Sister Jacobson's Glimpses of Gilbert: Week 51: Anotha One in Dridge

January 15, 2018

Hey hey hey!!

Str8 outta dridge

Transfer calls came in last night and I am so excited to be staying in Desert Ridge for another transfer!! After this transfer I'll have been in D-Ridge for 7.5 months, making this area my longest by a long shot. I love this area so much; the people here feel like family, and I think that this week they've become self-aware of how long I've been here haha, almost every dinner we've had the members are like "wow you've been here forever!" and I'm like yeah isn't it amazing?! Haha and of course I'm so excited to be staying with Sister Small! This next transfer is going to be amazing.

Exchanges with Sister Haley

This week we had the opportunity to go on exchanges! I was with Sister Haley, a sister who has been out just under two months. During the exchange I was freaking out a little bit because she's right at the beginning of her mission and I'm 2/3 through mine. We had a great day though. She's a super quiet girl, but on our exchange she had plenty of opportunities to open her mouth and talk to people! We even handed out a couple of BOMs. She's going to be an awesome missionary.

We had a lot of little encounters this week that are not coincidences! I feel like everyone we talked to this week was either less-active members of the church, or former members of the church. One day we felt really prompted to tract this one street in our area. We started tracting, and were five or six houses in and no doors had opened. But we felt prompted to be there, so we kept knocking. About halfway down the street a door opened and we found ourselves talking to this guy named B. We had a conversation about faith in Christ and how it can help us, and he was not really interested. We asked him if he'd ever heard of the Book of Mormon and he hesitated and then said, "Yeah...I used to be LDS." We were very surprised, so we asked him when the last time he'd read it was. He told us it was in seminary, and then expressed to us that his family are "black sheep" and don't fit in with the church. We were able to testify to Him of God's love for all of His children, regardless of who they are. The Spirit was so strong as we were standing on his doorstep. I shared one of my favorite scriptures, Ephesians 4:12, which talks about the purpose of the church. It says, "For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." I think sometimes we attend church, and we see all of these beautiful people with these seemingly perfect lives and we compare their highlight reel with the raw footage of our own lives and we wonder if we really fit in with all of these people, when in reality we only see a small snippet of their lives. The church isn't a museum for us to cruise around and look at already perfected people; it's a laboratory for the PERFECTING (present tense!) of the saints. We meet together often to strengthen one another and learn how to become better. B was really touched, and we invited him to come and worship with us again. He said maybe! The rest of the time we were on that street, no other doors opened...but we know that we were sent there for B!

We had another moment where we were trying to contact a potential and this lady answered the door, said "Just a moment." and then went back inside. When she came back she invited us in. We were so scared we were about to get anti'd. (Can you tell we've had one too many bad experiences to make that be our first reaction when we're invited in?) Haha but it was pretty cool because we sat down and started talking to them, and found out that they were converts to the church! They joined about fifteen years ago, and then had their names removed from the records of the church when they began to experience discord within their family. She said, "If it hadn't caused so much contention in our family I would still be a member today." We had a great visit with them, and they told us they didn't know any of their neighbors, so afterwards we walked outside with them and pointed out a few homes for them to visit. They live in a prime spot; the stake president lives across the street from them, one of our investigators is their babysitter, and the H family (RCs from August) live just down the street from them!

D-ridge zone pencil jumping

Another night we were biking down the street in one of our neighborhoods when we saw two guys outside. We stopped and started talking to them, and they ended up telling us that they were both members, although both inactive. One of them got emotional and told us that recently he'd realized he needed God in his life. He was like "Sisters, I've messed up my life. I'm so far off the path I need to be on. I have a girlfriend and two kids and I'm not man enough to be a good boyfriend and father. I can't do this on my own. I need God." He also told us he'd recently moved in, and his girlfriend had gone to church a few times but he hadn't been yet. We told him the time that the ward met at, and the building. Then HE asked US if we had a Book of Mormon we could give to him. We were like "Of course!!" and gave him one. He was so appreciative and told us it had been years since he had his own physical copy of the Book of Mormon. Super cool!

This week we attended a baptism with T! She LOVED it. As the person was being baptized she got all teary eyed and turned to me and said "That's me next week!" It's so cool to teach someone who understands the amazing step baptism is. Right afterwards she had her baptismal interview and she passed with flying colors, so we are a go for this Saturday! We are so excited. During our lesson with her this week she asked us if we could help her do family history work so she could take her mom's name to the temple to do baptisms. :')

On Friday we had the opportunity to watch President Monson's funeral. It was a beautiful service. I know he was truly a prophet of God; I received a powerful testimony of that eternal truth when I was a sophomore in high school and President Monson came to rededicate the Boise Temple. I remember singing in the choir for the youth cultural celebration and practicing for weeks and weeks to get the songs just right, but on the night of the celebration, about five minutes before it began, the conductor got up and said, "When President Monson walks into the room, we are going to stand and sing 'We Thank Thee O God For a Prophet.'" I remember being a little surprised, because we had never sung the song as a group before, and there had been such an emphasis on perfecting the other pieces since we would be performing for the prophet. But sure enough, when President Monson walked into that room, we all stood and sang for him. I will never forget that feeling. The Spirit was so strong and I could hardly sing. The song definitely wasn't perfect; but the spiritual witness was. The Spirit confirmed to me that he was a prophet and that the Brethren of this church are men who have been called of God. It's been my pleasure to sustain him as a prophet these past ten years and I am so excited for the opportunity to sustain the new prophet tomorrow morning.

