to meet with us? We referred him to the Elders who co-cover the YSA ward with us and they met with him this week. His name is C, and he was a convert when he was 15 years old. He went through young men’s and all that stuff but when he started preparing for a mission he made some bad choices and kind of lost his way. He got into drugs and alcohol, and when he saw Sister Sorenson and me on the street he had just been released from the hospital because he'd tried to commit suicide. He told the Elders that when he saw Sister Sorenson and me that we just radiated light and he knew that it was God telling him that it was time to change his life around. Ladies and Gents...THAT right there is why I'm on a mission. I'm not here because I like people slamming their door in my face. I'm not here because I love it when people reject what I have to say. I'm not even here to baptize as many people as I possibly can--as is a typical misconception about Mormon missionaries. I'm here because I can be a LIGHT to people who NEED it. If I can touch one person's life a day and make their day a little bit brighter then I'll consider it a successful day. If making their day a little bit brighter includes teaching them about the glorious gospel truths of the restored church then so be it. But if making their day a little bit brighter is just me smiling and waving at them then that's okay too. Anyways, so C is going to keep meeting with the Elders and we might start meeting with his girlfriend! The Elders want C to know that it's not too late for him to serve a mission (he's 21) and I think they're going to try and get him ready for that next step. 

Mesa AZ Temple

Another really cool thing this week...we got to go with A to her first time to do baptisms in the temple!! A was baptized the week before I got into the mission and she is the sweetest girl. The Gilbert temple was closed, so we went up to Mesa. That marks three times that I've been to the Mesa temple/visitor's center since arriving in my mission and a grand total of...zero times that I've been to the Gilbert temple ha-ha so which mission am I really in? Idk. ;) The cool thing is, we'd planned this like a week in advance and we texted her three or four times throughout the course of the week making sure we were still planning on going and we had it all figured out with rides and everything...and then about an hour before we were supposed to leave she called us telling us she didn't want to do baptisms because she didn't want to get her hair wet. We were like...is this a joke? What is this trash? So we promised her that she didn't have to do baptisms, but she should still come to see the inside of the temple, thinking that once she got inside she would want to do baptisms. We get up to Mesa, and we're talking with a temple worker when this older lady walks up to A and says "Excuse me, I can't do proxy baptisms...but I have all these family names. Would you like to do them??" So Sister Sorenson and I are like JACKPOT and we're like "ooh that would be super cool you should totally do that!" and she agrees! She was like super nervous but we were like A this is going to be awesome just trust us. IT WAS AMAZING. The baptistery inside the Mesa temple is BEAUTIFUL, with these two huge murals on opposite walls and the Spirit inside that room was THICK. A started crying as soon as she went inside the font and was crying while being baptized and then when she got out she came and collapsed in my arms just in tears. I will literally never forget how happy she looked and how radiant she was. I knew that she felt the Spirit just as strongly as I did, and Sister Sorenson and Elders Mitchell and Doman (who co-cover YSA with us) were standing there like proud parents and it was just so cool. When we left the temple she was crying again because she didn't want to leave, but we reassured her that she could go back any time she wanted. THEN on the way home she told us that she wants to serve a mission because of us and because of all that we've helped her through...and in the temple she received confirmation that it's the right choice for her. Ahhhh mission life!!

Also this week I had two exchanges! The first was in my area, and I was in charge of everything. Every plan that we made for that day went to absolute trash ha-ha. Everything fell through and I literally didn't know what to do. It was really scary but it was also kind of exciting being able to plan everything and take the lead on lessons and such. It was a good growing experience.

Hermana Anderson and Me

Mural in Little Mexico

Then, I had a Spanish exchange. Straight up...the Lord BLESSED me. I think He knows how many Spanish exchanges I have to go on because I straight had the gift of tongues on Saturday. Sister Anderson taught me how to say a basic prayer ONE time and when we started teaching on Saturday I was pulling vocabulary out of thin air and remembering stuff from high school Spanish ha-ha. We also went to a Spanish service activity...which is where Sandra Dietez took that picture and sent to you! Her family is in one of my family wards, and her daughter Mira (also in the picture with me) is in my YSA ward! ANYWAYS everyone was speaking only in Spanish...but I knew exactly what everyone was saying I just didn't know how to respond (‘hablo mucho pequito espanol lo siento’ was my favorite sentence ha-ha). Then in our language hour she was like why are you good at Spanish, how is this happening and I was like I literally don't know what's going on ha-ha. So that was really awesome, and I'm picking up more and more Spanish the longer I'm out! 

