Week #50

January 9, 2013

Hey family! 

Sounds like you all had an awesome week!! I can't believe it's already the 9th of January... seems like every month goes by faster than the one before it!!! Kind of scares me sometimes... but I have loved my time out here and have learned a whole lot! 

I have been incredibly blessed by Heavenly Father this week. I was able to go to the Temple again today and it was just as good (if not BETTER) than the week before. I am SO in love with the Temple!! There is a feeling there that is like no others. What a special privilege we have of attending such a sacred, beautiful place. Heavenly Father definitely, obviously loves His children. 

I want you to know how much I love you all!!! You all are so special to me. I can't even believe how blessed I've been to have such an amazing family and incredible examples to me of how I should live. I just wanted to thank you all for the amazing support you've given me while I've been out on my mission. I can't imagine some of these missionaries leaving their homes and having absolutely NO support whatsoever from their family and friends. I am very, very lucky. 

This week was good! Frank is doing very well. He is getting very close to baptism. We did learn on Monday in the lesson that he hasn't been specifically praying to know if the Book of Mormon was true, and if Joseph Smith truly is a prophet of God. He's been praying to know if what we are teaching him is true--- not quite specific enough! :) He strongly believes that what we're teaching him is the truth, but he really needs to know those 2 things in particular so he can have a strong foundation as a member of the Church. I'm so excited for him to get baptized!!! I'm really hoping and praying that he gets baptized before I leave... that would be AMAZING. 

We finally met with Philip and Edna yesterday. He's the lost member that Sister Callister & Brinks found, and Edna is a Catholic. They're wonderful people! Philip is SO ready to come back to the church, but Edna has definitely been fighting him on this.  What is so interesting though (and kind of funny) is that Sister Brinks and I both know the Bible better than she does... she's never even opened it up before!! So we've been teaching her about the Restoration and the Plan of salvation yesterday, and she told us yesterday that she believes that everything we have been teaching her is true. :) So awesome!! Satan, however, is working SUPER hard on her... holy cow. I actually offended her the other day which I, of course, felt HORRIBLE about, and apologized over and over again ha ha,  but everything's good now and I think she's still ready to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. She needs to have a spiritual experience with the BOM and prayer, and I know she'll receive her answer. We promised her (using Moroni 10:3-5) that she will be able to know that this is the right way, if she prays about it, and puts it into ACTION. I feel really good about her and know she will progress. 

So far everyone we are teaching we have found through our own efforts. Everyone. It's been such a struggle to get the members to do missionary work on their own. But Heavenly father knows SO well, like Mom and dad testified of in their emails!! We had Stake Conference this weekend and it was absolutely incredible. I can't even begin to describe to you how perfect the meetings were!! (Frank and Ana came to the session on Saturday, and Frank came on Sunday). All the Member of the area Seventy (Elder Garnes) talked about was doing missionary work, as well as all of the other speakers. It was SOOO awesome!! Almost the entire county of San Bernardino has almost 50% inactivity in the church. Almost 50%!!!! How does that happen??!! But now that the missionaries are almost doubling in size, they'll probably have to have 2 sets of missionaries for each ward... crazy!!! The work HAS to move forward much quicker than it has been doing recently. Sister Brinks and I are going to go around and challenge all of the members in the ward to find someone to share the gospel with, and then we're going to follow up with all of them on it. :) Woot woot!! I'm so stoked!! 

I love my mission so much, but I've been having kind of a difficult time lately. I asked my District Leader for a blessing on Sunday and he gave me one of the most beautiful blessings I've ever received. What was interesting about it though (and not necessarily surprising) is that a lot of the blessing was counsel on what I need to change. One of the things Elder Crookston said in my blessing several times was the I needed to counsel with the Lord on my future plans.... I haven't even really thought about my future at all!! But I thought that was so interesting that Heavenly Father really needed me to know that I need to talk with Him about things more, especially before I make decisions. It was a really good reminder. He also told me to not be prideful; to be the companion Sister Brinks needs, (not what I need), and that I would have sheaves of success in the harvest from my mission. That was almost exactly the wording Elder Crookston used. It was a great blessing that I needed to have. What's interesting about this too is that my comp and I were reading out of the white handbook about priesthood blessings at the very end, and that's where I got the strong prompting to get a blessing here. Of course, in the Lord's plan, it would that detailed that I would just happen to be reading about blessings that day and would need one right then!! Very cool stuff. 

Well, one last thing about investigators. Rachel (excommunicated member) is doing amazing, but she's moving in with her boyfriend on Saturday. We're going to have a pretty intense lesson about the law of chastity and feeling the spirit in the home... she won't be able to do that unless her and her bf are married. Please pray for her, but especially for us to use the spirit nd know how and what tot teach her. 

I love you all SOO much!! :) I'll send some pics to you. 

Love always, 

Sister Savage