Darkest Week of the Mission (but in a good way)

Sister Harris with Sister Jensen and Hermana Cline 
we got to do some training, and it was great!

Hope everyone is doing well and staying warm!

 Some things about our week:

-On Monday night for our FHE we learned self defense! It was super funny....and I was really really bad at it! But it was still good.
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-On Tuesday we were at the TC all day. We were on chat in the morning. It was ok. We had a TON of trollers from Romania, of all places. And we talked to a guy from India, and another one from England. Most of our chats weren't so great, and we were almost ready to get off, but then we got a person who was really sincere! He started off kind of rude, but as the conversation progressed and especially as we bore testimony to him he got more and more kind and sincere. Our testimonies are the coolest things ever!!
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-Thursday was the CRAZIEST day ever! We somehow overbooked ourselves on appointments, so we went on splits. Sister Jensen went with Ashley, and I went with a cute girl that goes to Iowa Western named Nicole. It was way fun and we got a lot done! Ashley and Sister Jensen saw Aaron and taught him, and Nicole and I taught a new investigator, who also goes to Iowa Western. Then we met up at the end and had another lesson with another investigator. It was AWESOME!! haha
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-I can't remember if I wrote about her before, but we met this woman that had just lost her husband to a long battle with cancer. The first time we met her was on the street and we just started talking to her. We gave her a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and she said that we could stop by again sometime, so we stopped by this week. It was really cool to watch her open up to us again. She was super hesitant when we first saw her, and slowly got more and more open the longer we talked with her. Our lesson ended with her telling us that she really liked talking to us and that she wanted us to come back again soon. We also gave her a Book of Mormon and she said that she would read it. I love watching the Spirit work on people and soften their hearts!
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-Aaron got baptized on Saturday!! It was so fun! S. Jensen and I gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. While we were talking he kept saying, "Cross my heart yes!" every time we said something that he was excited about. Cute kid! It took him forever to get in the water because he kept talking to Chris (the guy that was baptizing him). The whole room could hear everything that he was saying. It was hilarious! Something like, "And then I'm going to my mom's house tonight and I'm going to church tomorrow, where I'll get the Holy Ghost! I have to put my earplugs in before I get baptized, or else I won't be able to hear!" But it went on forever. It was SO funny!

-Just FYI during the Superbowl isn't the greatest to be knocking on doors...We had a few spare minutes, so we knocked on a potential's door and he answered and said, "Uhhh, you guys know it's the Superbowl...right?" It was actually pretty funny, so that's good.
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-The lights in the gallery of the Trail Center stopped working for like two days, and I ended up giving some tours in the dark. This week will forever be known as the darkest of my mission. haha!
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I hope everyone is doing well.  Tell everyone I love them!

Book of Mormon Challenge!

I honestly don't even know how to start this. I kind of stole this idea from another Sister who is serving here. I thought that it was brilliant, so I'm extending the challenge to all of you!

Ok. Here it is, plain and simple: The Book of Mormon has changed my life. I can't even tell you how much I have grown to love it over the course of my mission. I wanted to invite everyone who reads this to read the whole Book of Mormon by May. If you start in January it averages to about 3-4 pages a day. I know that it can change your life too!

I wanted to echo a promise made by President Ezra Taft Benson about reading the Book of Mormon:

"The moment you begin a serious study of [the Book of Mormon, you] will find greater power to resist temptation. You will find the power to avoid deception. You will find the power to stay on the strait and narrow path. … When you begin to hunger and thirst after those words, you will find life in greater and greater abundance”

I know that this is all true! The reason? The Book of Mormon will help everyone to come closer to the Savior. It will help us all to more fully access the Atonement, which allows each of us to do the hard things that we are called to do!

I know that anyone who takes this challenge will come closer to the Savior and have the increased ability to do hard things!

Oh! And will you all tell me what you are learning from your studies? I would love to hear each of your insights!

Christmas Time

Merry Christmas!  First I want to tell everyone who sent testimony stories thank you!  I LOVE them!! They are so fun to read! I love reading stories of how others have gained their testimonies. I bet that it was really fun to put together! 

 

I'm not totally sure about Christmas plans...we got invited somewhere for Christmas eve, so that'll be good!! And then after dinner we are having a party at the TC. And we are sleeping over at the TC that night, too!! (Which has basically been the dream of my mission, so that's awesome!) Then we're all opening presents together and having a big breakfast with everyone... And they have assigned times going all day so that everyone can be able to skype with their families. Some people are doing it at members houses I think.

