March 31, 2014

Hey what's up?

So obviously I am really excited that I have a new nephew who is super cute. Make sure to send me lots of pictures! That is so cool, I can't wait to meet little peanut!:)

This week on the other hand kind of put me through the ringer, but I guess all you can do is keep on keeping on right? Sister Kreiberg and I tracted a whole ton with not much success, but as always the Lord provided us with somebody to teach! So about 4 months ago when Sister Baker and Sister Peck were here they were out tracting I guess and they ran into a woman named Cynthia, they prayed with her and she didn't seem that interested, but she had given her sweater to Sister Baker for the night because it was cold and said just return it to me later. Well I guess the sisters forgot because it was still in our apartment forever! Well last Tuesday I was cleaning up a bit and I found the sweater and there was a note attached to it with Cynthia’s name and her phone number. So I set it on the table and told Sister K that we should probably try and return it this week. Then all week I kept looking at that little paper thinking, you should call Cynthia, and I just ignored it because I was foolish and just kept going about my business. Well Saturday night I was getting ready for bed and it was pretty late but I just had the thought come to my mind, go and call Cynthia now! So I ran up from my bed and went out to the living room to call her. She didn't answer and so I just left her a voicemail saying who I was and that she didn't know me, but that my companion and I would love to come and see her soon. Well the very next morning bright and early we got a call from Cynthia and she said that she had gotten our voicemail and asked if we could come over that evening, and of course we said yes! So after our dinner appointment we headed over to see her and she welcomed us right in. As soon as we sat down she just went off on how we need to be safe and how Florida is not a safe place, and just all theses things about protecting ourselves. Well it was nice but we kind of thought it was weird. And then the thought came to my mind to show a Mormon Message called Mountains to Climb. So we all watched that and she got all emotional.  She then, after the video, started to share with us how she has three sons and how two of them are dead.  One has died from cancer and the other one was murdered here in Florida; which helped us to better understand why she talked to us so much about keeping ourselves safe. As she was telling us about her boys she expressed many concerns about why God allows things like this to happen, and Sister Kreiberg and I were able to use the Book of Mormon and show her how it answers the questions of the soul, such as why bad things happen to good people, where we go after this life, etc. We went straight into the Plan of Salvation and talked to her about how she would see her other children again. It seemed to comfort her very much, and she said now she knows that we were sent from God to help her. It was crazy to see how much she needed the gospel in her life, that's why I kind of got upset with myself as we were leaving her home, because I had ignored the prompting earlier in the week to call her. But I am so glad that we were able to go and see her. I know that she is so ready to hear this message and that it is going to bless her life so much. We have another lesson set up with her this week with one of her neighbors who is a member of our ward (Sister Carter) I am really excited for that.

Lets see.... Oh we also had a really good lesson with Nancy the Chinese lady last week, it was a little hard because of the whole translation thing, but it seemed to go well. We haven't been able to go ahold of her yet since the lesson, but the Chinese member who came with us to the lesson (Sister Campbell) said that she was going to call her, so we will see how that goes.

Did you all get a chance to watch the Women's Conference, except you guys? haha wasn’t it great!!! Our ward had a dinner at the church right before and of course the Zone Leaders showed up to crash dinner, so typical elders.... I loved Sister Wixom’s talk! She is so cute! haha all the little 8-year-old girls stood up in the church and were singing along, I loved it! I really liked how they all (including President Erying) talked about covenants, and how important they are. I really liked it because I thought it really helped the younger girls to understand that making covenants is like walking on a pathway with the end being the Celestial Kingdom of course. Sister Kreiberg and I finished up the last lesson with Chloe Ragozzine that day as well and we were able to show her how baptism is her first covenant.  We drew her a little picture with a gate being baptism and a little pathway with all the covenants she will make in her life and it was very good. She is so smart and seemed to understand perfectly that making covenants with God is the only way we return to our Father in Heaven. I really love that the Women’s conference was centered on that and that we are daughters of God, which is so important, especially for the youth to learn while they are so young! So so good! Kinda feels so cool when you are sitting there watching and you know that you are apart of the biggest women's organization in the whole world! Mormons are so cool! Anyways I loved it and I hope that you all got a chance to watch it as well!

I love you all! Talk to you next week!

Love Kreiberson or Jamiberg, whatever fits your fancy

Dinner for the women before the Conference Broadcast

A gentle reminder 

Getting ready for the broadcast

March 24, 2014

Buenas tardes mi familia!