Oooh, yesterday we found Satan in a garage so that was fun. We talk to everyone we see so as you can imagine we have some pretty...interesting...conversations. We saw this guy sitting in his garage so we roll up on our bikes and start talking to him. First things first, he's practicing graffiti. Second things second, he's listening to super explicit and heavy metal music. Third things third, it straight up smells like drugs in this garage. Ha-ha but we're talking to him, his name is S and he tells us that he used to meet with the missionaries and then they stopped coming by. So we're like oh, he's a former investigator, that's cool. But then he's like "honestly....I've had some really...weird experiences when the missionaries were meeting with me" and we're like "oh what experiences?" and he's like "I don't want to scare you.....just...weird." and in that instant the spirit left the room and we started to get scared. Like even with the music and the lingering scent of drugs we could still feel the spirit all around us, but when he said that you could just feel the Spirit leave. I don't know how to describe it...it was just chilling. The only Spirit I could feel was coming from within me but I felt so vulnerable and so afraid. Sister Sorenson transformed into this stud of a missionary and started bearing a powerful witness of Jesus Christ and of the truthfulness of the gospel and how it can bless our lives and that was super cool but slowly we realized that this guy was a Satan worshiper so we got the heck out of there ha-ha. As soon as we left the Spirit came back and we gladly welcomed it ha-ha. Afterwards Sister Sorenson told me that she felt like she wasn't even talking to S, she was talking to Satan and she was calling upon the powers of heaven to rebuke him ha-ha. It only succeeded in strengthening both of our testimonies, which is what being a missionary is all about--helping others build their testimonies while simultaneously strengthening ours!

We also ate dinner with the guy who President Thomas S. Monson pulled out of the grease pit and took to church as a young bishop! You remember that story? He lives in one of our wards and he fed us this week! He has some cool stories about the prophet and it was so fun to get to talk to him and hear about his life.

Eating Exotic Food
(Panda Express)

This week I realized that I need to be more humble. I hate it when people act like I don't know what I'm doing, or ask me how I'm doing and I can just tell that they're only asking because they're expecting me to fail. This week an Elder came up to me and told me that the longer I'm out the better I'll get at cooking because I'll learn how to be on my own better. And I was eating this beautiful piece of chicken that I'd already cooked and I looked at what he was eating and he was eating EZ Mac. EZ Mac! Not even real mac and cheese like literally the kind that you put in a microwave!! I asked him how long he'd been out and he said "oh since 2015" and I was like "Elder did you come straight out of high school?" and he said that he had and I was like "okay well...I did a year and a half at college before coming on my mission so I hate to break it to you but I already know how to survive on my own pretty well." and he looked kind of sad and I realized after that I was just being a prideful jerk and that he was only trying to help. So this week I decided that I'm going to work on being more humble and more gracious when people offer their help...even if that help appears in the form of an Elder telling me how good he is at cooking while eating EZ Mac. ;)

Ha-ha well that's about it! I love and miss you so much!

Sister Jacobson 

My Apartment...

...Better than Liberty Square!

Week 4: Line Upon Line, Miracle Upon Miracle

February 20, 2017

Hello hello! 

1 Month Old

Everybody put your party hats on because as of Saturday....I'm officially one month old in mission years! It's simultaneously been the fastest and slowest month of my LIFE…but also one of the most amazing. How blessed am I to get seventeen more just like it!? 

So I don't have a ton of time...all of the libraries are closed today because it's a holiday so we’re emailing at a members house. If you sent me an email this week and don't get an individual response back then just know I read it but didn't have time to respond. I have tons of time to write letters though, so if you send me a letter then I can almost guarantee a response back. And just know that it's killing me to not be able to respond to everyone and tell you all the details about my week! 

Weekly Planner Cover

To start off...this week we saw a lot, and I mean A LOT of miracles. On Tuesday we were biking around, and we decided to stop by a member’s house to get the names of some less actives...but this member wasn't home. So we just kept biking, and like five minutes later we were biking past a park and who was there?? This member we were trying to visit! She flagged us down and told us she needed to talk to us, and told us to wait a minute. Well a minute turned into fifteen...and tbh I was getting a little frustrated. It started to feel like we were wasting precious proselytizing time. She finally came and talked to us, and then we went on our way. We decided to drop by an investigator and some other people...but none were home. At this point, we were getting really frustrated. Nothing was working out and we were going to be late for a lunch meeting because we were far away from our house. So we started biking back....and as we were biking back this man came out of his house. We stopped and started talking to him. He was waiting for his landlord to show up, and was very interested in talking about religion! He is actually a former investigator....he used to meet with the missionaries when he lived in California. He asked us to come back sometime this week, so we will go and visit him for sure. As we were leaving we realized that if we had biked past his house thirty seconds earlier or thirty seconds later then we wouldn't have met him. It was so cool to see that the Lords hand is in everything that we do...we had to be delayed at the park and none of our investigators had to be home so we could meet this man at just the right time.