 

I'm glad that you saw the zone conference picture! It was a fun day!

 

 

 

I'm good! I LOVE Sister Jensen. I was excited when I found out that we were going to be companions! But the first day that we were together it became obvious how different we were. We are SOO opposite in pretty much everything. I prayed that night and told Heavenly Father that I knew that He had a plan for me and for her, but I just wasn't sure what He was thinking putting us together! haha But we really have become so unified over these past few weeks!  Sister Jensen is helping me to become the missionary that Heavenly Father needs me to be, and I hope that I am doing the same for her! I just love her so much. She is becoming one of my best friends! I have learned so much about loving people and learning to work with people that are super different from me. 

 

Our area is good too. It's been a pretty tough week, though. Mostly because our whole ward is out of town for the break! We haven't been able to see the girl I told you about last week.  :( I have really learned on my mission that faith produces miracles and that miracles don't produce faith. Experiences like that are SO cool to have! But so much of the time they are only testimony building experiences for me and my companion, and not for the person that we see. Strong testimonies are built on the little things that we do daily (which is probably why they are the hardest things to do!)

 

So we are having a hard time figuring out what to do with ourselves, but it's been good for us. We have really been able to help each other. I have realized that having hard times help us to fulfill our covenants. I have been able to both comfort others when they are having a tough time and to be comforted when I am having a tough time. It's been a time of learning and growing for sure!

 

Love to everybody, and Merry Christmas!

 

Cool Experience

Ok a cool experience that we had this week!

So we had some extra time one day and we decided that we'd go and try some former investigators in this apartment complex. We went and were trying people and most of them had moved out and young families had moved in. But we talked to some awesome people and gave out a Book of Mormon, so that was good! 

We went to the last door that we had to try, and we knocked on it. A dog inside started barking like CRAZY! So we waited for a minute, and I started to leave. (Ususally when a dog barks, you assume that either people aren't home, or they are home, they hear you, and just don't want to talk to you) Sister Jensen said, "Wait! Let's knock again!" So we knocked again and waited a minute. No one came to the door, so we headed down the stairs to leave. Then the door opened! We ran up to see who answered. It happened to be a young single adult (which is so crazy because a lot of the time when we find people they're married so we have to turn them over to the family ward missionaries) 

She said, "This is the weirdest thing because I was just praying for people to come!" She invited us in and we taught a lesson. She's awesome and invited us back! It was SO cool! 

It's such a testimony to me that Heavenly Father hears each of our individual prayers and answers them! He knows us all so personally and he answers our prayers in exactly the way that we need them to be answered. Sometimes the answer is missionaries knocking on your door when you were just praying for someone to come. Sometimes the answer is knocking on someone's door at exactly the right time and finding someone who is SO prepared to hear the gospel. And sometimes the answers don't come at all in the way that you want them to. But I know that the answers come! I have seen that so much in my life and especially on my mission!

Sister Jensen and Sister Harris

#lovemycalling

This week has been awesome!! 

Jake got baptized, which was the best thing ever! And he now has the priesthood :) yay! It's been so cool to see him change over the past few months. He really is a completely different person. Sister Farnsworth didn't get to attend as we had hoped.  :( She was sad about it, but we took pictures!

 Our recent convert Chris got called as a ward missionary! He taught the gospel principles class and it was awesome! And then our Southern Utah friend came to church again and we're seeing him this week! I'm SO excited! It's hard to catch him because it's finals, so everyone is busy. He's also going home for Christmas, so we won't be able to see him for a while. Dang it!

 It really is so amazing to see the gospel help people and to see people change. I think that's been the highlight of my mission. No matter who you are or what you're going through, the gospel can help you! The atonement covers us all, no matter what. It's the solution to every problem and the answer to every question. I'm so thankful for the gift of the atonement!

It's been a fantastic week! We're really just working a lot with the ward and trying to get to know everyone. That's the nice part about having a smaller ward. It makes it pretty easy to get around to everyone! 

I'm so thankful to be a missionary and I'm SO thankful that I get to serve in Nebraska and Iowa!! Seriously, best mission ever!!

