October 6

So many miracles the last couple of days....

Wednesday night we went and taught Summer. Her grandpa is a less active. The first couple times we went we didn't even see him. Then we actually got to talk to him for a few minutes. Well we were teaching about tithing, follow the prophet, etc and he came downstairs and sat with us! Then he started teaching with us! I was pretty shocked. Then Summer asked him to say the closing prayer. I didn't think he would. Buuuuuuut...HE DID! I'm really hoping that Summer getting baptized is softening him up.

Thursday we did exchanges. Sister Allen came with me. It was an interesting day. President called and I figured he wanted to talk to Sister Allen, but no he wanted to talk to me. I was driving at the moment so I couldn't, and it took about three hours before I could actually talk to him again. So the entire time I was wondering what he wanted to talk to me about, yes I was quite nervous. More on that later!

We had zone meeting Friday morning. We talked all about working with members. I was way pumped! Unfortunately it's really easy to get full time missionaries pumped up about missionary work, but the members not so much. President Cleveland also wants us to work on using the pamphlets in finding. SO! We went finding afterwards and I actually had a lot of fun. It's pretty easy to get rote in finding, but we mixed it up!

Friday night was girls night! haha...a little different as a missionary. The Lykins had invited us over for dinner, but all her kids at a cross country banquet and her husband when flying, so she just took us out to dinner. Oh yeah!...tender mercy. Right when we walked in "Crush" by David Archuleta started playing. AND the elders are teaching this girl named Giselle. She's 20 and David's sister's friend. She's actually moving out to Murray in November...after she gets baptized. Anyways, yeah hearing that song made my day. We talked a lot about missionary work with her. In preparation for zone meeting we were asked to think of a creative way to work with members. Every ward has a ward mission plan, at least they are supposed. So I thought, why not family missionary plans! Then I was looking in PMG and found out it actually takes about them in there! So we talked with Sis Lykins about creating a mission plan for her family, since they are all about missionary work.

THEN! The day just got even better. We had a lesson with Don and Leah Ann. Jeremy and Carrie were both there. We asked how the reading was, Don is in 4 Nephi and Leah Ann was in Ether! Yes we've been teaching them for only a month. Anyways, then Leah Ann starts a 10 minute monologue about how there is no way a 14 year old boy could have wrote this book on his own, that 3 Nephi was full of "gold nuggets" that answered a ton of her questions. Don told us he didn't sleep because he couldn't put it down. Finally I just clearly asked them if they believed the Book of Mormon was true, they both said yes. Leah Ann told us she felt chills as she was reading. Jeremy then shared that whenever he has doubts about the church, he always goes back to that feeling. Their phone and internet hadn't been working the last couple of days and someone was coming to fix it on Saturday. Don told them they had to come after 2 or not mess with the tv because nothing was going to prevent them from watching conference (we found BYUTV when we were over there on Tuesday). He also said that they were going to turn it up loud and if they neighbors complained he didn't care.
They were pretty excited. I couldn't sleep that night because I was so excited!

The miracles continued. Saturday morning we got to help a non-member move! Ok it's dumb because the elders ALWAYS get asked to do manual service and the sisters never do because they think we wear skirts all the time or something. But the elders weren't available (YES!) A member in our ward as been friends with the family for a long time. They are looking for a church right now and it's between ours and another. So while we were packing up the kitchen we were getting to know her a bit more. She knows a ton of members in town and definitely has raised her family with good morals. We gave her our phone number and told her to call us if she needs anymore help. If she doesn't well call her haha. Anyways I love giving service. Oh and Aaron (the dad) said he has seen us walking around before and thought we were high school students! But we think that was a little sign.

CONFERENCE!!! ahh! So excited, I want to just watch it again. Revelation. It hasn't been until my mission that I have realized how important it is. That's what most of my questions were regarding going into conference. I loved the talk by Elder Maynes about spiritual stamina. We do face difficulties everyday! We have to be spiritually strong in order to receive revelation. I was thinking of it in terms of lifting weights. If you give a weak person 100 pounds to bench, it's going to crush them. You've got to start out small. The same goes for revelation. Heavenly Father isn't going to tell me something that I'm not ready to know or not prepared to act on. Elder McConkie's talk on teaching the gospel was incredible. My favorite part is teaching by the Spirit, obviously. I know when the Spirit is present in lessons if I learn too. The best lessons are when I learn! I know that's not my purpose, but it's a nice little gift. Something I learned from Elder Vinson's talked: In order to use ALL my strength, I need the help of my Heavenly Father. I can't do it on my own. As he was talking the words of a primary song came to my head (I can't remember the name) "He is always near me, thought I may not see Him there". It's so crucial to always remember that and I don't. I also really liked Elder Nelson's; I was expecting him to talk on missionary work, so it did catch me a little off guard. The reason we desire to learn and change is because we are eternal beings; it's who we are. We will never stop being children of God. We have to learn to "bridle our passions" while we are here on earth. Going back to revelation, I won't ever receive revelation if my spirit is not stronger then my body. I could go on, Elder Scott, Elder Holland, President Monson, etc. Anyways, how grateful I am for conference. And mom you're right, how grateful I am for the Ensign.

So transfers are this week. Remember how President called me on Thursday? One of the biggest blessings of my mission have been the opportunity to serve with him. He's incredibly aware of each of his missionaries, at least me. When he first called Sister Allen and was talking to her he said "Sister Mayberry and I are good friends". When I finally was able to talk to him he told me that because of our past phone calls, etc he wanted to personally ask me how I felt about training again. He doesn't want me to feel overwhelmed at all and that he wanted to help me out in any way that he could. I told him I didn't think I was ready, but a missionary is never fully ready to train. We talked for about 10 minutes. He asked me if I wanted to stay in Franklin or train somewhere else. I told him I preferred to stay put. I think I talk about President every week, but it's because he has made a huge impact on my life. He's gotten a million things to do, but he felt like it was necessary to call me personally. The major miracle this weeks was President calling. So yes, I'm staying and training again. I'm glad he gave me a couple days notice because it's given me time to pray and study. I've trained once before and I learned a lot. It was hard acting surprised when we got the call last night. I didn't really say much because I didn't want Sister Francis finding out that I had known for three days what was happening.

I'm pretty nervous, still terrified actually. But I can do it. I don't know why President, or really Heavenly Father thinks I'm capable of fulfilling this assignment, but I know it will but me in a situation where I'll learn the lessons that I need to. I haven't slept much since Thursday. I've been thinking a lot about training and what I need to change about myself. Last time I recognized my weaknesses. I had no problem sharing them with my companion and my leaders. This time around I've got to learn how to overcome those weaknesses and that's going to be hard. Yay for challenges! Just kidding, if life weren't hard I wouldn't learn anything. If my mission was easy then I would come home the same person as when I left.