Week 23: Awake and Arise

July 3, 2017

Hello!! Happy July!!

I cannot BELIEVE that it's July! Where is the time going?! Recently I've really started to feel the "time is flying" feeling that every missionary ever talks about, so I'm really having a difficult time comprehending that it's July and the Fourth is tomorrow!

This week has been a refiner's fire on so many levels. Man. But before I get to that...

This week we had Zone Conference! I always love having Zone Conferences; they're such wonderful opportunities to reflect and make changes. At this Zone Conference we spent a significant time reviewing what Elder Pearson talked about while he was here--ever since he came there has been a serious current going through our mission. It's really cool to feel the shift that he brought...we all have a renewed conviction and enthusiasm for the work! I also had the opportunity to sing at Zone Conference with another sister and two Elders. That was a good time.

We had an awesome miracle lesson with M this week, our 60-year-old sassy black-man investigator! He's been investigating the church for a really long time, and he has studied religion basically his whole life, so our lessons with him are typically pretty intense and we end up talking about religion in way more complex terms than what we're used to. It's really weird, but also really fun. He's SO CLOSE to being baptized. He keeps saying that he's "on the right path" and that he knows that the Book of Mormon is true. This week we went into the lesson and I wanted to put him on date to be baptized. We tried a while back to put him on date but he didn't accept it and didn't set any goals to try and work towards that date, but I felt really strongly that we needed to give him a date and help him set goals to be ready for that date. During the lesson we talked about the faith cycle--how the Lord's pattern is ALWAYS to have us take action, and how only after we've taken action do we receive evidence of what we already know to be true. We read Joshua 3, when the Israelites cross the Jordan River and are promised by the Lord that they will cross on dry ground, but their feet are wet before the Lord parts the waters. M absolutely loved it...and I testified to him that he's in a similar position, that his next step is baptism, and that the Lord is asking him to take a step of faith-even into the waters of baptism. I then explained that I wanted to set a goal with him, a date to be baptized, and I wanted us to work together to get him ready for that date. He was a little apprehensive but he said okay, and then I told him that we'd prayed and that we know that he can be ready by July 22. He said it was too soon, and we asked what would be holding him back. He said "literally the only thing preventing me is smoking...and the problem is that I really enjoy smoking, because it gives me an excuse to take a break from work." Then, I was super bold...haha I've never been this bold on my entire mission. I said, "So if I'm hearing you correctly, the only thing keeping you from following Jesus Christ and being baptized, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, receiving the Priesthood, and entering the temple....is smoking?" And I could tell it caught him off-guard, and surprised him. He was like "well, when you put it that way..." and then I testified that he could quit, and that if he worked towards July 22 then the Lord would bless him, because he would be taking that first step of faith. He explained to us that he'd tried so many times to quit before, and he'd never been successful...and we fired right back with "but you've never tried to quit with us before." Finally he agreed to give it a shot...so M is on date to be baptized on July 22!!!! The Spirit was so strong! We have a lesson with him this Wednesday and we're going to sit down and plot out a roadmap for success, including how he's going to stop smoking by then. Please pray that he will have the strength to quit--we need all the prayers we can get!!

This week we also received permission to keep teaching M (the 11-year-old girl)! Her mom gave us the go-ahead to keep teaching her, and she came to church yesterday and she loved it! Unfortunately, her mom has not given the go-ahead for baptism...so we can only teach her as of right now. :( But we know that her heart will be softened at some point, and we know that miracles happen every day!

Cookie-making service activity

This week we had a lot of really awesome gospel conversations with a lot of different people. It's amazing to me how the gospel of Jesus Christ is literally connected to everything. We walk up to people all the time and start talking about the weather and within minutes we're talking about the gospel. This week I really noticed how everything we experience prepares us to experience something else. I felt like every visit we made was intended to influence another visit; by the end of the day we were drawing on various conversations we'd had earlier in the day and having some really intense, spiritual discussions. I love being a missionary!

I also feel like recently I've turned a corner in my mission. These past few weeks I've had some amazing experiences and some amazing opportunities...just over a month ago Elder Pearson came and toured the mission, three weeks ago Elder Bednar came to my stake, and then this week we had Zone Conference. Plus, the plethora of other amazing and miraculous things that missionaries experience every day! It's been like a perfect storm haha. At every single one of these meetings the core thing I took away was that I'm doing well, but I could be doing better...and I've become self-aware of where I can improve and really started working towards becoming better. This week all of these feelings kind of came to a head...if I had to compare this week of my mission to a chapter of the Book of Mormon I would say that I am currently in 2 Nephi 4--"O wretched man that I am!!"(verse17) Haha, this is what President Wheeler calls an "Awake and Arise." This week I decided that I want to work harder than I have ever before on my mission, because the Lord is worth it. I realized that I am happy just doing the work, and that it's okay if no one accepts it...because I am still giving them the opportunity to receive the gospel.

However, I picked a bad week to have this "Awake and Arise." Sister Rudd and I have been met with road-block after road-block this week...every single day something has prevented us from going and working all day long. It's been so frustrating for me!! Like I said…a refiner's fire; I know we're being tested and we'll see miracles and blessings as a result. A couple examples of things that have happened:

This week I lost our phone. It fell out of my bag along the side of the road and we realized it probably about 30 minutes after it happened. Our phone is our life--we have 600 contacts in there! Lose the phone, our effectiveness decreases. So we stopped, said a prayer and retraced everywhere we'd been in the past hour or so...we were looking for around two hours and then we had to go home, with no phone. When we got home we had the sisters we live with call it and a man answered and told us he'd found it along the side of the road. We were able to meet up with him and get the phone back...but looking for it ate up two hours of our proselytizing time, so that was frustrating. But! The guy who found it is now a potential and we're going to try and visit him this week...so that's exciting.

Making Sis. Rudd work! S/O to Sis. Hatch, our driver

Nurse or Missionary?, idk

Sis. Fuimaono playing w/Sis. Rudd's crutches

On Saturday at zone sports Sister Rudd got injured. We were playing dodge ball and she went to dodge and her foot went one way and her body the other. It's not her ankle, it's her foot. She said she heard a pop and her foot is super swollen and she can't put any weight on it. I honestly think there's a really good chance it's broken. We called the mission nurse and they told us to wait a couple days and if it's still causing her problems then they'll send us to get an X-Ray. Well...it's been a couple days and they still won't send us...oh and they haven't come to look at it either. They're just diagnosing it over the phone. I'm really, really frustrated and trying so hard to be patient, but it's hard because I can see that my companion is in pain. The nurses also told us not to ride our bikes, and when I said that our area is 100% bike they told us to call and see if we could get a car....but we haven't had any luck in getting a car. I'm super frustrated at that. We got some members to drive us around a little on Saturday night and last night as well (do you have any idea how difficult it was to find people...it's the Fourth of July weekend!)...but other than that we're literally sitting ducks. We've spent a lot of time the past few days sitting in the apartment icing her foot and wrapping it and trying to get her better...but her foot is still just as bad as it was right after it happened. Please keep Sister Rudd in your prayers. We're really, really worried about her and we're hopeful that this trial is just a small moment on her mission. We're also hopeful we'll get the go-ahead for an X-Ray soon.

Anyways, it's been a good week! We saw tons of miracles and had lots of fun. Our area is doing so WELL and this work is amazing! The Lord's hand is in everything and I know He loves each of His children so much and is aware of each and every one of us. The Book of Mormon is true!

Have a great week and a great Fourth of July! I love you all!!

Sister Jacobson

Cookie-making service activity

Nursing Sis. Rudd while eating an Otter Pop