March
19, 2018
Hello hello!
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| Blockin out the haters |
Right on par with the other weeks of this transfer, this one
breezed by. Sister Rowley and I are staying SO busy this transfer and the Lord
has really opened up the windows of heaven and given us so many blessings!
There is not enough time in the world to talk about all the miracles we've seen
this week...but here are just a few highlights:
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| Exchanges with Sis. King |
This week I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with
Sister King! We were together in my area, and I led out this area for the first
time! I was really stressed, but we had an awesome day together. I've served
around Sister King a lot, and she's been in my stewardship several times but
we've never been on an exchange together. We were excited for the opportunity
to spend the day together! She goes home at the end of this transfer so we were
able to set goals and make plans for her to be able to finish her mission
strong. A little bit of a silly story: We were trying to contact this potential
investigator living in the apartments in our area, and we ended up meeting this
guy named C. He was just getting home from the grocery store and wasn't in the
mood to talk to us, so I just ended up asking him if there was anything we
could do for him and to my surprise he goes, "Actually yeah...know any
good steak recipes??" Haha but then it was his turn to be surprised
because I was like, "Yeah! Throw some soy sauce, pepper, and pressed
garlic in a bag and marinade the steak for like fifteen minutes, cook the steak
four minutes on each side and you'll be golden!" It was awesome! I've been
told by several people I make tasty steak, so I'm glad I was able to help him
out. A little bit of a silly story, but it was a good reminder to me that it is
truly inspired that we are in our specific areas, contacting these specific
people!
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| K's baptism |
This week was also K's baptism!! This was an event that
Sister Rowley and I were really looking forward to because we knew that the
Spirit would be super strong. It did not disappoint! K was SO excited for her
baptism. She was baptized by her nephew, and as he said the prayer, K started
bawling. She was SO excited to be able to make that covenant and come closer to
Jesus Christ. The Spirit flooded the room, and I just know that Heavenly Father
was so proud of her. Teaching K made repentance and forgiveness so real for me.
She had strayed off the path and had made some not-so-good decisions, but she
was still able to come back to the fold! Watching K be baptized boosted my testimony
of the fact that our Father in Heaven and our Savior are always reaching out to
us, even beckoning us to come home! It was definitely a special night.
Sister Rowley and I taught C and M again this week. M has
been investigating the church for a while now, and C has recently started
investigating. We decided to teach a lesson entirely 100 percent on the
Atonement of Jesus Christ. It was one of the most powerful lessons of my
mission. We realized that our investigators cannot draw strength from the
Atonement if they don't even understand/know what the Atonement is. One of my
favorite conference talks is Bruce R. McConkie's "The Purifying Power of
Gethsemane," (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1985/04/the-purifying-power-of-gethsemane?lang=eng)
and in this talk he says, "The Atonement of Christ is the most basic and
fundamental doctrine of the gospel, and it is the least understood of all our
revealed truths." I know that to be true! There is so much about the
Atonement of Jesus Christ that we do not understand, but what we do understand
is that Christ suffered and died for us, so that we might repent and be able to
return to our Father in Heaven. We can never study it enough. We started with
the most basic of the basics, down to explaining what the Garden of Gethsemane
was. C in particular really enjoyed the lesson, and we are looking forward to
building upon what we talked about last week in this upcoming week!
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| Exploring ASU! |
Some very exciting news: the ASU Polytech campus is in mine
and Sister Rowley's YSA area and this week we found out that we can proselyte
on it! Our whole mission’s accepted truth has been that proselyting wasn't
allowed on campus, but we think that no one ever asked and that everyone just
assumed that we couldn't proselyte there. We met with the institute director
this week and found out all the dos/don'ts, and then we went and explored
campus! This is seriously uncharted waters for our mission and we are super
nervous but also super excited...the closest we'll ever get to opening a new
area haha! It's gonna be a YSA goldmine!
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| Parking detail like a boss ft BofM giftee |
This week we had the opportunity to
do service at the Roots and Boots Rodeo. It was a four hour long service....and
we were assigned to parking detail. Sounds super lame, right?? WRONG!! We were
assigned to parking detail with four teenage guys, and all of them were
juvenile delinquents. I'll be honest, at first I didn't have the best attitude,
and I was a little bit afraid of them haha but we struck up a conversation with
them, and it turned out that they had tons of questions about missions and our
religion! We ended up teaching them the restoration as we were directing
traffic! The Spirit was surprisingly really strong, and at the end we were even
able to give a Book of Mormon to one of them. He said he would read it,
because at the very least we had piqued his curiosity! Also, while we were
there with them I felt a very strong amount of gratitude for the influence of
the gospel in my life. Every single good thing in my life I can attribute 100%
to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel has provided me with such a sure
foundation, and has given me an eternal perspective. These guys were so kind,
and have so much potential, but at the present have just lost their way a
little bit. Their foundation for their lives isn't quite as sturdy, and seeing
first-hand how badly they need the gospel lit a fire under me again to work as
hard as I can to bring this gospel to all of God's children!
