The Week in Which I Was Slapped in the Face By God

September 12, 2016

Got flowers from my Family for My 1 Year Mark!

Hey Ya'll so first full week of September.... Check! Wow. Halloween is almost here, Crazy. I keep having flashbacks to where I was a year ago and what I was doing. It's really weird. So I got softly chastised by my parents for writing a short email last week so I'll try to do better this week hahaha. Soooo what happened?

We went out to Denny's with our sisters

Okay so we had MLC a.k.a Mission Leadership Conference, this last Tuesday and it was Sister Myers first MLC! Also it was raining buckets outside which was kind of great! I love when it rains hard, it reminds me of home :) I really liked this MLC because instead of just talking about how could we be better at finding or using ward council members we actually talked about something you cant find in preach my gospel but is a huge part of being a leader. Helping struggling missionaries. What I thought was cool was as we were discussing people where sharing what helped them while they were struggling. I loved how it showed that everyone sometime on their mission will struggle. It doesn't matter who you are and you made be very good at hiding it, but we all struggle. I really liked that :) Kind of put everyone in a new perspective.

 On exchanges with Sister Christensen

Also this week we had our first round of exchanges for this transfer. We went on exchanges with the Apple Valley sisters, Sisters Card and Christensen. I went with Sister Christensen to Apple Valley and Sister Card went with Sister Myers to Lake Marion. So fun seeing old friends in the Apple Valley ward as always :) Also I found out that Sister Christensen is a movie nerd like I am!! Finally, someone could talk movies and loves them as much as I do. I haven't had a companion on my movie level yet hahaha. It was also really good that we went on exchanges cause both Sister Card and Christensen have been dealing with some personal issues and it was good to give them a break from normal routine and companion. Also it was nice to just get to talk with them and let them know that we really do care about and love them, and that they can come to us with anything. I love those sisters so much. They make me happy.

The Major Lesson Learned: So I learned a rough but really cool lesson this week. So we decided as a zone to focus on inspired goal setting and reaching and Sister Myers and I, not for lack of trying, have had a difficult time reaching our goals both daily and weekly. So on Saturday we got super excited and decided that we were going to work super hard and reach all of our daily goals for the day. It was the most excited I'd been to go out and do missionary work in a while. Like I was totally fine with cutting dinner short for more proselyting time and trying to do a bunch of finding activities. We even biked at night to save miles and try to see as many people as possible. I was so pumped and then it started getting later and later and we hadn't taught anyone. I prayed for help with reaching our goals, really reaching out to heavenly father for help. We didn't teach reach any of our goals. I was really confused and I pretty much lost the faith to find. The missionaries in the rest of our zone were all seeing awesome miracles and nothing was happening for us and I really didn't understand why. I kind of lost my desire to do things cause I didn't believe that it would work. Going to church helped a little bit with having two investigators there, but I was still pretty down after going home for lunch and comp study. I reflected on Saturday and realized that we had had the opportunity to reach every single one of our goals but we didn't open our mouths and teach. That however didn't help but made me feel like an even worse missionary, who still won't get outside her comfort zone and just flippin teach! That's all I've been called to do for this year and a half and I felt like I still didn't have it figured out! However, we got to work anyways on Sunday after lunch. We ended up having an incredible, miracle filled day. As a result of Sunday, we taught 3 lessons in less than two hours, got a new investigator, reached our weekly goals for investigators to sacrament meeting, other lessons, and referrals! The lesson I learned was this. Saturday was pretty much a smack in the face/ wake up call from god. Our job is not to worry about looking in every nook and cranny, and under every rock trying to find people. God will put him in our path. Our job is to open our mouth and testify. To bring up the gospel and like I said, just flippin teach! It was a two day lesson that I am so grateful I learned that lesson, I just hope I never forget it so I don't have to go through learning it again!

Well, Yup, That was the week :) ONLY TWO MORE SUNDAYS TILL GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! I'm so pumped!

Spiritual Thought of the Week:

So we had a lesson with Nette and Brother Lightner and Brother Lightner said something really profound that I wanted to share with you all. So we asked Bro. Lightner to share his testimony about the Book of Mormon and how he knew it was true and he started talking about the purpose of the scriptures. Basically what he said was that God doesn't want to just give us a book (either the Bible or the Book of Mormon). He doesn't want to give us words he wants us to understand feelings and develop a relationship with him and that's the best way that we can. For instance how can you communicate the meaning or feeling of faith? How can you understand God and Jesus Christ's love for us? How can we understand what forgiveness means and what repentance feels like? The scriptures are our best tool to understand these things, but the reason we need to apply them in our lives. Trying to develop faith, charity, habits or repentance, etc. Is so we can understand the feeling and meaning behind the words. That's what the scriptures are there for. To help us act and learn for ourselves. I love the scriptures so much!!! They are so amazing.

Love, Sister Richardson