Week #44 - Going Outbound to Southern California! :)

November 19, 2012

Hi everyone!!!! :) 

Oh my goodness!! Can you believe my call is already here??!!! I'M GOING OUTBOUND!!

Sooo so so exciting!! :) I'm seriously SO stoked to go to the SAN BERNARDINO, CA MISSION!!!  My boundaries go from Rancho Cucamonga, to the borders of Nevada!! :) I'm going to be warm for the winter!!! YAY!!! And I will be in members’ homes for Thanksgiving AND Christmas!!! I seriously am so excited. The more I think about it, the more excited I get!! 

Here's the mission address: 
 Sister Natalie Savage

6541 Woodruff Place 

Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701 

Mission phone number (in case you need it): 909-466-1129

My mission president will be President Craig E. Godwin, and my flight leaves on Wednesday at 8:45am!! :) Sooooo so crazy!!! Ha ha!! I honestly thought I would go to the South (Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, etc), but I'm actually really excited to serve in my home state! I never, EVER thought that would happen.... but it will be great, ha ha! I'll just help save corrupt California! ;) Heaven knows we need it!! Ha! I looked up the weather after I called you this morning and it will be 74 degrees in San Bernardino for Thanksgiving. :) Woot!! Give me my warm weather!! 

I still can't even believe it. Honestly, going back to California was the LAST place I thought I would go, ha ha!! But again, it doesn't matter where you serve, but HOW you serve. :) I will come back to Temple Square on February 13th, 2013!!  Next year!! AH!! So crazy! I'm sooo so so excited though!! 

I don't know if I told you this, but President has been hinting pretty heavily that I would be going outbound... ha ha. Yesterday after I had finished playing for Sacrament Meeting he shook my hand and thanked me for playing, etc, and then we started talking about all of the talented sisters here on Temple Square.  (By the way mom, I have the most AMAZING song I will send you!! It is incredibly beautiful. I accompanied a sister here who sang it for Sacrament meeting.). Anyway, the President stopped suddenly and said, "Well you know, some sisters will be outbound so they won't be able to hear all of the great musical numbers that will be happening during Christmas time!" It was pretty obvious he was talking to me, ha ha. He's s0  funny.  I'm very grateful for his hinting now because I have half of my packing over with. :) Ha! It's great!! Except now I'll kind of have to reverse the packing, because I thought I would be going somewhere cold ha ha. Ah, I'm SO excited for warm weather again!!! It will be soooo so nice! There's a sister serving here from Rancho Cucamonga who is outbound right now, but it would be so fun to be able to meet her family while I'm there. :) 

Okay, back to normal emailing. :) 

I thought because it is Thanksgiving week that it would be appropriate for me to just give an email of the blessings that I am grateful for. :) 

1.   I'm grateful for food! :) 

2.   I'm grateful for holidays to give us a break. Sooo nice! 

3.   I'm grateful for my family. :) 

4.   I'm grateful to be able to serve as a missionary for the Lord. 

5.   I'm grateful to be a representative for Jesus Christ and for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day   Saints here on Temple Square!! 

6.  I'm grateful to be able to represent the church in San Bernardino, CA!! :) 

7.  I'm grateful for the Gospel in my life, the many, many blessings I've received from it. 

8.  I'm grateful for my companion, Sister Nakaima. :) I can't even express in words how much I will miss her when I leave!! 

9.  I'm grateful for all of my former companions and everything they've taught me! 

10. I'm grateful for my investigators: Frank, Birko, Mark, Katherine, Alex Oliver, Alexander (he's SO amazing!!), Gardenia (who is trying to set up a time to take a tour of T2 with us. :D Yay!!!), Nick, Kelli-anne, Margeret, Chase, Manu, Satomi, Kumi, and Megan. They come from Costa Rica to Germany to Nigeria to California. :) What an incredible mission I'm a part of!! 

11.  I'm grateful for feeling tired ALL the time on the mission... Ha! 

12.  I'm grateful to stop focusing on myself during these 18 months and completely focus on the Lord.

13.  I'm grateful for golden investigators!! :) ha! 

14.  I'm grateful for investigators that struggle immensely. They have taught me more than anyone else on my mission. 

15.  I'm grateful for modern-day technology to be able to teach my investigators online and over the phone! 

16.  I'm grateful to be part of such a great cause. D&C 128:22

17.  I'm grateful for my daily challenges, and for Elder Holland's words, "Some blessings come soon, some come late, but some don't come til heaven." 

18.  I'm grateful to have a wonderful, loving family that supports me! 

19.  I'm grateful for change. 

20.  I'm grateful to be alive. :) 

I love you all so much and can't WAIT to serve in San Bernardino!!! :) Look out Socal!! 