 Sister Harris

December Already

I'm doing great!! Thanksgiving was awesome! We were at the Trail Center. I got to take all of the new missionaries on tour, and then we just had a giant party there. The pie I made was great! I wish that I had taken a picture of it. It was beautiful though :)

After dinner we watched Ephriam's Rescue. It was so fun! It was kind of funny because all of the new missionaries were upstairs having a testimony meeting and we were downstairs watching a movie... Good times!

I got a new coat last week! THANK YOU SO MUCH! It's super warm and nice :)

I also got a new companion! I'm still in Loess Hills and my companion is Sister Jensen! She's awesome! She's been out about 9 months, so she came out at the same time as Sister Bowles. 

We're still teaching Jacob! He has his baptismal interview today and is getting baptized on Saturday!! SO excited for him! He is so prepared.

We've found some new investigators and there are some members of our ward who have friends who are ready to learn!!

 

So there's this community college in our area and a bunch of the members of our ward are from Utah and they come to Iowa to play soccer at the college. (They actually just won nationals! Yay!) But they are all awesome and SO fun! They are all so willing to have us come over and visit them and to introduce us to their friends. There are two friends in particular that we have been trying to get to know and who are totally ready to be taught. One is a kid from St. George, Utah. We'd met him a few times, but for some reason we never really wanted to push anything with him, we just wanted to be there and to be his friend.

So yesterday we were sitting there during sacrament meeting and he gets up to the pulpit. He said something like, "I'm not a member of your church, but I just felt like getting up and speaking. I've been around Mormons my whole life and I've always felt pushed to learn about your religion. I never really wanted to. I just wanted to thank you all for being my friends and for being there for me. Now I really want to know for myself if this is true. I'm ready to find out." What the heck? Our Bishop's face was priceless...I'm sure that mine was too! Anyways, we're hopefully going to be meeting with him this week!

It's so cool how the Spirit works with people to help to prepare them for the gospel. I'm thankful that we didn't push anything and that we just let the Spirit work!

Singing at Thanksgiving 

Since we are in a singles ward we usually cook dinner on our own.  Occasionally someone takes us out to dinner, and there is a member of our bishopric that is always buying us gift cards to places,  but usually we are at home.  

If anyone has ideas for cheap/easy/healthy dinners, we could use them! 

Thanksgiving Week

We did a small little concert for the opening of Gingerbread. FUN!

This week was awesome!
Gingerbread opened this week!! It was so great! And super busy. For the opening we had a ribbon cutting ceremony and the Mayor of Omaha came and cut the ribbon, so that was cool! 

There are SO many amazing houses there!

 

The exhibit our ward did is over at the Kanesville Tabernacle. I will have to get a picture of it. It was actually the race track from Wreck it Ralph! And funnily enough, that's been the theme of my dreams for the past few nights. Kind of scary, actually.  haha

 

 

Gingerbread is such a great missionary tool for us.  We have Joy to the World playing in the theater on a loop and cards that people can fill out to learn more. It's awesome! It brings so many people in every year!

 

 

 

We also went on exchanges! I was with Sister Brough (pronounced Bruff) in Loess Hills. It was SO fun! It was kind of cool because I was talking to her about following the Spirit and learning to follow the spirit more. We had like an hour of time and we were trying to figure out what to do and I felt like we should go to this apartment complex. So we drove there, and I felt like it was wrong. Then another name popped into my mind, and we went and tried him. Nobody was home. So then, we prayed. Another apartment complex came to my mind, so we went there. It was kind of funny because we had planned to go there a little bit later in the day, but for some reason I wanted to go right then, so we went. 

 

We tried some potentials in the complex, and I just felt to go and walk around the building. As we were walking we saw this guy going out to his car. He was awesome and totally interested! He took a Book of Mormon and said that he would read it and that we could come back any time. 

It reminded me so much of the "Wrong Roads" Mormon Message.

 

 It's so amazing to me how Heavenly Father helps us to know not only where we need to be, but he helps us to be sure that we're supposed to be there. That's definitely how I felt that day!

For Thanksgiving this week we are either going to a member of our old bishoprics house or eating at the TC. And yep! I'm bringing a Swedish Apple pie!! I'm seriously so excited to make a pie!!! It's going to be awesome!

 

Also, I want to go and buy a coat today. One that's more wind resistant. It might be kind of expensive. Maybe that could be an early Christmas present. 

 

Anyway,I am so grateful for my mission and for everyone who has been so supportive! Tell everyone I love them and Happy Thanksgiving!