Wouldn't that be a cool title if wrote for a paper? It kind of sounds like Delilah. Maybe I should go into business with her.
ANYWHO! Hey you all! I just read sumner's email and am SO SO humbled! "Our brother. OUR brother. our Brother"- (alia at 9 years old) haha. But for reals, i love sum's selfless service. I love that our family is so missionary minded. This gospel will go forth to every nation! Serious!
Well, this week was great. again. I feel like I say that every week, but it's always great being a missionary. Our heavenly father is so aware of us. Sister Soum and I were tracting and we tracted into a woman that used to be LDS. It was raining and freezing and she let us in.
We had little miracles like that all week. I love it. Our ward mission leader whispered to us and asked if we would pray for his wife to be able to get a job. haha. I was like " of course! why are you whispering??" and then he just said i feel bad asking but i know that every missionary's prayer is answered haha. It's true. I feel so close to our Heavenly Father and Savior. I'm so grateful for the sacrifice. Our heavenly father never sent us here intending for us to fail. He is so merciful and created a perfect plan so even when we do mess up, we still have a chance. How beautiful.
I second Sumner's comment on laughing. I laughed SO hard last night.
I'm so sorry for acting out in pride now or in the past. I just want to apologize now! I'm sorry if i ever hurt anyone.
I love you all and hope you have such a wonderful week! Be happy and laugh a lot!
Love , Sister Mara
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Friday, November 9, 2012
This Church is so True, It's Ridiculous!!
(I forgot to post this on October 8)
OH FAMILY! Are you as happy and ecstatic about conference as I am?!?! ahhhh hahaahahah! I'm so so so excited about the age-change for missionaries! I got chills everywhere and felt such a confirmation of the spirit. This work is about to roll forth in a way that it never has before.
Banksy and I did exchanges this week, and it was great! I could tell it was hard/sad for her to be back in Federal Way. This is where her heart is! The people love her here and she loves them so much. That's all it is about, love. People want to feel love and be loved and know that someone who loves them believes they can change. Jackie DeShannon was right on when she sang " what the world needs now is Love, sweet love" Those hippies were semi-close. Now they just need the gospel and they would make bomb missionaries!
You know, not a whole lot happened this week. We had zone conference and general conference and there were some funny stories in between. I could probably write a huge long email on all of that, but I don't really feel like it. Is that bad? I just feel so happy and overwhelmed by this gospel and the conversion that is taking place in my own life. I was talking to Banksy about how I wish that I could help more people by bringing them to the gospel and it made me sad that I hadn't had the opportunity to baptize that many people. I just am not sure what my purpose is here. And she, ever-so-wisely, said that maybe I am here for me. That sounds selfish and I would never have done this for myself. I just want to make others happy and help their lives become better, but I have come so close to the Savior and I will never ever deny that this is truly his church and gospel. It's so true, it's ridiculous. I really want to spend the rest of my life helping others to see it too!
Our Savior loves us so much. He knew that this would be hard, so he gave us the gospel to help us. Oh how glorious. I love love love being a missionary. I love our Family! and I love that sumner is living in the Philippines! hahaha CHEEEEHOOOOO!
Sorry This is Short. AHHHH! I love you alll! Never Forget it!
One Love, Sister Mara
OH FAMILY! Are you as happy and ecstatic about conference as I am?!?! ahhhh hahaahahah! I'm so so so excited about the age-change for missionaries! I got chills everywhere and felt such a confirmation of the spirit. This work is about to roll forth in a way that it never has before.
Banksy and I did exchanges this week, and it was great! I could tell it was hard/sad for her to be back in Federal Way. This is where her heart is! The people love her here and she loves them so much. That's all it is about, love. People want to feel love and be loved and know that someone who loves them believes they can change. Jackie DeShannon was right on when she sang " what the world needs now is Love, sweet love" Those hippies were semi-close. Now they just need the gospel and they would make bomb missionaries!