Wow so this week was sooo long haha but a good one at that!

So basically we had no solid investigators besides Nathan, and now that he is a member we are back to square one! Last week as we were doing weekly planning we knew that this week would be tough because we would be looking A LOT, but the Lord has truly blessed us so much.  So last Tuesday Sister Kreiberg and I had nothing to do, no one to see, and everyone who is anyone was busy, so we went and tracted for 6 hours straight and by the end of it I am pretty sure I wanted to cry because of how drained I felt. It is pretty hard to tract on the North side of Viera which is our area because everyone has a nice home and a job and not many people are home during the day expect for older retired people. But we were able to meet some very friendly people who allowed us to talk with them and pray with them so that made it all worth it. I don't think I could have handled anyone screaming at me that day. By the end of the day though Sister Kreiberg was ready to call it quits for sure. But surprising (but not really) the rest of the week wasn't too bad at all. When we got home Tuesday night before we did our planning for the next day we knelt down together to pray and plead with Heavenly Father that he would help us to accomplish all of our goals this week, and that we would be able to use our time productively and all I can say is that we were blessed so much. From about Wednesday on as we made calls to visit less active families in the ward a lot of them had free time open up to where we could share lessons.  When we went out to find we were able to teach many people on the doorstep and get return appointments and we placed 6 copies of the Book of Mormon this week, wow it was amazing for us. We also saw many great miracles as well. For one about 10 weeks ago Sister Kreiberg and I stopped a woman while we were biking and asked if we could come and visit her, well she gave us her number and as we called she had never really been available to meet with us, well this last week we went to go and visit a potential investigator that we had met at the park and the woman we had met many weeks ago (Margret) happened to be his neighbor. When we tracted into her door she seemed to be less busy and we were able to set up a return appointment with her and now we are going back again tomorrow to visit her. What was so cool though when we went to see her the first time is that she already had a copy of the Book of Mormon from 50 years ago. She and her husband moved and a really good friend of theirs gave it to them as a going away gift. On the inside the friend wrote, " This may seem a little odd as a going away gift, but I feel as though it is the most important thing I could ever give you. I hope you find the happiness and joy that I have found in this book." Margret's husband has died now but she kept it because she said is was so dear to him. We were able to teach her out of the copy when we saw her, it was very neat.  Then this week one of our potentials (Tommy) Margret's neighbor wasn't able to meet with us because he was going to go out of town with his family. Well this week as we were at the park to teach a less active who didn't happen to show up, Tommy and his family were there. He said that his trip had been canceled and so we were able to teach him and his wife at the park instead and set up another appointment to see them later this week, way cool. One last miracle, ok so... We received a referral from someone in the Viera 2nd ward (Mark) this week for a Chinese lady (Nancy) that came to church with him last Sunday, so we called this lady and of course we can barely understand each other, but we managed to get an appointment with her. Then when we went to visit her she wasn't home. K bummer.... then yesterday we had decided to go and try and see if she was home again and she was and right when she saw us she welcomed us in. We sat on the couch and she couldn't say more than two words to us, her son Alex who is 10 or 11 was translating for us, we were able to set up an appointment with her for tonight and a Chinese woman in our ward Sister Campbell is going to come with us. We are so excited.  This lesson is going to be way interesting because it's going to be all in Chinese, but I think it will go well especially because Sister Campbell is going to be there and they will be able to click real well. Wohoo! I will let you know how that goes next week! Sister Kreiberg and I were blessed so much for tracting for hours I think, we accomplished all of our goals for teaching and then some. It is crazy how you really can't do anything on your own as a missionary. You have to depend completely on the Lord or nothing happens. I have been feeling that lately so much, especially now that we don't have many people to work with, but we do have some solid ones and I am excited about that. 

I was also able to go and get an eye exam this week which I am SO grateful for. My eyes have been bothering me so much lately, especially because my only pair of glasses I took with me on the mission are broken so I never can give my eyes a break during the day by taking my glasses off. So I was able to order some new glasses and I can't wait for them to get here! Ha funny thing though, so the Doc had to pour these weird drops in my eyes to dilate them super huge and she told me that the drops basically paralyze your eyes, and this was so she could get a more accurate reading she said. But it was the craziest feeling in the world first of all my pupils were so huge that you couldn't see the color of my eyes at all, I just had black eyes it was so freaky! And I could only see things that were 10 to 15 feet in front of me, anything closer than that or further than that was a complete blur, soooooo weird, and my eyes couldn't focus on anything so my whole depth perception was gone.  Seriously the weirdest feeling of my life haha, that lasted about 2 days and Sister K had to drive us around because I was just hazardous haha but I am proud of myself that we were still able to go out and work hard, I just had to wear sunglasses everywhere because my eyes were so big the light hurt so bad haha but all is well now, eyes are good haha I will take pics of my glasses when I get them. I think you will like them! Well that's all for now! Love you all!