My bffs these past few weeks

We had a really funny moment on Saturday night. Sister Small and I had been talking about how frustrated we were because we felt like we were in a bit of a rut; we felt like we were doing the same stuff every single day and seeing the same exact results. We felt prompted to go by a potential investigator, and right as we were getting to her house her neighbor was outside. Her neighbor is a former investigator that we've been teaching a little bit off and on. Her name is C, and she was SO excited to see us. She goes "Oh! Thank you so much for coming!! Please, come inside and eat with us!" We were a little confused, but she was like "Please! Come inside. We have so much food." She was really persistent, so Sister Small and I eventually decided to go inside, and when we got inside we realized that it was her sister's baby shower, and also that her entire family was there, and also that we were the only ones who didn't speak Spanish. C insisted that we sit down and enjoy some food, so we sat down at this table with this entire Hispanic family...all of them speaking Spanish...us only kinda knowing one of them...eating some tostadas. Eventually we were like okay this is ridiculous...so we tried to leave but C wouldn't let us! She was like "you haven't been here long enough!! Eat more!!" so we ate some more, and then tried to leave, but she was like no!! Stay!! and we were like no really we should be going. So she settled for making us take some dessert, except it was super gross so that's the story of how we ended up on our bishop's porch holding a milky fruit cocktail asking him if we could throw it away. Haha moral of the story: if you feel like you're in a rut, the Lord will get you out of that REAL QUICK.

Yesterday we experienced a huge miracle. Our stake had fast Sunday yesterday, and during Mountain Ranch Ward's testimony meeting yesterday CK got up and said, "I'd like to bear my testimony on something I've been trying to gain a testimony of for three years." and instantaneously burst into tears. She then went on to bear powerful witness to the fact that Thomas S. Monson was a prophet of God. She described her feelings following his death, and she said that she began to search his life and his teachings, and she realized that he was a prophet of God. She said that it took him dying for her eyes to be opened. Then she described how she began investigating the lives of ALL the Brethren and she knows that they are prophets, seers, and revelators. She was bawling the entire time. And then she says "I also want to take this opportunity to thank my local leaders" and turns and looks at the bishopric and the stake presidency, both seated on the stand, and she says, "I know they are called of God." She testified of the organization of the church! If you remember, this is coming from a woman who literally one month ago testified to us that she knew that the senior leaders of the church were "conspiring men seeking to get personal gain." Sister Small and I weren't in the meeting; we were in a different meeting, but our ward mission leader told us immediately after. Sitting in ward council with Mountain Ranch yesterday was a sacred experience as the leaders of the ward described what it was like to hear CK bear that testimony. I don't think there was a dry eye in the room. The K’s have so many people praying for them, and the Spirit is truly working on this family. The coolest thing is that this isn't a result of anything that we or the ward did...this is 100% the Lord. THIS IS THE LORDS WORK. This is all in the Lord's timing. I don't know why it took her three years to gain a testimony of modern day prophets and apostles, but the Lord does. He has a plan in store for the K family and He is watching out for them. They are changing their lives, and while three years seems like a long time to us to wait for this testimony...it's just a blip in the grand scheme of eternity. The Lord's hand is in their lives and I'm so grateful to have a front row seat to watch Him do His work and aid as best as I can.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the Lord's will and His timing. Sister Small and I have spent a lot of time this week talking about how frustrating it can be to wait on the Lord. You can be doing everything right, jumping through all the right hoops, but if it's not the Lord's will then it won't happen. One of the biggest challenges in life is to submit to the Lord's will. Yesterday we sang the classic song, "I Am a Child of God" and the third verse really stood out to me:

I am a child of God.

Rich blessings are in store;

If I but learn to do His will

I'll live with Him once more.

Lead me, guide me, walk beside me,

Help me find the way.

Teach me all that I must do

To live with Him someday.

I know that the Lord truly does have rich blessings in store for each of us if we learn to follow His will. The way to the celestial kingdom is completing the Lord's will in His way. Sometimes it's difficult to do that; sometimes the Lord asks us to do difficult things that we don't want to do, but I know that He has the full, eternal picture. If we turn to God in prayer, and align our will with His, then I know He will make us an instrument in His hands. As Mother Theresa said, “It’s [God’s] work. I am like a … pencil in his hand. … He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it. The pencil has only to be allowed to be used.”

I love you! Have a great week!

Sister Jacobson