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!