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| Best part: there's no camera! |
This week we also picked up a new investigator! We met with
T twice this week. He's the one that came to church last week and was finished
with 1 Nephi. Our first lesson with him was definitely not our best. The Spirit
was super strong and Sister Rowley and I were both teaching in unity really
well, but T was definitely overwhelmed. He told us that he has autism, and in
our lesson it became pretty clear because he had a really difficult time
communicating with us. We would seriously ask him a question and then sit there
for like three minutes waiting for him to answer. When we figured out that the
questions were making him uncomfortable, we just ended up teaching the lesson
with minimal questions (literally what we're not supposed to do), testifying,
and closing. That night we sent him a message inviting him to read 2 Nephi 31
before our next lesson with the question in mind: What was the example that Jesus
Christ gave us? The next day he responded and said, "I read the chapter
and the example that Jesus Christ gave us was being baptized. What else can I
read??" So awesome! We sent him some additional things to read before our
next lesson.
On Saturday night T was seriously a
different person. He apologized for our first lesson, and said that meeting new
people makes him really nervous. He opened up so much more, and the lesson went
significantly better! We taught him the Plan of Salvation, and really focused
on how this was God's plan for Him. Right at the beginning of the lesson I felt
really prompted to share Jeremiah 1:5 (Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and
before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.), and basically just testified super simply that God knew T
and loved him. T's response literally broke my heart. He goes, "That's
really nice to know...because that tells me that I'm not a mistake." In
that moment I felt so strongly the love that God has for T. I know that He
knows T personally! And I know that T is definitely not a mistake. I am a firm believer
that understanding our divine identity as children of God changes everything
about our lives. So many of our problems can be solved by the knowledge that
God is our Father in Heaven, He loves us, and nothing that we or anyone else
does can ever, EVER change that. We only made it halfway through the Plan of
Salvation, and T loved it! He's completely fascinated by eternal families, and
by the idea that God has a specific plan for each and every one of us. Haha
this part is funny: At the end we invited him to baptism, and he goes
"I've been doing some research on my own...here let me show you." and
Sister Rowley and I were like oh great he's gotten into anti stuff, but then he
turns his phone around and he literally had Preach My Gospel, Chapter 12
"How Do I Prepare People For Baptism and Confirmation" pulled up and
had read all of it. We were DYING haha! He goes, "based off of the
qualifications for baptism listed here...I am not currently ready to be
baptized, but I would like to be led in that direction and would like to work
towards that." He’s literally so golden. We are so excited to keep working
with him!
We had two lessons with A this week! The first lesson we
read the Book of Mormon with her, which was super cool because she was
at 1 Nephi 8, the tree of life. We were able to read with her and explain the
symbolism, which she loved. She told us that she feels the Spirit so strongly
every time she reads the Book of Mormon and she also told us that the
peace that the Book of Mormon brings into her life is unlike any other
she's ever felt before. We were super bold and testified to A that this was her
answer that this was true, that this is Christ's church restored to the Earth,
and the Spirit was really strong!
Then last night...the coolest thing happened. Every month
our mission has a new member fireside, where three or four recent converts are
selected to share their conversion story and testimony. We brought A, and it
was so packed that we were unable to sit next to her. We had her and her
boyfriend sit down and then Sister Rowley and I sat a few rows ahead. The
fireside was awesome, as it usually is, and when it ended we turned around to
see A BAWLING. We were like...shoot what happened?? We went up to her and asked
her if it was a good cry or a bad cry, and she said it was a good feeling in
her heart. Then she told us that she had never felt anything so powerful
before, and she told us that she was confused as to why she was crying and
couldn't stop. We testified to her that it was the Spirit, and she said that
she knew it was. We asked her what the Spirit was telling her to do, and she
said, "I need to tell my mom that I want to get baptized." and then
we said, "And how do you feel?" and she said she was scared. Sister
Rowley and I both bore testimony that God and Jesus Christ were with her
through this, and that Jesus Christ had walked this path alone so she didn't
have to. We promised her that God would help her know not only how to bring it
up, but what to say, and she said that she knew He would. It was seriously so
awesome. It's not very frequent that you get to see your investigator receive
their answer that the church is true and that they need to be baptized, but
last night we were able to experience that with A. I love being a missionary!
You can't make things like this up! The gospel of Jesus Christ is REAL and it
is the greatest thing in the whole entire world.
I love you all! Thank you for the love and support and
prayers; I truly feel every one of them!
Sister Jacobson
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| Playing ball with a 7 year old |
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| Playing ball with a 7 year old |
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| Roasting dawgs at FHA |
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| S'mores! |
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