The next one is with our YSA investigator, E. She is going to get baptized...but she moved to Vegas on Friday, so we made the decision to send her as a golden investigator instead of a recent convert...because it will be better for her in the long run. We took her to the Mesa Temple Visitor’s Center to watch the Joseph Smith film and she loved it. Afterwards she had lots of good questions...mainly having to do with why Joseph Smith would endure so much persecution for the Book of Mormon. We told her it was because the book was true, and he really was a prophet of God. I told her to look up a talk, and sister Sorenson told her to look up a video. The next day we saw her, and she told us she was reading the talk and loving it, so Sister Sorenson asked her if we could show her the video right there. We watched it and as we were watching it I realized that the video was an excerpt from the same talk I told her to look up!! It was so cool because we realized that the Spirit had told us both that this was EXACTLY what E needed at that moment. Anyway, she's in Vegas now and we'll probably never see her again but it was an awesome experience to have, ha-ha.

Cheese or Peace, Your Pick

The third one is CRAZY. We had correlation with one of our WMLs on Friday night, and then had an evening full of visiting members and meeting people, when we got a text from the Mongolian sister we live with. We took one of our wards from her, and we have asked her multiple times if she's given us all the information we need for the ward...and multiple times she's said yes...and multiple times she's come to us with MORE information. It's been frustrating. Anyway, she texts us and gives us this address and tells us to go and visit them because she promised the man who lives there, T, that they would stop by that night. Sister Sorenson and I were ticked...and we were like, “No we’re not going to do that because we don't have time tonight.” So we were working in our other ward...and we were looking at the list of names we were going to stop by, and none of them were popping out to us. We stopped by one house, but they were not home. At this point, we said a prayer and both of us felt strongly that we were not supposed to be working in that specific ward. We said another prayer...and immediately we felt like we needed to be visiting the person Sister Bolormaa asked us to. So we biked back to our car, loaded the bikes in, and drove like another fifteen minutes to this other ward. We knocked on the door, and this woman answered. We asked her if she knows a man named T and she says that she's never heard of this guy before. Her name is K though...and she was super pumped to see lady missionaries, ha-ha. She's a labor and delivery nurse and she is so interested in learning more about our religion and what we believe in. We left a Book of Mormon with her, and she asked us to come back at the beginning of this week. It was the craziest experience...we still have no idea who T is but all we know is that we were led to K for some reason and we are excited to continue teaching her this week.

The fourth and final miracle is also super cool. We were biking around, street contacting people, and not having a ton of success. It's hard to street contact in this mission because EVERYONE knows who the missionaries are and there are a lot of churches around here that teach anti-lds literature as doctrine. We were talking to this one guy...when suddenly this other guy comes up to us and says, “Hey can I leave my number with you guys? I want to start meeting with you." so of course we were like, “YEAH YOU CAN LEAVE YOUR NUMBER WITH US!!” Come to find out, he's a less active member who wants to start coming back to church but hasn't been in a long time and has a ton of questions. He's YSA age so we referred him to the elders who co-cover the YSA ward with us. Super cool experience! 

Those are the big things this week! However, we were biking through the back fields this week at night...and I was looking at the stars and had several thoughts. 1. Swan Valley has ruined me from other places with "good stars." Swan Valley is the standard of excellence for stars! 2. Why do we spend so much time comparing ourselves to other people? We are preordained and destined to become like God, not become like man. Comparison is the thief of joy, and the only way we will find joy from it is if we are comparing ourselves to God and asking ourselves how we can become more like Him. 

I used these thoughts to write a talk for Sunday. Yes, we spoke again...in a different ward. I spoke on pride and humility, and I felt like it went well. I'm going to be a pro at speaking by the end of these eighteen months. 