You know, not a whole lot happened this week. We had zone conference and general conference and there were some funny stories in between. I could probably write a huge long email on all of that, but I don't really feel like it. Is that bad? I just feel so happy and overwhelmed by this gospel and the conversion that is taking place in my own life. I was talking to Banksy about how I wish that I could help more people by bringing them to the gospel and it made me sad that I hadn't had the opportunity to baptize that many people. I just am not sure what my purpose is here. And she, ever-so-wisely, said that maybe I am here for me. That sounds selfish and I would never have done this for myself. I just want to make others happy and help their lives become better, but I have come so close to the Savior and I will never ever deny that this is truly his church and gospel. It's so true, it's ridiculous. I really want to spend the rest of my life helping others to see it too!
Our Savior loves us so much. He knew that this would be hard, so he gave us the gospel to help us. Oh how glorious. I love love love being a missionary. I love our Family! and I love that sumner is living in the Philippines! hahaha CHEEEEHOOOOO!
Sorry This is Short. AHHHH! I love you alll! Never Forget it!
One Love, Sister Mara
:)
Maloi lei lei!
Hey Family! This week was an interesting one! Matty got confirmed last night. The Bishop wanted to do it at his house so that the dad could be there. So we go over at 7 and it was such a powerful experience. His dad called us afterward and apologized for being so rude and said that matty should have been his priority.
Sepe and Rimson, our little islander family that I have been teaching for 2 months now.. we had to drop them. We share a ward with the elders, so the second we dropped them, they went by and started teaching them. AH! It hurt my heart. It felt like i broke up with someone and then they started dating someone else right away. haha. They just weren't progressing. we love them so much but they weren't making and keeping any committments. one of the elders is an islander so maybe he can work some magic on that. pray for them!
We taught the Law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom so much this week. SOmething I learned is that if people feel that you love them, you can say anything.
I really love being a missionary. You never know what you are going to get. Serious. I love the people we meet each day. I love walking everywhere in the rain. I love when there is so much opposition and you don't think anyone is going to come to church and then all of a sudden a girl from sudan comes in and stays all 3 hours and wants to learn more. I love our heavenly father. so much. My heart hurts thinking that I can never ever repay him back for the blessings in my life. I am so so humbled by the sacrifice of the bishop i'm working with and the ward mission leader. They have completely forgotten themselves and just want to help others. I love this gospel. This really is the church of Jesus Christ!
Thank you all for everything!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU! Happy Halloweenie!!!!
Love, Sister Mara
Hey Family! This week was an interesting one! Matty got confirmed last night. The Bishop wanted to do it at his house so that the dad could be there. So we go over at 7 and it was such a powerful experience. His dad called us afterward and apologized for being so rude and said that matty should have been his priority.
Sepe and Rimson, our little islander family that I have been teaching for 2 months now.. we had to drop them. We share a ward with the elders, so the second we dropped them, they went by and started teaching them. AH! It hurt my heart. It felt like i broke up with someone and then they started dating someone else right away. haha. They just weren't progressing. we love them so much but they weren't making and keeping any committments. one of the elders is an islander so maybe he can work some magic on that. pray for them!
We taught the Law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom so much this week. SOmething I learned is that if people feel that you love them, you can say anything.
I really love being a missionary. You never know what you are going to get. Serious. I love the people we meet each day. I love walking everywhere in the rain. I love when there is so much opposition and you don't think anyone is going to come to church and then all of a sudden a girl from sudan comes in and stays all 3 hours and wants to learn more. I love our heavenly father. so much. My heart hurts thinking that I can never ever repay him back for the blessings in my life. I am so so humbled by the sacrifice of the bishop i'm working with and the ward mission leader. They have completely forgotten themselves and just want to help others. I love this gospel. This really is the church of Jesus Christ!
Thank you all for everything!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU! Happy Halloweenie!!!!
Love, Sister Mara
Aua mi oe??
Hi Family!
Ok, first off- I'm so glad Elder Mahaffey is doing well. I wasn't all that worried though. haha. no offense sumbuddy. I got the message for the family fast for sum!! I'm so happy i got it in time! I just knew that the Lord would take care of you!! I was more worried about ma. haha I bet she was as sick with worry! I'm glad you are doing better Sumner! I'm so sorry you had to go through that. It's the WORST being sick on the mission. the WORST. Your companion is so sweet. I'm so happy that he took care of you. tell him thank you for me.
