Week 38: Sister Jacobson and the Sitting Skeletons

October 16, 2017

HELLLLLLOOOOOOOOOO 

Holy toledo the weeks just get faster and faster. Time flies when you're stressed out and over-exerted!! Haha just kidding, time flies when you're having FUN...and that's exactly what Sister Utsch and I have been doing this week!

Exchanges with Sis. Jensen

This week we had another exchange! This time it was with Sister Cammon and Sister Jensen! I was with Sister Jensen, a cute sister who is towards the end of her second transfer in the mission. I was with her in her area and we had an awesome day together. We taught three lessons and took an investigator on a church tour! It was a really eventful exchange. Also, we went tracting in an apartment complex and I was so excited because I'd never tracted an apartment complex before! We tracted this whole building and no one answered, and I was pretty disappointed....and then we realized that the entire building was VACANT!!!! I was so mad!! Oh well, next time. 

Sister Utsch and I had a really cool lesson with T this week! Her dad was in town and she wanted us to come over and meet him. Her dad was reactivated about four years ago and is super awesome. His testimony is rock solid and he is the current young men's president in his ward in Nashville, Tennessee! We had a super spiritual lesson about the importance of prayer and the Holy Ghost, and T talked a lot about the difference she's felt in her life since praying daily, and the difference she's noticed in her son's life as they've been praying together every day. She also told us that she and her dad had been having a lot of gospel conversations since he'd been in town, which we were super excited about. It's every missionary's dream for your investigator to come with built-in fellowship! While we were there, Sister Utsch and I both received the distinct impression that T will be baptized someday, we just don't know when, but it's our job to be here for when she's ready. It was really comforting because T isn't progressing as well as we would like her to, and missionaries are not professional naggers, so it doesn't do any good to follow up on commitments that she's not keeping...but she is progressing slowly, so our plan is to just keep in contact with her and be there for her when she's ready! 

Pumpkin Party Selfie

This week we were invited to a neighborhood pumpkin carving party hosted by one of our members! They invited their whole cul-de-sac and there were well over 30 nonmembers there. It was awesome! We were able to talk to so many people and we helped tons of the neighborhood kids carve their pumpkins. It was a huge success...we didn't get any return appointments, but we felt really strongly that we needed to be there that night. It was good for the people in this neighborhood to see that missionaries are real people, with real personalities, and real lives! We're not just robots that show up on their doorstep like clockwork every six months. So much of missionary work is planting seeds...I realized this week that members get frustrated with member missionary work because so often they don't see the end results! Having the big picture makes missionary work so much easier...if you have the knowledge that every little touch makes a difference then suddenly it doesn't feel like a waste of time to spread the gospel, even if no one listens right away.

We have been feeling pretty strongly that we need to work with our members better, so this week we made a list of YSAs that we don't know and set a goal to visit every single person on that list. So far we've seen tons of miracles! Usually when doing YSA visits no one is home, or they've moved, or they're just super busy and can't talk...but this week it felt like every YSA visit we made was inspired! We visited this one girl who said she's "not exactly active" anymore but asked us to come back this next week, she even set a reminder for herself in her phone! It was awesome. Then we talked to another girl who's been going through a really hard time and she prayed that someone would bring her something good...and then we showed up on her doorstep. The icing on the cake that is YSA miracles this week though is that yesterday this girl walked into church, introduced herself in Relief Society, and said that it was her first day back in six years! We don't know what prompted her to come back, we're going to visit her later this week, but it was so cool!

Rash from a mosquito bite

We also saw tons of little miracles this week, little moments to reassure us that the Lord is right here with us in this work. A couple months ago on exchanges I stopped by a part-member family in one of our family wards to ask for water...and they told me that we couldn't get water from them. In Arizona, it's against the law to not give people water if they ask for it...so I was like wow yikes they do not want us coming over. Not gonna lie, I was pretty salty. Sister Utsch and I took them off our focus list and essentially washed our hands of it haha. Well, this week we were biking down the street...and we saw someone outside their house. We started talking to him and he was SUPER nice!! We had an awesome conversation with him, shared a few laughs, and he invited us back this week to come and meet his family! Miracles, I say, miracles!

We dropped by another part member family this week and they opened the door said "No." and started to close it...and Sister Utsch was like "wait wait wait!!! We just wanted to drop by and say hey!" and he stopped, opened the door and was like "Okay, come on in." It was so surprising haha. But he let us in and we had a great conversation with him! We were able to talk about the gospel a little bit and they even gave us water haha. When we left they walked out to the edge of their driveway and waved goodbye to us until we were out of sight. It's amazing how far a little bit of friendship can go!

Finally, we dropped by yet ANOTHER part-member family this week and the nonmember answered the door, was so excited to see us, and practically begged us to come back in a few days. We went back and his wife was going through a tough time and they both sat there and listened to us give them a lesson on maintaining faith through trials. Sister Utsch said that that had NEVER happened before...he'd never sat in on any of their lessons. Little progressions are worth celebrating! Moments like that are what build your faith.

A couple funny moments:

Last week we had a lesson with the K’s on the iron rod and clinging tight to the word of God. This week we saw the K’s outside next to their trashcan talking to their neighbors. We went and started talking to them...and the K’s were suuuuuper drunk. It was one of the wildest conversations I've ever been part of. During the course of the conversation this metal bar rolled off the top of the trash can and landed loudly on the ground. M K about lost his mind, he goes "SISTERS!!!! THE IRON ROD AM I RIGHT?!?!!??! OHHHHHH!!!! GIVE ME KNUCKLES LOOK AT THAT CONNECTION!!" Hahaha we were laughing SO hard. It was easily one of the funniest moments of my mission. 

This week on exchanges I was trying to be a really good example for Sister Jensen by talking to everyone we saw. We were biking along, and she was probably like 20 feet in front of me and I saw this house with tons of Halloween decorations. The front yard was designed to look like a graveyard and there were zombies coming out of the ground and dead brides walking through it and all that stuff, but there was this person wearing jeans and a t-shirt and it just looked like a guy doing yard work...and Sister Jensen wasn't stopping to talk to him so I was like...alright this is it. I will be a great example and I will OYM (street contact) this guy. So I call out "Hey! How's it going?!" and we get closer...and I realize that this guy is 100% a Halloween decoration. It was so embarrassing. Sister Jensen didn't say anything...so I'm not sure if she didn't hear...or if she was just trying to preserve my ego...but in any case I'm sure she was like "wow, worst STL ever." Haha Sister Utsch and I had a good laugh about it once we exchanged back. 

In other news, people in Arizona go hard with their Halloween decorations. It's been pretty impressive. I've seen more skeletons this week than ever before in my life. I started taking pictures with all the skeletons we saw but it got to be too much so we decided to set some parameters on the kind of skeleton photos we would take...we decided that the skeleton has to be sitting. So I've started a photo essay that I will entitle "Sister Jacobson and the Sitting Skeletons" Please enjoy the photos. :)

Haha I love you all! Have a great week!

Sister Jacobson 

No wrapping paper? No prob!

Gifts for our stewarships