Happy 6 months!! I’ve officially been a missionary for 6 months! Dang… It’s sad that I’m already 1/3 of the way through.. yikes!
This week has been crazy! In a good way(: After emails last week we went and played sports with the Zone! That was super fun. We played chair soccer and one of the big Samoan Elders in my district kicked the ball at me and just NAILED my leg with it.. haha that was last week and I STILL have a wicked bruise where it hit me lol. the best part about it was the fact that I was already out when he hit me!! What a goober.. I tried to take a picture of my lovely bruise for y’all, but alas the camera just didn’t do the gorgeous black, purple and blue colors any justice.. maybe next time hahaOn Tuesday my testimony of following spiritual promptings really grew! We had planned for our day the night before as always, but right as we were about to walk out the door we felt impressed to swing by our investigator Anna’s house before we went to our next appointment. Well.. it was exactly what she needed. We stopped by at the precisely right time for us to help her in her time of need. And later that evening we felt impressed to stop by a member’s home where they’ve been struggling in the past few weeks. We hadn’t planned to teach them anything so in a last minute effort the Spirit told us to just play a game of Jenga with them and read Helaman 5:12 and talk about how we can strengthen our foundations! They then expressed that it was exactly what then needed to hear at that time. And so once again, following the Spirit to do random things blessed us and both these families. I’m so grateful for the Gift of the Holy Ghost 🙂 I know that as long as we listen carefully and are worthy to receive answers, God will provide us with what to do or say through the Holy Ghost.
We met with Estella again this week with Sis. Barron! It was great to see those two connect(: Hopefully through Sis. Barron we can see Estella and her husband Sergio make it back to church!
On Thursday it was Sister Stott’s One Year mark! so we celebrated by making a batch of Gluten-Free no bake cookies by just adding coconut flour instead of oatmeal(: SO yummy!! they taste like coconutty brownies 🙂 and they’re completely lactose and gluten free when made with coconut milk and butter substitute! woohoo!
On Sunday we had our Area Broadcast and heard from some of our General Authorities of the Church! I feel lucky to have been able to be a missionary for Texas’ Area broadcast and the Pacific Area one too! It was an incredible broadcast and it felt like they were speaking directly to me!
Our Area President (Kevin W. Pearson) spoke about trusting in God and acting on the faith we have in Him. He told us how in order to trust God we need to 1st: Know God and know His character, 2nd: Have personal prayers to build a relationship with God, 3rd: Obey His commandments and serve God by serving others, 4th: Yield our will to God’s and act according to His will, and 5th: We need to receive, sustain and follow God’s servants the Apostles and Prophets. 🙂 I loved it because he also said that it is through trusting in God that fear and weakness truly leave our beings. And we can find strength in Him. He shared a story about a famous tight-rope walker who tight-roped walked across Niagara Falls several times while doing tricks and leaps in front of a large audience. When just walking/doing tricks became boring he asked the audience “How many of you believe I could walk across whilst pushing a wheel barrow?!” the audience cheered and truly believed he could!! So he got ready to walk across with his wheel barrow and right before he started to go, he spun around and asked “ok so since you all believe I can do this, who of you will ride in the wheel barrow?” suddenly the crowd got quiet.. they all had faith in the man, but none of them trusted him to risk their own life. This story can then relate to the gospel. How many of us not only have faith in God and his plan, but also trust Him enough to hop in His sacred “wheel barrow” as He tight-rope walks us across our life?
Elder Tad R. Callister of the 70 spoke also(: He spoke about taking the “Spiritual Offense”. That it’s not enough to just constantly defend from Satan’s advances, but we must step forward to fight to win against him! A football game can never be won without taking the offensive side, the best you could ever hope to do with the best defense in the world is merely tying 0-0. So likewise as Satan fights against us in this world, we need to be doing everything we can to counteract his offenses. Things like praying everyday, multiple times a day, reading our scriptures everyday and obeying the commandments like going to church! These things are what make us PRO players in the Gospel! And Satan doesn’t stand a chance against those who go PRO 😉
I guess to wrap things up… Sister Stott had a pretty eventful week, because as well as it was her year mark on Thursday it was her 21st Birthday yesterday on the 28th! (that’s today for all y’all in the States haha) So we literally had meal appointments after the broadcast back to back to back to back to back… yep 5 of them!! And I thought double dinners were bad… lol But we truly felt the love of the ward and got to teach 5 lessons because all of them except our Bishop had a Less-Active/Investigator/Recent Convert present for the meal appointment! It was a great day(: And Sister Stott got her Key!!! haha it’s a polynesian culture thing here for those who turn 21 to receive a Key 🙂 she was SOOOOO excited! haha I’m jealous.. I won’t turn 21 in the mission so no key for me haha but I’m happy for her! I think she had a pretty good day (: I drew her a giraffe for her birthday! haha she’s as obsessed with giraffes as I am with pineapples x) (see?? I found a baby pineapple!)
Hope you have a great week!
​Love y’all heaps,
Sister Swan
