Monday, March 7, 2016

Lindsay - February 29, 2016

Zone Conference

Hello Everyone!! I hope you all had a fantastic week! This week was crazy, but so good!

On Monday, Sister Steele and I had an amazing experience! We visited one of our recent converts named Frank. He is dating a girl named Chelsea, and so we are teaching her and helping her to prepare for baptism. When we got to the house, Chelsea was asleep, so we decided to read the scriptures with Frank. He always loves reading the scriptures because it helps him to invite the Spirit more into his life. As we were reading, Frank asked his daughter Meghan to come and read the scriptures with us. She told him that she was going to walk the dogs, and then she would come over. Meghan isn't a member and doesn't really have an interest in being a Mormon. She has also had some struggles in her life, and has been involved with drugs. But during the reading, Meghan came out and sat in the lesson with us! We talked about the chapter and started talking about the Book of Mormon. We asked Meghan to read the last two paragraphs of the Introduction, and we talked about them. The Spirit was so strong in that lesson! At the end, we were going to say a prayer. I thought that Frank would volunteer, but then out of the blue, Sister Steele asked Meghan to say the prayer!! Meghan hesitated and said that she didn't know how to pray. So we taught her and she said the prayer! We could feel the love that God had for her as a daughter of God. I hope and pray that she felt the Spirit. 

On Tuesday, we met with Ida and Jim! Ida isn't a member, and Jim is a less active. They are an older couple and Oh they are so stubborn!!! Usually we have been too scared to invite Ida to baptism, but we planned to invite her at the end. We decided to talk about the Book of Mormon. Literally the whole time, Ida was testing our faith, and what we believed in! It was really intense! Sister Steele was getting a little steamed up towards the end:) haha! We also asked Jim if he had a testimony of the gospel. He told us honestly that he didn't know. So we are going to focus on helping them discover for themselves the blessings of the gospel. We asked Ida if she would read the Book of Mormon. She told us that she didn't think she had enough strength to read the Book of Mormon and accept the message that it contains. So we are going to work very hard with the both of them! We are giving this challenge to the Lord!! 

We also visited with Tucker who is our recent convert. His sister and Mom are less active, and so it has been awesome to help them come back to church. This week we invited them to attend church consistently. They said that they would! And guess what?? They came to church!! And the mom accepted a calling!! We are so excited about that! Later that night we had a lesson with our investigator Maryanne. She is the sweetest thing, but her thoughts are all over the place!! So it has been hard to find a direction in the lesson! We brought a member with us who is a recent convert to the church. So Maryanne was Baptist, and so was the member that we brought! So it was amazing to see them connect that way! 

On Wednesday, we met with an older lady named June. She reminded me so much of Grandma Bliss! She was the sweetest thing. She talked about her wonderful family, and how blessed she was to have some many wonderful people in her life. :) We also had a lesson with Floyd. It was an amazing lesson! Sister Steele randomly brought up the idea that we should talk about baptism with him. I had never thought of that topic before! So I said, "Let's do it!" The Reynolds came with us, and we talked about the reason why we get baptized, and the purpose and symbolism of it. He told us that he had never thought of it that way before. I just know that we strengthened his testimony of baptism! :) We also met with Jason, and taught him about baptism and confirmation. We invited him to be baptized, and he said yes, but the Mom didn't want to set a date. She wants to wait until he retains more of the missionary discussions, and knows what decision he is making. But they haven’t been to church, and so it's hard because that is how Jason WILL learn!! By going to church, AND taking the missionary lessons, AND praying and reading his scriptures. So it is going to be tough, but hopefully we can get them to come to church!

On Wednesday, we had an awesome lesson with Devan! We talked about the Priesthood and Baptism. Devan has been hesitant to set a baptismal date because he wants to fully quit smoking before he gets baptized. We had the lesson at the Alder home which was so good for Devan. Brother Alder works with Devan so they are good friends. When we started teaching the lesson, it was so hard for us to teach about the priesthood! But Brother Alder was so good, and he explained the priesthood perfectly! At the end of the lesson we asked if Devan was ok with setting a baptismal date. He was still hesitant. But then Brother Alder comes in and says, "A word of caution", he proceeded to tell Devan that he didn't have to be perfect before or after baptism, but that setting a date would help him and motivate him to be ready on a certain date. So we set a specific baptismal date with Devan!!! Brother Alder helped so much in that lesson! It was amazing! We then went to a scout activity, and taught the scouts about the gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the scouts wasn’t a member so we taught him which was nice! 

On Friday we had Zone Conference from 10 to 3. It was so fun! I played the piano a lot, which was such a tender mercy!! When we got home, we had dinner, and started weekly planning! We did it for the rest of the night! We barely got it done! Planning for 3 wards is a long process!! 

On Saturday we met with 3 less actives! We taught the Restoration with all of them and it was amazing! For Zone Conference our challenge for March is to teach the Restoration at least once every day! It is definitely a hard challenge! But we had done good so far! I learned so much about how we can apply specific principles to the people that we teach. There are so many principles in the first lesson that I love, and Sister Steele and I love teaching the Restoration! 

We ate dinner later that night with the Lucas's. They are a less active family, and their daughters are taking the missionary lessons from us! We are so excited! The mother is a facebook recipe person, and so she experiements all the time! She fed us a green chile chicken lasagna!! It was really good! At the end of our visit, Sister Lucas showed us this game called, "Bean Boozled". So there are two types of jelly beans: For example: Moldy cheese, or buttered popcorn, toothpaste or berry blue, skunk spray or licorice, barf or peach, lawn clippings or green apple etc. And so how you play the game is one person gets the gross one and the other gets the really good one. So you both have to pop it in your mouth!! And that is the game!! They told us that when they played it, one of them totally barfed. haha!! So we are going to play that game next time we meet with them!!! I am so excited!! 

Sunday was such a great day! Sister Steele and I need to be taught because we are so used to us teaching! So it was very nice to have a break! We attended ward councils during the sacrament meetings of our other wards, so it was a bit crazy. But this one girl in one sacrament meeting  told the story of Ponchinello (I think that is how you spell it?) But I remember that book from my childhood, and I almost started crying! She related it to how God has made us and He loves us. He accepts us the way we are, and we shouldn't let other people's opinions stop us from progressing in life. So it was really good! I LOVE being a missionary! It is such a roller coaster, but I love it!

I love you all, have a great week!

Sincerely,

Sister Dunn

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