We weren't sure we'd get a letter from Lila this week since the missionaries depend on the libraries for their emailing, and yesterday they were closed. I had send her an email with several questions for her to answer.
BTW, "P-day" = Preparation day--the only day a missionary has to write letters, do laundry, shop for food etc.
Dear Mom, Dad, and family and friends,
Below are my answers to your questions.
(Oh btw, my P-day is Monday but it was a holiday yesterday so we are at the library emailing today.)
1.Who is your companion and what is she like? My companion is Sister Goodell. She is very friendly, has red curly hair, is from North Salt Lake. She is a little blunt at times, but she is really helping me to be more bold and confident in what I am saying. She has been in OK for a year, as of Thursday.
2.Where are you located? I am serving in the Oklahoma City 1st ward, which is in Northwest Oklahoma City.
3. Are you healthy? I am. :) I'm eating rather healthy and I'm not really worried about that. In fact, all this week we are going to be on bikes because we had to take our car in yesterday because they wanted to repair some dents on the top of our car. Apparently some elders decided to get on top of the car and take pictures (that is the story anyway, we don't know what actually happened).
Anyway, I have bought healthy food, and stuff for salads.
4.How are you finding people to teach? Referrals? Tracting? We have about 10 investigators, currently 7 with a baptism date. Out here they are stressing a lot inviting people to be baptized after the first lesson. There are so many churches out here and many people have been baptized several times, so they are perfectly fine saying OK to baptism, but it's harder to get people to keep other commitments like being there for appointments and coming to church. Many people we teach are in the lower economic status which means they are humble, but often they are also rather flaky. We do a lot of tracting though also--often about 3 hours a day. We also teach lessons to a few recent converts and some less active members.
I'm getting a lot better at tracting. When we go tracting we use pass-along cards. For example with The Book of Mormon pass-along card we might say something like, "Hello, how are you? We're the Missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and we are handing out a card for a free copy of the BoM. Have you ever heard of the BoM? Well the BoM is another testament of Jesus Christ and it is scripture just like the Bible. It contains the words of prophets just like Noah or Moses, but prophets in the Americas. The BoM shows that God loves all his people and gives his word to everyone, not just those living in Jerusalem.....”
We also use cards for the Bible, though everyone here has one, Finding Faith in Christ, 3 Ways to a Happier family (a booklet), a card with temples on it for the Website, and one other I can't remember. Apparently we are going to be getting new cards in the next few weeks/months that go along with the ad campaign, which would be cool.
Sister Goodell and I are going to work on asking for more referrals; apparently we are supposed to ask everyone we talk to for a referral. So this week we are going to work on that. Another companionship goal of ours is to be more on time. I'm not wonderful at being on time, but Sister Goodell has an even harder time of that then I do.
OK, so for other non-question related stuff. Guess what? I am going to be going to the Church of Christ on Wednesday night. We talked to someone and they said they would go to our church if we went to theirs. I'm actually really surprised that Sister Goodell said yes, but she has been to several other churches while she has been here. We'll also be taking a member with us when we go. Sister Goodell was like "We're going to be eaten alive" with this beaming smile on her face and I was like "Why are you so excited about that?" and she responded that we have the truth so there's nothing they can really do to us. Which is true, but still.
I saw my first Oklahoma storm on Thursday and it was pretty amazing. I like where I live, I've been learning a lot. One of the investigators we are teaching is a 23 year old college student with a 2 year old son that started investigating the church after her Mormon boyfriend broke up with her. She quit smoking and started dressing modestly on her own without the missionaries telling her anything. She has a baptism date scheduled for next Saturday but it will probably be postponed. She struggles with alcohol and a little depression. She called us on Sunday night and said that she didn't want us to call her back and didn't want to speak to anyone from church again. She and Sister Goodell have become really good friends and Sister Goodell was really hurt by that. But she called back the next morning apologized and said that she just didn't feel ready to be baptized. She went to a different ward for church and we told the missionaries to look out for her, but she left after about 30min because her son was being very loud. She also said that she will be busy with work all week, and we're going to meet with her on Saturday afternoon, but Sister Goodell is worried that her saying she is busy means she's blowing us off.
A lot of our investigators have said they will be baptized but we are having the hardest time getting them to church. We had nobody at church this week. Four of them were out of town, two of them were sick and we couldn't get in contact with the rest of them (i.e. they wouldn't answer their phones and didn't answer when we stopped by their house)
I've really enjoyed my study of The Book of Mormon recently. I've started reading it again, just going straight through, and I have learned so much and gained so many more insights. I'm sure the Holy Ghost has been with me as I study because I know that I'm not that smart on my own. For example I was thinking about how Nephi prayed to God about his father's decision to leave Jerusalem and it says that the Lord humbled him. I'm pretty sure he wasn't too excited about the idea just like Lamen and Lemuel. But he went to the Lord; he was willing to ask God if it was his will. So the Lord was able to soften his heart and go along with it even though I'm sure he hated the idea at the beginning. Reading this just gave me comfort that we can all be mad or frustrated or worried, or have all these emotions, but the real important thing is how we handle them and what we do with them. Nephi turned to the Lord and was comforted, whereas Lamen and Lemuel just complained. I know that as I submit my will to the Father I too will be comforted. Especially when tracting sounds like the worst thing on the planet.
It is kind of nice to not have to deal with lots of financial/temporal stuff. Though I've been realizing that so much time on a mission is taken up trying to find people to teach, eating/cooking, driving places, making phone calls, etc. It reminds me of something Richard Anderson said about special education teaching--that the awesome 10% was teaching and the other 90% was red tape and dealing with other people like staff and parents. In some ways a mission is the same: planning tracting, traveling, eating, studying--all take up a lot of time. And the actual hours we spend teaching aren't anywhere near to what I thought it would be. But it's hard when people don't show up to appointments, etc. And especially this week. I see why the church wants as many cars as possible even though they are more expensive. It saves us so much time. Getting places it going to take like 5x as long, at least.
I love you all very much! I know that what I'm doing is the Lord's will, and I know that I will and need to do everything I can in order to have the Spirit with me so that I can be guided. I know that as I am obedient and do all that I can to study, etc, that the Lord will strengthen me and that I will be able to succeed despite all my short falls.
Love,
Sister Lila Jenson
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