Family and Friends,
Well, I've been officially grounded... from our car anyways. It's snowy and apparently the Church is very careful about what weather missionaries drive in. Any snow or ice and it's a no-go. Our district leader called us twice this morning telling us to be careful if we planned to drive, and then again after President Taylor called them, to officially ground us. But thankfully the Family History center we email at is only about a mile away, and in fact a random nice lady gave us a ride :) The snow here has been more like snow specks or snow pellets rather than snowflakes, but it's still making the roads a little icy.
Well, this week was a lot of tracting, because all of our investigators were either sick or busy or dropped us. But Sister Maude and I have started memorizing hymns that we can sing while we are tracting. On our 1.5 hr trip to district meeting on Friday we learned "Let Zion in her Beauty Rise." We both like that song and it's a fun one, plus it talks about missionary work and preparing people for the Second Coming of our Savior.
Well, this is about the part of my letter that I try to include some super spiritual experience...But nothing is really coming to mind....(Rereads journal) Oh well here's something. We were teaching a member couple after a lesson fell through and we were talking about the Armor of God. Sister Maude had written a lesson using both Ephesians 6 and Alma 43. In Alma it talks about 3 things the people did to have success in battle: before the battle they created armor, asked the prophet what to do, and during the midst of the battle when things were looking bad they prayed. This can have a spiritual parallel. We try to put on the armor of God and listen to the prophet to prepare us for trials and hard things in our life. But even with that there are times that things still look bad and we don't know how we will prevail. That is what prayer is there for, at the moments in trials when we don't know what else to do--we pray. The Nephites prepared all they could but they were still losing to the Lamanites. But when they prayed and called upon the Lord, the Lamanites started fleeing from them! I've been thinking a lot about prayer and it seems to come up in a lot of things I have been studying and teaching recently. I know that prayer can be that steadying and boosting power in our lives. I have talked to so many people who have such a strong testimony of prayer and how that gives them strength. Prayer is a major way we access the power of the Atonement. It is through prayer that we repent. It is through prayer that we can give up our own will and focus on the Lord's will.
I'm grateful for the teachings of the Spirit. I've decided I want to learn as much about temples from the standard works of scripture and the missionary library as possible, since as a missionary I don't get the chance to go to the temple very often. I love the temples. I'm grateful for what the Holy Spirit teaches. I've seen that almost everything I read there is something that refers to temples. I know that the Lord knows of my desire to learn about them and is blessing me to be able to see things I haven't seen before.
Sister Lila Jenson
P.S. Advice to writing to missionaries: Ask specific questions. Much of the time I'm not sure exactly what to say in a letter, so I love it when people ask me questions that I can answer. I have a feeling this is true of all missionaries (the letter writing ones anyways).
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