October 28, 2013

Hey everyone!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Today we are doing a "pumpkin fest" with the sisters in our apartment for our p-day! woohoo! we are baking pumpkin things and carving pumpkins! im going to do one of our mission president haha its going to be great. Im pretty excited about it. haha I'll be posting pictures, dont you worry.

So. some great events that happened this week is that fall is just beautiful! I'm starting to feel that Minnesota chill coming on. Okay so we had our first new missionary training meeting this last week and we were telling the president things that are good about a mission and things that are difficult about a mission and one of the new sisters is from Australia (she has a really cool accent) it's 30 degrees outside right now, and she yells out in her Australian accent "the cold weather!" haha and then president clements laughed and said well it's going to drop another 130 degrees. haha cant wait.

Okay so Minnesota has like ten million squirrels. There are so many squirrels here! I never realized how jerky they are in their movements... so weird. Anyway that's not what was cool, the other day i saw an ALBINO SQUIRREL! yes an albino squirrel. it was the coolest thing ever. you would have thought i saw a unicorn or something. we were in the car so i didnt get a picture, but it made my day. it was like a big foot sighting or something it was that cool!

So that was cool this week and also this week i had mole, imagine and accent over the e (mol-ay) its a mexican taco with chocolate sauce, it is SO  good!!! I loved it. I really love mexican food, it is the best. Except for I found out I dont really like spicy food. That is something that I'm gonna need to get used to. It's just so espicy!  I might be trying guinea pig sometime soon as well. I'll let you know how that goes.

So, now that I have time today to explain to you a little better my surroundings. It truely is so beautiful here, Imagine the great outdoors: trees, lakes, squirrels, and charlie brown statues on every corner. (found out the creator of charlie brown is from Minnesota). The houses have so much character and there are all of these old really cool looking buildings everywhere here! It's like I'm in a scene of Harry Potter at times. It's really cool. Biking is a lot of fun here as well, they have great pathways to get everywhere! So we bike to our investigators houses sometimes to save on miles, and I really enjoy it. We get the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about the gospel just out on the streets!

Most of the time,we are in apartment buildings knocking doors and teaching lessons. I will note that these aren't the nicest apartments, but they have the nicest, most humble people. I love the Hispanic culture, I really do. I won't ever speak a bad word about them again. They love to talk about God and they are not afraid to speak openly about it. They respect what we do as missionaries and they invite us in almost every time to pray with them and share a message about God. They are a very open, loving people.

So one family we are teaching right now I absolutely love, they are a husband and wife with two little boys and they are catholics (which 90 percent of hispanics we teach are). But its great because they invite you in even if  you aren't catholic because they love just learning about God.

So we've taught them 5 times now and they are really interested in the plan of salvation and how families can be together forever. That is my favorite lesson to teach! Even though they probably can't understand my spanish, they do understand how much I love it because I get so excited about it! haha they are a great family though, you really grow to love all the people that you teach and you really, truely, with all your heart want them to accept the happiness of the gospel and be part of this awesome church of Jesus Christ (La Iglesia de JesuCristo de los santos de los ultimos dias!) its such a long name in spanish haha 

So I've learned some great things this week. You are always constantly working on yourself while you are on a mission, and the mission is THE perfect place to grow and learn spiritually. You are just immersed in the work of the Lord and so for me, it is impossible not to be learning something each day. My companion, Hermana Peterson is one of the most obedient missionaries out there and it is awesome! I learn a lot about being a missionary from her. We are never not doing something. Which is what a mission should be. One thing I'm working on is having the spirit with me all day! because yesterday was so awesome! And I will share that experience with you. 

Okay so you would thing that being on a mission you will have the spirit with you all the time and you are this awesome super spiritual person who cries repentance to the people and they tremble because they feel the spirit so much from your words like Moroni or be like Helaman and lead 2,000 stripling investigators into the baptismal font without a single one being spiritually killed, or like Ammon who sits for an hour with an investigator in silence and it's not ackward at all. haha dont get me wrong, this is my goal, but it's not always like that on the mission. One of my favorite scriptures is in Alma 36:6-7 which talks about small and simple things. God makes us great people and great missionaries through small and simple acts of faith, small and simple thoughts and feelings, small and simple steps toward eternal perfection. Now one day, ya I'm going to be an amazing missionary, I believe I'm already a great missionary, but I know that I have ALOT to learn and ALOT to grow in. And that does not come all at once. It comes through the small and simple of every day. And little by little the Lord is growing me into a Helaman, Moroni, and Ammon type of missionary. One day this week we went tracting and no one was answering their doors to us, and those days you think are the worst but those are the days the Lord is teaching you alot about yourself, in strengthening your faith and giving you patient endurance. small and simple. They say on your mission the last half hour of the day is the time for miracles. Which is true. We knocked doors all day without any success and then its like you find this person who at that exact moment needs your message! That day we met a girl who had just had a big fight with her boyfriend and she told us that it was a physically abusive relationship and we taught her how to pray and to pray for guidance in this trial in her life, and as she prayed in front of us she started crying and she poured out her soul to God, and it was so spiritual and sincere and the spirit just filled the room with peace and comfort and happiness, and I knew that God loves me and He loves her and He loves us all and He hears our prayers. 

Our mission goal is to get people to church because that is where a big part of  true conversion comes, and you are blessed in so many different ways because of it. I never really thought of the things we do in the church in the ways that I have being here on a mission. Like why church attendance is so important, and why we should obey commandments and dress modestly, and believe in the things we do and why we do and how we do it. I've never had the opportunity to be constantly asking myself what is the real reason I am a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? There are the obvious answers, like it's the right thing to do and I get blessings from it, and I'm happy. But the questions of why am I happy because I am a member and what does that happiness come from, and what experiences in my life have proven that to be true. To teach people the gospel of Jesus Christ is to teach yourself the truth of it. Learning I've realized has alot to do with asking questions, researching, thinking alot, testing what you know, and testing what you don't know, more researching, talking, praying, and then you figure it out! but then it doesn't stop there, the process just starts over again and you just keep building on what you know, and you grow into this well of truth. Your foundation becomes solid and you turn into someone who has a firm foundation of the truth of Jesus Christ. 

That is my eternal goal, to be a rock. a spiritual rock of awesomeness. 

And everyone should have that goal. Search, Ponder, and Pray. and I would add Act to that list. That is how we become rocks.

I know that this Church is True and it becomes truer and truer every day and the Holy Ghost testifies that to me every day that it is true!

I LOVE THIS GOSPEL!!

until next time! 

Love Hermana Ficklin!