CTR Ward Party

Also...update...we did eat with the Joseph Smith actor family. They fed us on Wednesday ha-ha and we had a picnic! We didn't ask him about being Joseph Smith...but we’re actually really good friends with the family now because we helped them with the ward activity on Saturday night. We taught the junior primary the story of Nephi and the boat. We had them act it out and draw pictures about good choices they make. It's funny though because we recruited our zone leaders to come and help us with these children and they became obsessed with Brother M...the Joseph Smith actor ha-ha. Sister Sorenson and I were playing it so cool but have been high key freaking out this week about how much time we’re spending with the family and long story short the elders asked him if he would teach our zone about the restoration and share his experience about acting as Joseph Smith with us and now we're going to have FHE with them next week! And they have bloopers from the Joseph Smith movie!! I'm so excited. Also, I found out the reason why his hair is so long is because Salt Lake keeps him on retainer in case they need to film new movies...apparently he's also played Jesus Christ!

Last night we took M, our recent convert, to the new member fireside. We listened to recent converts share their testimonies and their conversion stories. It was so cool. I'm super worried about M though...she's in such a bad situation. Y'all I need you to understand...it's scary walking up to people on the street and having them yell at you about why your religion is wrong....it's scary giving a talk in church....but NOTHING is as scary as looking into the eyes of your recent convert as she cries and says "I don't know how long I can do this." It is SO scary watching someone come close to the Savior, and knowing how close they are...and then watching them waver. I just want to take away her pains and help her feel like she can do anything. I guess I know now just a little taste of what our Savior feels every day for us. He wants nothing more than for us to come close to Him so He can ease our burdens, and He is standing with wide open arms just waiting for us to ask Him for help. Please keep M in your prayers this week. She's amazing and has been through so much and could greatly benefit from the gospel. 

I love and miss you all! Thanks for all you do...have an amazing week! 

Sister Jacobson 

Meridian Rd. in AZ?

Week 3: Random Pictures

Headed Out from the MTC

Calling Home!

Mesa, AZ Temple

First Night in a Really Big Bed!

 Getting Our Valentine Groove On

Whitewashed Weekly Planning

Week 3: You Will Prepare to Preach the Gospel in the...Spanish? Language

February 13, 2017

My beloved friends and family!!

What a WEEK it's been!!! Eleven days without a P-day is a LONG time. I can't even tell you what we did the last few days in the MTC....it feels so long ago. All I know is that it was good, and now I'm safe and sound in the field!

Bella Vista, San Tan Valley, AZ

Speaking of...WHERE am I?! My first area is called Bella Vista. It's down South in the mission in the San Tan Valley, close to Queen Creek. Y'all, this is literally the Promised Land. The Arizona Gilbert Mission is special. We were created as an experiment. The temple is smack dab in the middle of our mission. The mission is 40 miles long and 20 miles wide. It is the smallest proselytizing mission in the church, but has some of the highest baptism rates. There were over 50 baptisms in December alone. Miracles happen here. People move to Gilbert and they go "I don't know why I moved here...I just really felt the need to be here" and then they meet the missionaries and get baptized. 

However, Queen Creek is special. A few years ago a member of the Quorum of the Twelve came here and dedicated the land and said it was sacred. Since then, there has been an exponential increase of baptisms. People flock here, and baptisms literally fall out of the sky. Last week someone came up to our ZLs at church and said "I need to be baptized immediately!" and she was baptized like two days later. She'd been going to church quietly for months and no one knew and then when the time came she was perfectly prepared for baptism. Things like this happen all the time in this mission. This truly is the Lord's work. How blessed am I that I get to do my part.

Sister Sorenson and Me

My companion is Sister Sorenson. She's from Boston, and she's been out nine months. We were actually at BYU together, and we think that we've seen each other before. She and I are a great pair. When I interviewed with my mission president when I got here he said "When I read your file in October, I knew EXACTLY who you were going to be trained by." So she and I are truly an inspired companionship. She's an amazing missionary and she's had a lot of success on her mission so I feel blessed that I get to learn from one of the best. 

Sister Sorenson and Me

However, it hasn't been the easiest couple of days. Sister Sorenson served the first nine months of her mission in the same three wards up in Gilbert. So we are both new to this area. They whitewashed us, and our area books were super out-of-date and for DAYS we didn't know who our bishops or ward mission leaders were. In addition, Sister Sorenson was just called a Sister Training Leader, so our first two days she had to go on a lot of exchanges and I didn't see her for a long time. It was really hard on me, because I was brand new and I didn't know anyone, and the one person I was supposed to know was on exchanges with other people! Her STL companion is one of the Spanish speaking sisters, so my first exchange was in a Spanish area. The first lesson I ever taught in the mission field was in Spanish. I learned how to pray and testify in Spanish in the car on the way to the appointment, and then I read a verse from the El Libro De Mormon. It was the most overwhelming thing of my LIFE. However, the lady understood everything and I was like BLESSINGS FROM THE LORD because there is no way I could have done that on my own. Then we went and knocked doors for a bit...the bad thing about being in such a small mission is that EVERYONE knows exactly who the missionaries are, and not everyone is super nice. So many slammed doors and people throwing things at us and dogs chasing us. My first day in the field, I came home and just wanted to cry, and then the next day I was on exchanges again and it was with the other Spanish speaking sister and it was much of the same. 