Getting ready to teach their Book of Mormon class

Sister Jamison XOXOCTR

March 2014

Teaching the Ragozzine girls about the Restoration as Chloe will soon be baptized.

March 16, 2014 - Waiting

Waiting for Ward Correlation to start

March 17, 2014 - Nathan's baptism on Saturday (3-12-14)

Hello Everyone!

How are all of you this week? I hope really good!

Well I am sure that you are all wondering about Nathan's baptism and all I can say is that it went so great! So funny thing, Sister Kreiberg and I made a facebook event for his baptism like 5 days before and then we got a call two days before his baptism from the ZL's saying that we aren't supposed to make facebook events I guess. So we got on to delete it and not thinking that it would then tell everyone that the event was canceled. So then after that Brother Snavely in our ward called us all frantic because he had seen Nathan that morning and things seemed to be going good and now he didn't know what was wrong and so we rushed back to the library to email everyone and tell them that it was still on.  Haha and poor Nathan facebooked us and was like what did I do wrong! Why is the baptism off, haha and then we told him of our mistake and he said he about had a heart attack....oops... But we got it all taken care of! The baptism on the other hand went so well. There was a good group of people there and a former mission president that is in our ward President Estes preformed the baptism.  The whole thing really came together nicely and you could tell that Nathan was very happy! When Nathan bore his testimony it was so amazing! He truly has been converted. He got up and talked about how we found him and what his life was like at that point in time and how his life is different now and how he is so much happier now, and then he went on to talk about how blessed he feels and how all he wants to do now is serve in the church and help others feel the way that he does.  His testimony was so strong and you could tell that his life really has changed. Then after the baptism Nathan, the Snavelys and us two went and got Chick-Fil-A and ate at the Snavelys. That was pretty fun. When we were there Sister Snavely said that she was going to try and get my watch fixed this week and so she gave me one of hers to borrow until then and we were talking about how OCD I am without a watch and how whenever I am at home I carry my big clock around with me when I study or get ready, etc. and so now Nathan calls me Flavor Flav... Like that black guy that wears the clocks around his neck... I have more nicknames from him than I think from anyone else!  Then it was so cute on Sunday when Nathan got to church he came up to us and said "Sister last night when I was laying in bed watching T.V. I felt so good and happy. I turned off my T.V. just to sit there and enjoy what I was feeling inside. You know how I always used to say Nathans happy, well last night Nathan was truly Joyous, I felt so light and clean, and just pure joyous." It was so great to hear him say that and that he was so excited about it! You can see a total change in his countenance!

But now that Nathan is a member Sister Kreiberg and I will have a lot of finding time this week coming up.  It's going to be a bit of a drag but that's ok! This last week we have had miracles finding solid potential investigators and so we are going to try and see all of them this week. One that we are really excited about is a man named Tommy.  Last week we were at the park teaching a less active in the park and it was very windy and not a really good time for a lesson, but we had a hard time meeting with him so it was better than nothing.  And we showed him a Mormon Message on our iPads, and Tommy was sitting 3 tables away from us and once the message was over Tommy comes over and says, hey can you email me that video? I really liked it, here I will give you my email.... Pause.... WHATT!!!!?????... Crazy right? We don't even know how he heard the video over the wind and the fact that he was about 30 feet from us but he did.  We were able to talk to him a little bit about the church and we asked if we could come and share a message with him and he said yes that'd be great! So he gave us his address and telephone number and we are going to stop by this week! Cool right!  As we were leaving too his daughter came over to sit on his lap and he pointed at us and said, see those girls, they are going to come over this week and teach us about Jesus. So cool! We are way excited!  Sister Kreiberg and I are also teaching Chole Ragozzine the lessons because she is going to be baptized soon.  This is the same little girl that told her little sister that we could fly haha It was fun to teach her the restoration this week, we used cups to teach about the priesthood and other blessings in the church that were lost and then restored and she thought it was way cool! K one last miracle then I gotta go haha So last night we got home and it was about 9 and I looked for the keys to open the door and the keys were not in my backpack.... ugh so we went back out to see if we could find them, and about 2 hours earlier I have fallen off my bike (AGAIN...) But I am totally fine,  at a golf course and we thought to go check over there. And so we went searching for them and could not find them anywhere and it was 9:30 by that time and we had to go home.  So we said a prayer together and we off again along this golf course path and the thought came to my mind to look at my camera pictures, (we took pics of me on the ground after I fell) so I stopped and looked at them and sure enough in the pick you could see the keys in the grass, but you could also see that by my feet there was a patch of brown grass, and so I thought K I just need to look for a patch of brown grass, and as I looked sure enough about 3 minutes later I found a brown patch of grass and about 10 feet away were the keys... Such a miracle, Sister K and I were freaking out, but the Lord blessed us! Well that is all for this week! I love you all so much!