This week was so slow all week. Serious. No one was home. We had like zero lessons, a couple here and there but it was so slow. And we hadn't met any of our goals! sad. But saturday rolled around and we taught like 6 lessons, found 5 new investigators and put them all on date for baptism and three of them came to church! It was such a miracle. PATIENCE y'all. patience. The good lort will provide. It was beautiful.
Halloween was fun. EXCEPT our mission president decided to have a mission fast on the night of our ward halloween party. haha. Trial of faith lemme tell ya. I LOVE food. serious. We had a lot of investigators there and some people no one knew and then our phone got jacked! haha. I was so afraid to tell president. but it's all good.
So I had been praying to be able to teach a polynesian family. I don't know why, i just really wanted to and felt prompted to. When we ask for specific things that Lord answers our prayers! It's true. So one of our new investigators is a samoan boy. He is 21 and his brothers got baptized in another ward a few weeks ago. He was so prepared. We asked him to come to church with us and he said, i don't know maybe. But then he calls us an hour later and asked if we could get him a ride the next day! So cool! haha. So he came and stayed all three hours. I love him! So humble. I asked him to stop smoking and he said it would be hard but that he would do it :)
we met with Martha, the sudanese girl that showed up randomly at church last week, and her family. Her mom and sister are now new investigators and came to church and are on date for baptism for Dec. 1!!
Matty is doing well. Still by himself all the time, but he is in the scouts program now and our ward mission leader is taking good care of him!! I love that man. He is awesome.
We get to go to the temple today! So excited!! i love it there. I love you all so much!! have a good week and "live after the manner of happiness" like nephi!!!
Love, Sister mara
Ok, first off- I'm so glad Elder Mahaffey is doing well. I wasn't all that worried though. haha. no offense sumbuddy. I got the message for the family fast for sum!! I'm so happy i got it in time! I just knew that the Lord would take care of you!! I was more worried about ma. haha I bet she was as sick with worry! I'm glad you are doing better Sumner! I'm so sorry you had to go through that. It's the WORST being sick on the mission. the WORST. Your companion is so sweet. I'm so happy that he took care of you. tell him thank you for me.
This week was so slow all week. Serious. No one was home. We had like zero lessons, a couple here and there but it was so slow. And we hadn't met any of our goals! sad. But saturday rolled around and we taught like 6 lessons, found 5 new investigators and put them all on date for baptism and three of them came to church! It was such a miracle. PATIENCE y'all. patience. The good lort will provide. It was beautiful.
Halloween was fun. EXCEPT our mission president decided to have a mission fast on the night of our ward halloween party. haha. Trial of faith lemme tell ya. I LOVE food. serious. We had a lot of investigators there and some people no one knew and then our phone got jacked! haha. I was so afraid to tell president. but it's all good.
So I had been praying to be able to teach a polynesian family. I don't know why, i just really wanted to and felt prompted to. When we ask for specific things that Lord answers our prayers! It's true. So one of our new investigators is a samoan boy. He is 21 and his brothers got baptized in another ward a few weeks ago. He was so prepared. We asked him to come to church with us and he said, i don't know maybe. But then he calls us an hour later and asked if we could get him a ride the next day! So cool! haha. So he came and stayed all three hours. I love him! So humble. I asked him to stop smoking and he said it would be hard but that he would do it :)
we met with Martha, the sudanese girl that showed up randomly at church last week, and her family. Her mom and sister are now new investigators and came to church and are on date for baptism for Dec. 1!!
Matty is doing well. Still by himself all the time, but he is in the scouts program now and our ward mission leader is taking good care of him!! I love that man. He is awesome.
We get to go to the temple today! So excited!! i love it there. I love you all so much!! have a good week and "live after the manner of happiness" like nephi!!!
Love, Sister mara
Matty's Baptism!!!
Hey all! Matty got baptized :) haha. it was great! this week was so great and so full of miracles. let me just say that faith truly and really precedes the miracles. miracles don't bring faith. Wow.