It was really discouraging, and I was feeling really overwhelmed and stressed, and I literally wrote in my journal "It's my second day in the field...high-key already have a lot of responsibility...and low-key really freaking out. What have I done?" and then we went to Weekly Planning and out of nowhere our Zone Leader came up to me and said "Sister Jacobson...do you want a Priesthood blessing?" and I said that would be awesome...so he gave me a blessing of comfort. It was the most amazing blessing I've ever received. I felt the Spirit so strong, and God's love for me in more abundance than I've ever felt before. In the blessing I was told that I would not have been placed in this area, with this companion unless the Lord would provide a way for me to accomplish the work and the things he needs me to do. Ever since then, life has made a complete 180 turn for the better, and I know that the Lord will help me in everything I am trying to do. The Priesthood is real. 

We saw a really big miracle on our first night here. We were brand new to the area, and we got a new phone as well so we didn't have any contacts. Out of nowhere this Sister called us and was like "Sisters do you need dinner??" and we were like....”Yeah??” and we went over. It turns out she was in one of our wards AND had a referral for us!! We still don't know how she got our number, but it was a great miracle to see after such a long and crazy day. 

Check Out the Roads

We are over three wards. We have two family wards and one YSA ward. Let me tell you, being over an YSA ward as a missionary is the weirdest thing. YSA wards are weird anyways because it's like "let's take all of the young single people and put them all in a room together and see which ones get married!" and everyone knows that...but then you add being a missionary on top of it and it's just uncomfortable. Ha-ha. We co-cover it with Elders and we're not really supposed to interact with them and it's just weird. Ha-ha. The struggle is that lots of missionaries become too chummy-chummy with the YSA ward so then they have to be sent to a different ward because the ward members stop seeing them as missionaries. Since we cover an YSA ward we have a car, but we don’t have a lot of miles allotted so we are going to bike as much as possible. Except when we went out on bikes the other day we were lost for like thirty minutes. And our GPS is from like 2009 so half of our ward's neighborhoods aren't on there. I miss Google maps! However, our two family wards are AWESOME. They are so pumped to have Sisters in their wards and they are literally begging to feed us! Ha-ha.

One of our wards has the actor from "Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration" in it. Except he has dark hair in real life and he has a BEARD. He looks like Hugh Jackman from Les Miz!! I will keep you updated if I eat at his house or not. I may or may not send a picture if that does happen. Stay tuned. 

Yesterday I spoke in church. The bishop had asked the two sisters who had this ward originally to speak...so when we took over the ward that opportunity went to us. So yesterday I gave a ten minute talk on charity out of nowhere. I've never given a talk without having thoughts written down before and it was really intimidating, but it's good to be uncomfortable because that's when you grow! Afterwards so many people came up to me and couldn't believe I had only been in the field for a few days...I wanted to cry it meant so much to me. So I'll take that to mean it went well!

My First Baptism!

Also on Saturday I had my first baptism! Ha-ha-ha it was also the sister's before us, and we just got to reap the benefits and it'll go in the office as ours but really it was theirs...if that makes sense. Her name is M, she's originally from Iraq, but she's lived in Switzerland and Germany and speaks like five languages. She's really sweet, and she was Muslim before this so it's really awesome to see how much her faith in Christ has developed. Her home life isn't the greatest and long story short we are no longer allowed to go into her home to teach her because it is unsafe for us.

We also have several other investigators and recent converts who I'm excited to meet with this week, one of the RCs is preparing to go to the temple for baptisms, and we have one investigator who is really close to baptism. This is going to be an exciting transfer. 

I love you and miss you all so much!! 

Sister Jacobson

P.S. THIS MISSION IS PERFECT FOR ME. Remember how I was sad because I wasn't going to meet all these people from other cultures and countries and stuff like that?? No. I live with a sister from Mongolia, there are several people in this mission from Europe, and there are quite a few from Japan, lots from Mexico, and more from South America. In this mission I will get all the benefits of serving stateside while still having all of the benefits of serving foreign! I am so excited and so blessed. 

P.P.S. Oh, one more thing…in the past six months, NINE of the 12 apostles/First Presidency have come to the AGM. Pretty cool, huh!