November 20, 2017
Hello everyone!
Yet another week has come and gone!
This week wasn't quite as exciting as last week, but that's okay...sometimes
the Lord needs to humble us. ;)
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| Me and my bike |
Something else that was a bit
disheartening...the only people we could find that seemed to want to talk to us
this week were antis! So as a result, this week I talked to more antis than I
have my entire mission. And I think overall, the antis I talked to this week
were the meanest, nastiest ones I have encountered. I will spare you all the
details, but let's just say that I have never been more personally attacked. It
was pretty awful. Sister Utsch and I weren't necessarily upset about the things
that were said to us; if you worried about every little thing that is said to
you as a missionary then you wouldn't last in the field very long haha. We were
more upset about the people that they were coming from. The majority of the
antis we talked to were members of different faiths, claiming to be Christian
people. Something that has surprised me my whole mission is the sheer
amount of people who tell everyone they're Christian and then turn around and
do something un-Christ-like. The idea of being Christian is to emulate the
Savior in all that you think, do, and say. I highly doubt that Christ would
yell at a person for merely believing differently than Him. In 3 Nephi 27:27,
Christ poses the question, "What
manner of men ought ye to be?" And I think He meant it as a rhetorical
question, because He immediately answers, "Verily
I say unto you, even as I am." In order to be as Christ is, we must
become better at accepting others as they are, instead of imposing our own
personal judgments upon them. Just some food for thought.
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| Exchanges with Sis. Klinke! |
We picked up a new investigator, K,
this week! She came to a lesson with L a few weeks ago, and she used to
investigate the church a few years ago, and she is super awesome so we are
excited to be able to teach her again! She told us that she has lost much of
her testimony as a result of not attending church, not praying consistently,
slacking on scripture study, and not meeting with the missionaries. We decided
to start the lessons over with her. We talked about God's love for us and how
He hears all of our prayers and she committed to pray to know of God's love for
her.
We had a lesson with D this week,
but I was on exchanges so I missed it. Sister Utsch taught dispensations in
great detail and said that he still doesn't understand it. In addition, she
says that she is unsure if he has real intent. She said that at the end of the
lesson she asked him if he had any questions and he said, "Why are Mormon
girls so pretty?" Haha...so now we are trying to decide if he's just
saying that, or if it's legit a problem. Stay tuned haha.
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| Spot the dog |
We had another lesson with T (not to
be confused with the previous paragraph’s T) this week! The Mesa sisters tried
to send her teaching record to us, but they didn't have her complete
address...so the teaching record is lost in cyberspace somewhere. Good times.
We had to plan our lesson with no teaching record, with no idea what she
had/hadn't been taught, so we decided to teach about temples! It was a great
lesson. She is so awesome. She was so excited to be able to go to the temple
following her baptism! She explained to us that she wants to be baptized the
first week of January to start the new year off right, which is a pretty good
reason, so we are probably going to leave her baptismal date in January.
This week we weren't able to meet
with L. She was crazy busy this week...but we saw her at church yesterday!
She's definitely struggling with telling her family about her baptism. It's so
heartbreaking because she wants it so bad, and she's so ready, but she wants
her family to support her decision. I can't imagine what it would be like. It
would be so hard to continually maintain the faith in an environment that is
unsupportive. Overall, I think that she's just feeling pretty alone right
now...I wish that she could see all of the people that are behind her! Every Sunday,
Sister Utsch and I are blown away by the amount of people that come up to us
and ask how she's doing, and ask how they can help her, or tell us how awesome
she is, or tell us how impressed they are by her testimony. Throughout the week
even, we have people asking us how she's doing. I know that Satan is really
working on her right now because she is going to be such a force for good in
the world. Please, please, please keep her in your prayers!
This week we received a hilarious
text from the K family. It was the devil emoji followed by the middle finger
emoji. We were pretty confused, and then three minutes later we got another
text that said, "Sorry. Wrong person." Hahaha, when we met with them last
night they were SO embarrassed. Turns out, MK was trying to send that to CK,
because apparently it's an inside joke. We had a pretty good laugh together. Last
night our lesson was on the Ten Commandments. The Spirit was so strong. That
family is amazing. They are progressing SO well. LK is going to be able to be
baptized soon.
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| AZ being AZ |
"Many
of you have traveled long in a personal quest for that which rings true. The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sends forth to you an earnest
appeal. Open your doors to the missionaries. Open your minds to the word of
God. Open your hearts, even your very souls, to the sound of that still, small
voice which testifies of truth. As the prophet Isaiah promised: “Thine ears
shall hear a word … saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.”
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| Africa living room |
We are so excited for Thanksgiving
this week! We aren't allowed to proselyte, but we can visit people if they
invite us, so we are going to eat three dinners haha. I think I am going to
stop eating tomorrow in order to prepare my body. Haha, just kidding. We are
eating with a less-active family in our area, with a part-member recent convert
family in Sister Utsch's last area, and an awesome active family in our area!
We are humbled by the generosity of these families in inviting us over to share
their Thanksgiving with them! We are so blessed to be able to serve such
amazing people.
I love you all! Have a great week
and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! :)
Sister Jacobson
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| AZ being AZ |
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| Africa living room |
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| $10 6' tree and a floating head |
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