Sister Nat 

Week #43

November 12, 2012

Hello beautiful family!! 

Wow... Can you believe that my 7th transfer is almost over??!! I seriously can't even believe it. Every minute just seems to be literally flying by! I have loved my mission so much and have learned a TON from it. The Lord truly has blessed me so much, and all of you! :) I'm so glad you were able to visit Brad this weekend. . . how fun! It is good to hear Brad has multiple callings in his new ward too! Sounds like you had a really fun week! I had a great week too, despite the election... I honestly just can't believe our nation right now. It is DEFINITELY the last days!! 

Well, Sister Nakaima and I had a good, but hard week. My companion is honestly the sweetest thing ever!! She has really struggled with her confidence lately with mission work. She has a really hard time understanding what people say, especially when they are from other countries (even though they speak English). She and I talked for awhile on Saturday and the poor thing just cried to me. Thursday was a really hard day for her . . . she called 3 people in Japan and no one referred to meet with missionaries or even wanted to hear about the gospel, and she was really really discouraged. It was so sad. :( I told her about my first week with Sister Crookston in my 3rd transfer. I had 3 investigators drop US (suddenly decided they didn't want to learn more) the first week Sister Crookston and I were together. It was SO hard on me, and I, like Sister Nakaima, thought about going home. But I then told her about Gary and what a blessing he was to me! He got baptized the transfer afterward. I told her about how hard we worked and that we were super obedient, and the Lord blessed us because of it. I reminded her of what an incredible blessing Joy was to us and to not let Satan get her thinking she isn't a good missionary, because she is!!! She is an INCREDIBLE missionary. She has such an amazing testimony, especially about the Atonement. She is doing amazing things despite her difficulty with the language, and I honestly am SO proud of her!! I got emotional when we were talking because she reminds me of my trainer. They both had difficulty with being confident and sure of themselves and their power and authority as missionaries. It is SO real though!! Heavenly Father truly blesses us with a different mantle when we are set apart as missionaries. It is absolutely incredible. I've been trying to help Sister Nakaima have this same perspective as I did with Sister Wilson. I think having these two sisters as my companions has actually helped me realize how important this really is to have that confidence in our Father's promises!! That's really what it is. It's not having confidence in ourselves, or our own abilities, but having confidence in the Lord. He's the one that has provided a way for us to just do good, period! We wouldn't be able to do ANYTHING without our Savior Jesus Christ's help. It is about truly knowing that He is the one that has called us to these positions; therefore, He'll provide a way for us to accomplish them! It says so right in the scriptures. :) (1 Nephi 3:7) Anyways, Sister Nakaima is such a sweetheart and has changed since we talked. I think she just needed to get things off her chest!! I had a small prompting that her and I needed to talk as we got ready to call our potentials and I'm SO glad I listened. 

 I only have a few more minutes but I wanted to let you know that we went to Zone Conference in the Pioneer museum here in Salt Lake City and it was the coolest thing EVER!!! I sent you a few pictures of it. :) You should definitely go next time your here in Salt Lake! Also, I got to do service in the TEMPLE today!!! It was AMAZING!!! and SO fun. I LOVE the sisters in my class ha! We were able to put on old baptism jumpsuits and vacuumed and dusted and things like that... Even in the Garden room!! :) So next time you are in there, you can imagine me in a awkward white jumpsuit cleaning in there. :) It was so amazing. Absolutely loved it! :) 

So Kelli-anne has another baptism date, ha ha, for December 1st. We need to work harder with her to keep her commitments (especially reading the Book of Mormon), but we're praying she'll be able to just feel good about all of these things. I think she needs to feel Heavenly Father's love in her life. 

We have a new investigator Katherine from Vacaville, CA!! :) Kind of fun huh? We also had a man refer online on chat in Budapest... :) Gotta love my mission ha ha! If I go outbound I will be seriously so sad. 

K. Well I love you all SOOO much! Enjoy the pics :) 

Sister Savage 

Week #42

November 5, 2012

Hi family!! 

So glad to hear from most of you! :) Thanks for the emails. They are SO fun to read! I love hearing about your lives and getting updated on everything. 

