INTERVIEWS

                                        

We have had such a wonderful week. Three big things three days in a row and many other wonderful visits with people!

We have been trying to visit this one member for a while and finally got in! Her 9 year old son was baptized in January and she finally signed the confirmation papers. But we had such a wonderful visit with her. She has two cute, cute boys. I am excited to work with them more! That was a huge miracle this week.

Saturday we had to drive to Springfield, Mass for the BYU-Idaho sinfonietta performance, our zone was to help direct the people to their seats. It was such a fun night. The concert was in a HUGE, beautiful Methodist church so we took lots of pictures. We really bonded with our zone so that was so much fun. We are the biggest zone geographically so we hardly have a chance get together. It was a great night.

                                                                                                                    

Then, Sunday, we had a busy day. Church was wonderful; there was a new missionary who is leaving on his mission, who gave his farewell. That night we had to drive to Weston, Mass to have our "special meeting" for the missionaries who are leaving between now and October. IT was such an amazing and inspiring night. They want to prevent "trunkiness". There were so many wonderful things that were said. But one thing that really hit me was that we need to sprint to the finish line, we can't coast. For example, when we are running a race and we get to the end, are we going to slow down and walk to the finish line, or will you sprint to the end, to finish it off good? I think the latter. I wish I could talk about it with you all in person because it was so incredible. I swear we always have such amazing meetings. The spirit is always so palpable; you can't help but be motivated to dedicate your whole selves to the Lord. They talked a lot about dedicating our whole heart, might, mind, and strength, individually and collectively. I learned so much in this wonderful meeting. I think one of my favorite quotes from that night is, "As we allow the Lord to hasten His work through us, He hastens the work in us."

Monday, we had interviews with President. This was awesome! I always feel so loved and uplifted and encouraged after meeting with President Packard. While he was interviewing the Assistants to the President and the Zone leaders gave training on building Zion or unifying the companionship. I absolutely LOVE this concept and am always striving to perfect it. So I loved the training, we have so pretty awesome leaders in this mission. We can always work on building Zion.

                                                                                                              

One last thing, but the greatest of all, last night we had a dinner/teaching appointment with a new investigator!!! She was a media referral that we got last week. So we stopped by last week and found out that her fiancé is a jack Mormon whose family is still strong in the church. His brother referred them to us (with their permission). They were so open! This is very unusual for a media referral. We knocked on their door and once they knew who we were they immediately let us in, sat us down at their table and talked our ears off. Brother M (her fiancé) told us all about how he went to seminary when he was young and knew all about home teaching and everything. T (the investigator) grew up as a Jehovah's Witness but converted to Islam at the age of 22 (she is probably in her mid-late 40's). They invited us for dinner on Monday and said we could teach her before or after dinner. They then invited us to use their laundry appliances if we needed them. They were seriously amazing! Who knew!

So back to last night, we were going to be late because of interviews being an hour away. So we called a member to go over and let them know because the number we had for them was wrong. :( The member was so sweet and willing. She and her fairly recently returned missionary went over. They told us how Tand Brother M was so excited to have us over and they were so grateful that the members came over to let them know. Now we have some fellowshippers! It worked out so well. We had a wonderful dinner with them, they told us we were already adopted into their family and that we are expected to come over every Monday night for family home evening and to come by whenever we want. Tara has three teenage boys, two of them were there. They are such a cool family!! They seem so golden. But when we taught our lesson, only T listened in, though Brother M would come in once in a while, and the youngest boy would too. I am not sure T will convert quickly but I know that we are planting a huge seed in their home. It was such a cool experience because I know that we are making a difference in their lives already. I think it will take them a while to figure out the truth for themselves but I know they will find it someday. But as for right now, we will be seeing them every Monday night, and they are coming to the spring fair we have this Saturday AND they are probably coming to church! AAHH I am so excited I can hardly contain it. I just love them so much already! They have a lot of things to work on, but I am ready to work on those things with them!!

Hope you all have a wonderful week!! I am glad the wedding went well!

Love, Sister Eliza

Boston Temple & Samoan Food

                                                 

Hello lovely family!

We have had a pretty good week, we met with our investigator again (finally) this week! It was perfect timing too. It was a rainy, gloomy day and we had been driving a lot and we were tired. But we decided to still swing by and see M. She came to the door and looked at us like she didn't know who we were so I asked if she remembered us and she said of course! She started telling us about how it wasn't a good day because she was worrying about her son who was in the hospital. But I quickly said "can we say a prayer for him with you?" She automatically said yes. She we prayed with her while standing outside her door and she was just inside the door. After the prayer she thanked us and asked if there was anything else we wanted to do with her. We said actually we had a message prepared to share with her and she invited us in. She talked about how it was kind of funny that we showed up that day because it was one of her worst days. She was worrying not only about her son but her daughter who is an alcoholic and many other things. She said she knew we were there for a reason and she felt God's love through us. We shared the Restoration with her and she seemed to really enjoy it, though she seemed a little questionable about the Joseph Smith story. But she wants to continue learning more about our church because she says "there ought to be something about this church because you girls just glow, you are sweet, good girls." She always compliments us for our work and thinks it's the best thing ever to have young people dedicating our lives to God. It was a pretty awesome visit.

