February 13, 2012

February 13, 2012

Hola Familia!

I'm so glad I get to email you today!! I feel like its been so long. I miss you guys! Dad thank you SO much for that talk last week, it seriously helped me so much! and Brad... I can't even begin to express to you how much your last email helped me last week. I seriously changed how I look at things on my mission. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! You're the best!! I have so many amazing family members!! Thank you so much for all of the support.

My first week was such a huge adjustment, but this week has been SO much better! I finally know what I'm doing and feel like I'm actually a missionary now! :) We have this thing called the 12 week program that helps SO much. We use it for our companion study. Its so great. It's like a mini MTC experience everyday. Super fun! and I get to see my friends from the MTC a lot which is nice. Also, I saw 4 people I know this week. Ha! One of my EFY girls and Kevin Curry... he used to be in our Granite Bay ward. We took a picture and he told me he would send it to Jeff-- so be on the lookout! :) It was so fun to see so many familiar faces. I'm sure it'll just keep happening. Ha! Then my friend Seth Bott is an organist, and he was practicing yesterday and Sis Wilson and I just happened to come in right when he was playing, and he played Come, Come Ye Saints for me. It was the COOLEST rendition of it I have ever heard! He's trying out to be a guest organist with all of the organists that play for the Mo-tab. Cool huh?! I'll see him around a lot more this week.

It is so cool to meet Sisters that are literally all over the world! I am now friends with a sister named Sister Anwar, from Pakistan, and Sister Wu, from Mongolia, Sister Biras from Kiripati, sisters from Brazil, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tahiti and other islands I've never even heard of before ha.... the list goes on. I love my mission!

So now to missionary work... The work is good! It's starting to come better. Sis Wilson was able to get all of her old referrals/potentials/investigators back, so we have people to teach now which is SO much fun! We are teaching a lady named Esther from Liberia, and Faustina from Ghana. Sweet, right?! Oh family... I have the best mission ever. We literally talk to people from all over the world on the phone. Calling them was initially scary, but I think I'm getting a lot better at it. It's very different talking to real people than fake investigators in the MTC... ha. You definitely get rejected a lot. But the good moments are so amazing that it doesn't even matter. We prayed with Faustina on the phone and it was the COOLEST thing ever. We actually ask them to kneel down and everything... even teach them how to properly pray to their Heavenly Father. So awesome!

So basically, Heavenly Father thinks I can handle all of the anti's that come to t-square... Ha. We gave a tour last week with 2 baptists who just wanted to prove to me that the Gospel isn't true. What a joke. What's funny is that when they try, it just strengthens my testimony of it more, because I know the TRUTH. This guy was so ridiculous. He tried to tell me that we believe in False prophets because Jesus was the last prophet on the earth, and that the Bible warns us of these false prophets. He tried to say a lot of other things too. And the whole time I was thinking, "Yes, but God is unchanging. That's why there's a prophet on the earth, because Heavenly Father still works the same as he did when Adam was on the earth." Of course, if I tried to say this, I'm sure he would try to think of something to say to prove me wrong... Sis Wilson didn't really talk when these people tried to argue with me... She said she's glad to have a companion like me that can handle talking to those people, haha! But what's cool is that during this whole tour, I was totally calm, cool and collect. I knew the reason why I was this way was because we as missionaries are set apart to be representatives of Jesus Christ. We've been given the authority to preach His gospel. We know the truth. I have loved being able to get closer to the Spirit. I've never felt it more in my life than I do now. The spirit kept telling me the whole time they were arguing that if I tried to argue back, it would do no good. It would not help anything. So I just told him that I know that these things are true, that I could tell that they were great people and they desired to do right, and that I respected them. (even though I really didn't.. :) ha) It was a really cool experience actually. I KNOW those people left seeing us "Mormons" in a better light. I know they will always remember the way Sister Wilson and I reacted to their accusations of our church, namely the Book of Mormon.  It is just like Elder Holland says in his talk Safety for the Soul, "For 179 years this book has been examined and attacked, denied and deconstructed, targeted and torn apart like perhaps no other book in modern religious history—perhaps like no other book in any religious history. And still it stands. Failed theories about its origins have been born and parroted and have died—from Ethan Smith to Solomon Spaulding to deranged paranoid to cunning genius. None of these frankly pathetic answers for this book has ever withstood examination because there is no other answer than the one Joseph gave as its young unlearned translator. "

I know now more than EVER that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. There is no other answer. There is no other explanation. No one with so little education could make up something like it. The Book of Mormon IS another testament of Jesus Christ. We gave a tour to an agnostic and he told me that he doesn't like that every church claims to be the one true church (I had said that earlier in the tour.), and I just wanted to shake him and say, "But this IS the only true church!! How can you not see that?!" Don't worry, I refrained from doing that. :) But it made me so sad to think that some people really believe God just left us here. So so sad.

I had an inbound call (someone calling from Mormon.org) and this old southern Baptist named Hector (yes, another Baptist.) called in to ask me some questions. Holy cow. That was an intense phone call. But it was cool to be able to hear someone love the Book of Mormon. The only problem was that this man couldn't make the connection between the Book of Mormon being true and Joseph Smith being a true prophet. It's so hard when I think I explain something so clearly, and yet it doesn't get across. Just need to work harder! :)

Well family, I love you all.   Brad, thank you again for your email last week. Email me your home address so I can send you a letter. :)

  

K that's all. :) Love you guys sooo much! Your prayers seriously help so much, I can feel it!

Love always,

Sister Savage