This week was very very fun!! On Halloween I got a package from you (thank you SOO much! :)) and we got to watch the first Harry Potter movie!!!  We were loaded up with potatoes & veggies for dinner!! :) It was SO much fun. We all flipped out when we heard that we were watching Harry Potter!!! What a PERFECT Halloween movie to watch! So that was super fun. I got a note from the Ivancich's saying they had come but I didn't see them. Too bad.  I was glad for the note though for sure! :) 

I sent you a picture of our Zone's Halloween party that we had on Monday!! So fun huh?! Sister Nakaima was "Otaku." (Dad, do you remember Otaku from your mission??!! Please tell me you do, ha!) Otaku are people from Japan that are literally obsessed with Anime (Japanese Animation), so they dress up like those characters, part their hair in the middle, and run around doing random dances for people.... Very interesting, ha ha. She looked absolutely PERFECT! She seriously was the life of the party. It was so cute to see her being her crazy self in front of everyone. She's more of a shy person with other people... not with me though! She is the craziest Japanese person I've ever met, but she is awesome. I've SO enjoyed her as a companion!! We've had our struggles, but she and I have both improved so much and we really have grown to love each other a lot. She will forever be a great friend of mine. :) 

I forgot to tell you but told Christie... ha ha! President Gillette basically told me that I will be going outbound this next transfer, the 21st of November. :( (which is so funny.. last transfer we had a mission meeting and President Gillette called everyone to repentance because they looked online and found out if and where they were going outbound. He just brought it up with me though and I didn't even ask about it ha ha!) I'll miss Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years on Temple Square. Definitely bittersweet. But I do feel good about it. I think it will be better for me to not see everyone I know on the square during that time ha ha. I'm not sure how long he will send me outbound for... I'm hoping and praying he doesn't send me out longer than 2 transfers. I think 3 transfers would be too long!! I love my Temple Square. :)  However, transfers are in just a couple of weeks, and I'll be able to call you for about 5 minutes and let you know where I'm going. :) You will know about it when I call I guess, ha ha! 

So despite the fact that I know I'm going outbound now, I'm really trying my hardest to stay focused. It's been difficult to do so but Sis Nakaima's helping me out. :) Joy was confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!! :) So exciting. Only 4 weeks after we met her she was baptized. Pretty amazing stuff. She definitely was prepared by the Lord! She's also given us 3 of her family members/friends to call already... ha! She's an amazing missionary! Now that she's found the truth she literally wants to tell EVERYONE about it. Her mother is now interested a bit in the church. She was NEVER interested in religion before this! It was so interesting... we asked Joy why she thought she's suddenly looking into all of these things and she told us it is because of the change that has happened to her. She told us she used to have a huge temper. She would get so upset about little things that would happen in her family, with her friends, etc. But now that she's found the gospel of Jesus Christ, she doesn't have problems with those things anymore!! Pretty amazing that she has been able to change so much already. I love missionary work so much!! It truly is the most incredible thing in the world. The best part is seeing people change their lives to follow their Savior. "Leaving their nets", just like the 12 Disciples did. Such great stuff. If she's the last baptism I have on my mission, it will ALL be worth it!! :) 

We are still working with Nick, but I think we helped him realize how he is going to get his answer to all of these questions. He will move to Alabama next month, so crazy! How fun would that be if I went there on my Outbound??!! Ha! I could teach him in real life rather than on the phone!! :) We'll see what happens I guess. 

So we called one of Joy's friends, Margaret, the other day. She was a nice girl, but doesn't like churches... very similar to how Joy was actually. Except she's Joy's brother's girlfriend. They live together and have a child. (they're originally from Nigeria too but now live in Denmark). She really wants to get stability and coherence in her life. She REALLY wants to strengthen her faith in Jesus Christ. We told her about the Book of Mormon and how much it increases our faith in the Savior and His gospel. She was very interested in that. We taught her the rest of the Restoration too, and we'll call her again tomorrow and teach her more about the Book of Mormon and kind of break that down a little bit further. 

Birko seems to be doing great still. She hasn't responded lately but I'm sure we'll hear back from her soon. Alex, responded and told us he would read the Book of Mormon which is awesome!! We're just trying to get ahold of him again but I think it is hard when he travels around so much. 

Right now we have a lot of new investigators, but we are not having as many progressing. It is SO difficult to get progressing investigators here on Temple Square, because it depends on if they answer the phone or not. 

:( Sad day! I'm looking forward to outbound for that reason, to really be able to work with members in the ward and teach people face-to-face. PS. We'll be getting pictures of Joy's baptism and confirmation this week!! :) It will be the first time we will actually see what she looks like. ha ha! So fun! 

Well family, I love you all SO much. As of yesterday I have been out for 10 months. AH!!! So crazy. I honestly NEVER want to leave my mission. It is the single greatest experience of my life!! I miss you all but I'm so thankful to be here as a missionary, completely dedicated to serving the Lord. I'm going to send you pictures of my life so I will leave you now. :) 

Love you all soooo much! 

Sister Savage