So we went to matty's house at 9am, the font was filling and we had everything ready. well, he was still sleeping and his dad wasn't there!! gosh. so we rang the doorbell like 12 times and then i finally threw a penny at his window and he answered. we called the ward mission leader and he went over and got him dressed and drove him to the church. we were waiting on the "ok" from his dad and FINAlly he said yes. but he wasn't able to make it ;( my heart!!! Oh Family, i love this little matty more than anything. it's crazy how you can love someone so intensely and then 20 minutes later go to another appointment with someone else, with different problems and circumstances and love them just as much. it's a beautiful thing!!
Sister Soum is great. I feel like i'm living in Cambodia haha. her experiences, humility, faith, charity, could rival a giant. she is amazing and so intense. haha. she was the first convert in her family and they didn't talk to her for a month. She prayed for 11 years to be able to come on a mission and finally she was able to come. i love her so much. we taught a Cambodian family this week. well... she did and I listened and smiled. we taught them for 2 hours because the girl was supposed to get baptized that night. man, i felt like Sumner haha. the people would look at me and say something in Cambodian and i would just smile and bow at them and say " jah bon' haha which means 'yes' and then they would laugh. she didn't end up getting baptized ;( it's ok.
So on sunday we drove around for an hour waking up all our investigators and getting them ready for church. only one came and it was kind of dissappointing but not discouraging. We knew that we did all we could and the Lord would provide. and He did. we showed up at church and 3 investigators came! out of the blue! it was crazy. and 5 less-actives. my heart was so so happy to see them there again. I wanted to hug them all and jump up and down. how great.
an elder just returned from the philippines and talked all about the people there. he talked about his experiences and how their main efforts were to reactivate the less-actives. Sum- don't be discouraged about your investigators, reactivation is JUST as important. they are all God's children. success is measured by how much charity we feel for the people. serious. i felt so close to Sum as he was talking.
A lot more happened. i feel like it has been a month!! but i don't know what else to say haha. i love you all. thank you for your prayers and support. it's almost the end of october already. cray-cray! what is erybody going to be for halloweenie/!?!
love love love you!!!
Sister mara
So we went to matty's house at 9am, the font was filling and we had everything ready. well, he was still sleeping and his dad wasn't there!! gosh. so we rang the doorbell like 12 times and then i finally threw a penny at his window and he answered. we called the ward mission leader and he went over and got him dressed and drove him to the church. we were waiting on the "ok" from his dad and FINAlly he said yes. but he wasn't able to make it ;( my heart!!! Oh Family, i love this little matty more than anything. it's crazy how you can love someone so intensely and then 20 minutes later go to another appointment with someone else, with different problems and circumstances and love them just as much. it's a beautiful thing!!
Sister Soum is great. I feel like i'm living in Cambodia haha. her experiences, humility, faith, charity, could rival a giant. she is amazing and so intense. haha. she was the first convert in her family and they didn't talk to her for a month. She prayed for 11 years to be able to come on a mission and finally she was able to come. i love her so much. we taught a Cambodian family this week. well... she did and I listened and smiled. we taught them for 2 hours because the girl was supposed to get baptized that night. man, i felt like Sumner haha. the people would look at me and say something in Cambodian and i would just smile and bow at them and say " jah bon' haha which means 'yes' and then they would laugh. she didn't end up getting baptized ;( it's ok.
So on sunday we drove around for an hour waking up all our investigators and getting them ready for church. only one came and it was kind of dissappointing but not discouraging. We knew that we did all we could and the Lord would provide. and He did. we showed up at church and 3 investigators came! out of the blue! it was crazy. and 5 less-actives. my heart was so so happy to see them there again. I wanted to hug them all and jump up and down. how great.
an elder just returned from the philippines and talked all about the people there. he talked about his experiences and how their main efforts were to reactivate the less-actives. Sum- don't be discouraged about your investigators, reactivation is JUST as important. they are all God's children. success is measured by how much charity we feel for the people. serious. i felt so close to Sum as he was talking.
A lot more happened. i feel like it has been a month!! but i don't know what else to say haha. i love you all. thank you for your prayers and support. it's almost the end of october already. cray-cray! what is erybody going to be for halloweenie/!?!
love love love you!!!
Sister mara
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