FELIZ DIA DE LOS MUERTOS! Happy day of the dead y’all!! But in bigger news… BLUEBELL ICE CREAM HAS BEEN RESURRECTED TODAY!! Woohoo!! 🐮🍦❤️ (question of the day: which is better, Star Wars or BlueBell??😂)
So two big things happened this week! Last Sunday we got a new Ward Mission Leader in the Wylie 2nd Ward! Bro. Brandon Dorman (the famous illustrator…) got released 😩 he was called as a seminary teacher and will just so absolutely amazing in that calling as well! We’re sad to see him go but Bro. Clark was called and it’s going to be so great to work with him! He’s a convert to the church and has a lot of great insights and is so hard working and has incredible goals pertaining to missionary work for the area! It’ll be so great!
The second thing happened on Friday… We were low on miles this month (we can only drive 950 miles a month) and we were hitting it pretty close because we knew that we needed to drive all the way to the stake center for the Halloween Zone meeting. So on Friday we decided to walk as much as possible to save our miles. We ended up probably walking about 6-7 miles around visiting people and then our sweet bishop’s wife in the 3rd Ward kindly gave us a ride home at the end saving us
about 3 more miles of walking(: but during this whole time, it was raining and wet and icky and windy and cold… Which was fine because I had a jacket and umbrella and everything so it was an adventure lol but the real tragedy happened during the 1st mile we walked! I LOST my only name tag!!! 😖😥… I had put it on my jacket and it apparently was too thick for the magnet to handle so it fell off at some point between our apartment and the church house and I didn’t hear it because of the rain and the cars going by.. We’d already been walking for like 30 mins so we didn’t want to turn around yet, so we decided to go back and look later on our way home but we couldn’t find it… It was so sad… But it’s ok I had miraculously ordered new tags from the mission office like 2 weeks ago and so they came in today and so
they’re mailing them to me! This experience has been kind of revelatory for me though. All Saturday I felt awkward and out of place without my tag, because as a missionary it is a HUGE part of who you are. Wearing your name next to Christ’s over your heart is so comforting and it is such a reminder of who you are and who you represent.
And it wasn’t until Sunday morning when I realized that being a missionary isn’t about the tag you wear but it’s about who you are as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I love the quote from Elder Neil L. Anderson that says: “If you are not a full time missionary with a missionary badge pinned on your coat, now is the time to paint one on your heart—painted, as Paul said, “not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God.” We share this quote a lot with members inviting them to do missionary work. And so after I lost my tag, I read this again and realized that I’m not only a missionary because I received a special full-time mission call, and because I wear His name on my heart, but more importantly because I had already painted His name on my heart when I was 8yrs old and was baptized as a member of this true and everlasting Church of God. THAT is when my mission truly began and that is when I started wearing His name alongside my own over my heart. ❤️
So actually another big thing our mission is doing is we have set some hefty goals recently and this weekend there was another big push to apply them to the missionary work. I am just so psyched to be a part of accomplishing them! On Saturday before the Zone party we had a little meeting before hand. We talked about when Elder Bradley Foster came and visited the mission earlier this year. He talked about 3 stages of missionary work. 1) when missionaries do all the missionary
work, 2) when members help the missionaries and then 3) when the missionaries help the members with THEIR missionary work. We feel like, as a mission, we have been in stage 2 and are making a big push into the 3rd stage!
A few months ago before I got here, the mission had MLC (missionary leadership council) where all the zone leaders and sister training leaders got together with the assistants to the president and President and Sister Taylor. The object of this meeting was to discuss how many baptisms we could set as a monthly goal for the mission to accomplish. President Taylor had everyone at the meeting split off into 4 groups and pray and discuss for about 20 mins what they think the number should be, and then come back with a number. Well, when all everyone came back together, one after the other ALL 4 groups said they had prayerfully decided on the exact same number!! It was the number of 200 baptisms in a month. Each group came up with that number separately and on their own with the inspiration from God. And even President Taylor had that number in mind but he figured that it would
come by averaging the 4 group numbers.. But it didn’t! We have heard that experience many times and it was truly a miracle and a testimony that the Lord truly wants us to have 200 baptisms every month. That’s 200 souls in the Texas Dallas Mission area that we would be bringing back to the fold of God each and every month! That boils down to about 2 baptisms per companionship.. So for us a baptism in each Ward that we cover.