We also had a wonderful visit with this cute young mom with two little boys. We were thinking about whom we could visit and since I don't know very many people still, I was looking through the branch list reading names. Most of them Sister Endemann said no but then we came to J's name and she said, "We can ask her". So we did and she said we could come over the next day! Sister Endemann told me that when the sister missionaries go over there J's mother is usually there (her mom is a branch missionary). But Sister A (her mom) wasn't there! Sister Endemann said that means that J trusts us; though it was actually both our first visit with her. We had a wonderful visit with her. She is so cute. We are hoping to work with her family more. Her husband was baptized three years ago and is kind of less active, they haven't been sealed in the temple yet and she really wants that to happen. So hopefully we can help them!! 

Yesterday we were able to go to the temple! It was so amazing and just what I needed. We had a great time in Boston for a little while, though we didn't get to go to downtown Boston to see the marathon. We came back to North Brookfield and Sister Endemann's mom's friend who lives out here came over and made us a delicious Samoan dinner! It was so good. Then she spoiled us by buying our groceries. She was so sweet. It was a pretty great day.

Hope ya'll had a wonderful Easter Sunday!! Ours was pretty good. We had a busy Sunday with playing a musical number in Sacrament meeting, teaching gospel principles and young women’s. But we had a wonderful dinner with  The Allen family! Three non members were present and we were able to share a message when missionaries aren't usually allowed to when Brother Allen's non member parents are there. We felt pretty successful. They were wonderfully kind people.

I love you all so much! I hope this week goes well for Nathanael and Whitney! I can’t wait to hear all about it :) Good luck and Congratulations!!

Love,

Sister Eliza

The Sun is Shining!

Me & Sister Endemann

It has been a pretty busy week! We had some wonderful visits with members and non members. There was one visit that I thought all were active members but no… one was a former investigator! He comes to church and everything so I totally thought he was a member until after we left and Sister Endemann told me he wasn't! That was a shock. So we have some pretty awesome low lying fruit up in this place!  Woot!

Another "low lying fruit" visit was with this sweet older lady in the ward, she had us for lunch and her dear friend, C. Sister K told us that C was not interested in listening to the missionaries but she likes the spiritual messages and having those religious discussions. Well, I thought that is basically the same thing. So we were prepared to talk about the restoration, but instead talked about something else. She asked us a ton of questions about the church and said she felt like a lot of her questions were being answered. So naturally I asked her if she wouldn't mind us coming by sometime to answer more of her questions. She said she would have to think about it, but I gave her our number so she could call. We will definitely keep up with Sister K on doing "what's next" with our dear friend C :).

Another exciting event that happened was we were able to go visiting teaching with a cute young mother who has never done visiting teaching before, because she is super shy. Shyer that I am, let me tell you. Anyway, we told her we would go with her and we would even give the message. She bore her testimony and LOVED it! I was so happy. We will probably continue to go with her for a few more times so she feels more and more comfortable. Don't you just love the work of salvation! It doesn't matter what way you are doing it as long as you are helping it along!

We had a wonderful Sister's conference this week. It was such an empowering and uplifting day! I loved every minute of it. It was such a wonderful, full of the spirit day. I wish I could share exactly how wonderful it was so all of you could be just as inspired and enriched as I was! President and Sister Packard are incredible.

Reunion with former companions at the Sister's Conference
Sister Grant

Sister Preszler

                                              

Sister Endemann and I played in a musical fireside for a ward in our stake. It went pretty well, I will send you a video of it soon. It took us about an hour to get there and the whole fireside was less than an hour itself! But it was great. They had the new amazing portable visitor’s center there that our mission created! It was the first time they displayed it and it was incredible. Such an amazing thing that is going on here! I just loved it.

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter week continually thinking of the Savior and what He did for us. I love you all so much!

Love,
Sister Eliza

Sister Endemann is a pro bowler!!

“TAKE UP THE JOYFUL BURDEN OF DISCIPLESHIP”

Hello!

I know, everyone is talking about Conference, but really. Wasn't it just amazing! I loved it so so much. So I just wanted to share with you some of my thoughts.

This week Sister Endemann and I have been having some pretty awesome spiritual conversations. Seriously takes up at least half of our daily companion study. It is pretty sweet. It seemed like conference touched on every single one of our conversations this week too! I loved hearing something and it reminding me of the conversation we had just that morning or the day before. For example; I had been studying the March ensign, the article on Wayward children (which by the way, is so good!). President Eyring's talk totally related to that article. I loved when he said that each day we can choose to make or keep a covenant to God. Even though we have entered into the covenant of baptism we can still make small covenants with God each day. We can covenant, like President Haight (in MBM presidency), to share the gospel with someone everyday, or to study the scriptures everyday. We can choose to make those covenants with God everyday, and we can choose to keep them. I love it!

I wish I could talk about all of my thoughts on each of the talks! But I really wanted to talk more about our call to discipleship. We can be members of the church without being disciples of Christ. Each day we need to recommit ourselves to being Disciples of Christ, even when we have to stand alone. I loved that theme of conference. It kind of scared me in a way because we will only be more and more tested. I feel like the theme of standing strong and holding up your faith was such an emphasis. We never know what is going to happen but right now I feel as though I need to strengthen my faith and be determined as a disciple of Christ to always uphold His name.

I had another thought but I totally lost it... I will try and remember it for next week. But for now I love you all and hope for your continuing faith and diligence and love for the gospel of Jesus Christ! I LOVE being a servant of the Lord and preaching the gospel to every person I meet. I feel like Alma in Alma 29:1, "O That I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!" I wish I could share the joyful and wonderful gospel! The more I study it the more I am completely dedicated and converted. I still have a long way to go but I love this gospel with all of my heart. If only we could share it with every people!!

Love,

Sister Eliza

p.s. a sweet quote from President Packard. "When we follow Satan we give him power. When we follow Christ He gives us power."

We made sushi this week!