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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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!
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