It is a pretty high bar to reach, and last month we didn’t do as well as we would have liked to, but we realized that it’s because we haven’t been involving he members in our mission goals. We were trying to accomplish it all through our own work and efforts. In order to reach this high goal we NEED to become a stage 3 mission and involve every member of the Ward in reaching this goal. To try and accomplish this, we were asked to share that experience in fast and testimony
meeting yesterday at church. And we shared the vision and goals that the mission has for this area. It was such a neat experience to do that. I know that the goals we have are from the Lord, He wants those baptisms not to just increase the number in the congregation but to give those people the gospel. We encouraged the members to do missionary work and talked about how we were there to help them share the gospel successfully. I loved being able to share my testimony of missionary work and of those goals! I also shared the experience I had with my tag missing (because a lot of members were wondering why I was wearing a “Hello my name is:” sticker instead of my name badge haha) and I invited them all to paint that badge over their hearts with the spirit of God just like Elder Anderson wrote(: it was an awesome experience!
So funny story… the other day we were reading the story of Jacob in the Bible, in Genesis chapters 29-31 and we’re reading about all the sacrifices and situations that happened in order for him to be with his true love Rachel. And the things that happened afterwards too… And as we were reading their story in Ch. 30 we came across an item that seemed somewhat familiar and sparked our interest… It seemed
that we’d heard of this certain plant from a certain Herbology professor in certain school of witchcraft and wizardry… MANDRAKES ARE REAL Y’ALL!! Guess we can officially say that J. K. Rowling is a fan of the bible(;
Halloween was pretty awesome! Being over two Wards we seemed to have a whole week of Halloween awesomeness(: we had two trunk-r-treats, 3rd Ward had theirs on Tuesday and then 2nd Ward had theirs on Thursday. Michael and his kids came to the 2nd Ward’s trunk-r-treat!!! He’s the one who’s wife is Teresa and she’d been in the hospital about a month ago and the relief society brought over meals and then she agreed to take the lessons.. But we haven’t been able to get back in with them so it was amazing that Michael brought his two kids Evan and Haidyn to
the activity! AND he was wearing his BYU tshirt haha he totally fit right in and it’s sounding like he’s planning on coming to church next week!! and we have a lesson with the whole family on Wednesday! I’m so excited!! I love that family so much!
And so on Saturday for Halloween, since we aren’t allowed to proselyte after 6pm on Halloween we had a Zone meeting/party instead(: it was really fun! We played Ultimate Frisbee and some other group games! I scored the winning point for our team in Ultimate (: it was awesome! I love the missionaries in our district and zone.
Also a few days ago we stopped by a less active member named Staci. Who is also a return missionary. We knocked on the door and nobody answered so we decided to contact around her house. We talked this man who was interested in coming to church(: While we were talking to him we saw a car pull in to Stacis house. After we finished talking to him, we decided to give Staci another try. She was SO nice! The whole time she talked about her mission and how much she loved it and didn’t
want to leave the field. She loves missionaries and loved having us in her home. One of the experiences she shared from her mission was when her and her companion had knocked on this mans door. He didn’t really want to talk so they asked if they could sing for him. They sang “I Am A Child of God” and she said it touched him so deeply and they were able to minister to him. We told her we wanted to share a song with her and that we had a ukulele. We quickly dashed out to the car and
grabbed Sister Jorgensen’s uke (which we weren’t actually going to bring that day, but last minute thought “why not?”) and we sang “I Am A Child of God” for her. She was so sweet about it and sent it to our families and even posted it on Facebook! We felt the Spirit so strongly there. Staci helped us feel so loved and we truly felt love
for her as well! We hope that we can get her to come back to church soon!
I love this gospel SO much and everyday is a new adventure in bringing God’s truth to those who need it ❤️ I love y’all so much and I hope that each one of you can find the happiness that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has brought into my life and will surely bring to yours if only you seek it out(:
Much love,
Sister Swan
P.S. Sorry that was so long haha.. I just love y’all extra much this week! 😉