This week was a good one! The reason why I titled my email a week of starting fresh is because that is what we had to do this week... all of our investigators either dropped off the face of the earth or weren't progressing so we had to start fresh with our teaching pool! I felt bad because as I have been training Hermana Bailey and we haven't been able to find any of the investigators that we were teaching before she got here! Dang apple picking season... haha.
This was a huge leap of faith on our part because its kind of hard to do missionary work if you aren't teaching people haha but we felt that by taking a break from the people that we were teaching to look for those who are really searching for the gospel that we would be blessed for our efforts!
So as I was saying our main focus this week was finding with faith. Hermana Bailey and I talked a lot about whether or not we have been truly acting in faith.. and we came to the conclusion that yes we have faith, I mean we chose to come on missions and we are striving to fulfill our purpose, but we weren't necessarily allowing the Lord to do His part. A couple of weeks back Sister Wilcox, aka Brooke, sent me an awesome talk about faith and how no matter how hard something is or if it may not seem like its really making a difference, IT IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE. So as we have been applying finding with faith we have been able to talk to a ton of people not just about the message that we share, but about what this message can do to change their lives. It has been awesome!
At district meeting this past week we had a training on OYMs which just stands for Open Your Mouth.. aka talking to people haha. As missionaries it is our responsibility to talk with everyone that we see because everyone deserves to hear and everyone needs to hear about this message. But I feel like a lot of the time missionaries, including myself, get caught in kind of a rote presentation of how we approach people... so what we talked about in district meeting was changing things up! Our district leader challenged us in our OYMs to not use the phrases: we have a message, can we leave you with a card, here is a website to check out... and there were a couple more that I cant remember haha! but it was hilarious because after district meeting Hermana Bailey and I went out to work and we were super pumped to apply the things that we learned.. but the first person we saw we said every single rote phrase that there is hahaha literally all of them... after we talked to him we walked away and just started laughing our heads off because it was everything we were challenged not to say! So right after we said ok for the rest of the day we are going to be completely UN-rote. and we did it! We had some awkward moments where we had to think of things to say but as we used the scriptures and testified from the heart it became so much easier! We felt that we were truly giving people a chance to hear the message rather than just telling about the message!
So yesterday during studies in the morning we got a phone call from one of the members saying that she was sick and was wondering if we could teach young womens! Well it was really short notice being that church was in a half hour haha but we teach people all day so we accepted the challenge! It went pretty well! we taught about the Christlike attributes in preach my gospel and how we can work on developing them. But young women are so hard to teach! haha we felt like we were teaching a wall because no one was participating and they were all on their phones except two of them... So I gained a huge appreciation for youth leaders yesterday! growing up I always had the best leaders who were always so patient and willing to help us out. So THANK YOU to all my young womens leaders and sunday school teachers. I seriously learned so much from young women's and was truly blessed with amazing leaders!
We also had exchanges this week! I was with Sister Peatross from West Jordan and no Cortney she doesn't know you or any Maples :( I got really excited when she said where she was from though! haha The theme for the exchange was Finding Joy in the Lord's Work. We had such a good day as we focused on why we do missionary work... and thats because it makes us happy! The gospel brings us so much joy that all we want to do is see it bring happiness to others! I am excited to continue applying finding joy in the Lords work as we look for new investigators!
Update on Maribel (the one who does weed haha).. She is all the way in 1 Nephi chapter 11 in her reading!! She said she was bored the other day so she started to read! We are still having some issues with her smoking thing and the fact that she doesn't really want to stop haha... but that fact that she has been reading is progress!
Random thought from my studies this morning... In 2 Nephi 33:3 it talks about how Nephi is crying unto God in faith because he knows that He will hear his cry. I LOVED this verse because it is exactly what Hermana Bailey and I have been trying to apply. Praying in faith and believing that we are going to get answers and believing that we will find new people to teach! I also like this verse because it says that Nephi has a pillow which I don't know why I think is so hilarious but it is. Just picture Nephi sleeping in a tent with a fancy fluffy pillow.... oh how I love the Book of Mormon!!!
I LOVE YOU ALL so much and I hope you have a super rad awesome week full of miracles and good things!!
con mucho amor
hermana wortley
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