Week #37

September 26, 2012

Hey family!

You all sound like you are doing great. Thanks for being so wonderful to write me every week! I seriously appreciate it more than you know! Letters are SO huge here, ha ha! Speaking of which, Mekenzi Cornwell (my good friend from EFY) wrote me the other day and it was SO fun to get a letter from her!! I seriously loved it so much. So THANK YOU Mekenzi!! I also saw Michelle Romero from our ward back home that mom visit taught with!! It was SO fun to see her with her son's mother-in-law from Scotland. I REALLY wished I had been able to talk with them more.

I can't even tell you how great the mission is out here. We are doing SO good with our investigators right now!  I has been awesome to see how much they have progressed! Unfortunately, Debbie and her husband weren't able to be baptized this past weekend... they missed church. :(  But, the Elders there set a date with her for October 13th, in just a couple weeks, so we are really excited about that. We told Debbie we will be talking with her throughout these next few weeks to make sure her husband and her get to church together so they can receive those amazing blessings of baptism!

Well, we got a new investigator this week from mormon.org chat named Joy.  She is from Nigeria. :) I just love them Africans! She is SOOO incredibly amazing and SO prepared! Wow. She is seriously just ready for this gospel. She's been searching for the truth for YEARS and everything we have taught her so far, she has completely agreed with. She actually taught US the Great Apostasy today in our lesson. HA! It was so great. She agreed to meet with missionaries and to go to church this week which was great, of course. She's had a Book of Mormon for 4 years now that she said a "young lady" gave to her. Not sure who this young lady was... but Joy had no idea what this book was when she received it, and wasn't quite understanding it when we explained it to her, so we decided to read the introduction to her and break it down so she understood it okay. It took a long time, but she FINALLY gets it! We've committed her to reading and praying about the Book of Mormon and to pray to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. We sent her information through to the local missionaries, so they (hopefully) will be contacting her immediately to teach her. We also committed her to baptism last week and she said YES to October 28th! :) We now have 2 on date for Oct 28th (Nick too) and 2 for October 13th!! Ha!  Everyone's getting baptized next month I guess.

I have been SO grateful to my Heavenly Father lately. I feel like Sister Nakaima and I have been incredibly blessed lately. I don't know if I really expressed this very much, but I've had a really hard time the past 2 transfers not seeing much progress in my investigators, and not really seeing any baptisms. (at least with people I taught personally). I feel like the Lord has really seen my effort lately, especially with Sister Nakaima, and that he is truly blessing us for it. It's kind of interesting. I didn't realize how much the mission really would teach me about being in a relationship. I literally couldn't do all these things without Sister Nakaima, Sister Albanes, Richardson, Crookston, etc. They have all taught me SO much, each one of them being SO completely different in temper. But I understand now why God has instituted marriage as a sacred thing. (Random thoughts there, ha!) Heavenly Father has seriously blessed us with some amazing investigators that are progressing SO well. Nick is actually meeting with the missionaries in Alabama!! (That's where he drove his aunt to.) So awesome. We're still teaching him the lessons, but the Elders are helping him keep his commitments, taking him to different firesides and activities, etc. They're REALLY helping him feel the spirit there which makes me SOOO incredibly happy!

We got to talk to Nick's aunt, Sister Gunter today though... Nick's situation back in Anderson is not looking so good. Sister Nakaima and Sister Gunter and I are really nervous about him going back home. He doesn't have a good, solid family support system. He has horrible friends who (several years ago) got him into drugs and alcohol and things like that, etc. We're really nervous he may go back to his old ways. We're going to have a fast this week for him to be able to stay in Alabama with his aunt. She has a room for him and everything.  All he would need is a job, which would be a LOT better for him to find than in Anderson I think!! Anyway, if you could all keep Nick in your prayers, it would be SO helpful. We just really care about him and want him to receive these blessings so badly.

I met a man named Tim Allen this week from Elk Grove, he said he used to be Jonny Pack's seminary teacher, ha ha! It was so fun to meet someone that knew my family. :) He was a super, super nice guy. I really liked him a lot. I thought I would mention that because I thought that was kind of fun.

We had an absolute MIRACLE day yesterday. . . Sister Nakaima and I.  It was so cool. We called Nick and Joy and were able to teach them, and WOW, that was so fun! We got three progressing investigators in a single day, three that went to Sacrament Meeting and two with a baptism date. It was sooo fun to see so much fruit from our labors!! We've really been working hard in the Beehive house, and it is starting to get a lot better. . . we feel like missionaries still. :) We also took an AWESOME investigator lesson last night, Sister Nakaima's first! :) She did an awesome job though. I'm so proud of her and SO proud of her progress. I love her so much. I definitely think I needed her at this time of my mission!

Well, I think that's all for this week. Thanks again for your emails!! I always love them. I'm sorry Christie that you lost your ring!! Such a sad thing ... I'll pray that the police can find it sometime soon!! :) And Brad, thanks so much for the email and reminder of repentance!! I learned a hard lesson this week about humility. I really needed some humility at the beginning of the week. I was doing my personal study and was studying recognizing the spirit, when I came across a scripture Preach my Gospel gives to study (page 97). It says, "Guides the words of humble teachers: D&C 100:5-8." So I read that scripture, and verse 7 COMPLETELY stood out to me, as if that verse was written for me!! It says this: 

 7 But a commandment I give unto you, that ye shall declare whatsoever thing ye ^adeclare in my name, in solemnity of heart, in the spirit of meekness, in all things.

"In my name" was the part that I felt like completely hit me like a tow truck. I realized I hadn't been doing everything I do as a missionary in His name. I had been doing some things in mine! I had been taking the credit of our success, thinking I'm better than my companion or other sisters, etc. It was a hard lesson to learn, but its helped me truly become that consecrated missionary I need to become on my mission. (I still need to send you that talk... I will one day, promise!)

Love you all SO much! Thank you again for the prayers and love. :)

Sister Natalie Savage

PS. We took a motor coach on tour yesterday, and I introduced myself as, "Nata... uh, Sister Savage." AWKWARD! Ha ha. It was so funny. Everyone was so confused, including me! All of our different investigators call us different names so sometimes I just get confused with the guests on Temple Square, ha ha ha. Gotta love embarrassing moments. :)