Sis/Bro. Snavely, Nathan, Sister Kreiberg & Sister Jamison at Nathan's baptism
on Saturday, March 12, 2014

Sister Kreiberg, Nathan, Sister Jamison just before
Nathan's baptism  - they are demonstrating how
happy they are.

Sister Jamison!

March 10, 2014 - Nathan's upcoming baptism

Hey there!!!

What's up family! Sounds like you all had a pretty good week and that is great to hear! Well Sister Kreiberg and I are very excited because our investigator Nathan is going to be baptized this Saturday! Wohoo!!! :) We have seen so many miracles this week with Nathan it is amazing!

This week we were at the end of our lessons that we teach and we taught Nathan about the Word of Wisdom, Tithing and Fast Offerings and it went soo much better than Sister Kreiberg and I had thought haha so let me fill you in! So on Tuesday we had a lesson with Nathan on the word of wisdom and Sister Kreiberg and I were a little worried about this one because Nathan is a super avid coffee and tea drinker, he not only drinks everyday but multiple times a day.  So we were thinking of how we could best approach this lesson with him and all we could think was (you dumb missionaries just teach the doctrine and don't worry about it) so we did just that! haha We read in Doctrine and Covenants Section 89 with him about the Lords law of health and during the whole lesson Nathan seemed to be in deep thought almost to the point of looking concerned. As we read through we discussed and explained what exactly the Word of Wisdom means and why it is so important and he still seemed to be quiet. During the lesson I could feel myself getting so anxious inside and finally I asked Nathan what he was feeling about what we were teaching and why does he think Heavenly Father would want us to live this law of Health?  Nathan replied  " I did not realize that God himself has asked us to live a law of health, and it makes sense, it all makes sense. You can't have the spirit if you are not healthy, and if He commands you to do something you just have to do it, you can't cut corners with God." The spirit was so strong as we were then able to bear witness off of Nathan's testimony. He could feel the spirit and so could we, and it was because we were all under the influence of that same spirit that Nathan was able to know that this came from a loving Heavenly Father. At the end of the lesson Nathan asked if we could take all of his coffee and tea with us when we left, he said " I'm done, you need to take it with you because I will not drink this stuff anymore." Nathan gave us over 60 dollars worth of expensive coffees and teas in a big garbage sack. Two days later we had another lesson with him and he said, "Sisters ever since I gave you my coffee and tea and have stopped drinking it I have felt so much better, physically and spiritually." It was such a miracle! That same day he told us that we also had a lesson at the bishops house with Nathan about the Law of Tithing. The lesson went very well and Nathan readily excepted that he needed to pay tithing as well. At the end of the lesson he asked bishop when he could pay his tithing and bishop smiled and said "Once you are baptized." and then Nathan said "Well I'm ready to go anybody got a pool near by?" Haha it was so cute and funny. Nathan is so ready to be baptized, we are getting everything organized and he will be baptized this Saturday at 2 p.m. at our chapel. I wish you all could come so bad, if you ever met Nathan you would be amazed at how far he has come! Soo cool!:) I remember the first night that we knocked on his door he wasn't even sure if God existed, and now he reads the Book of Mormon and prays everyday and whenever we see him and teach he always bears his testimony about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and how we have to follow them to be happy, and how he is much happier now too! He also always gives us referrals of people to see whenever we go over, haha he is basically already a Mormon! He always is telling us about people he knows that he is going to bring to church and people that we need to go visit with him and teach them the gospel. So so cool! Wow!

Sister Kreiberg and I also were able to do some service this week for some older people that we met, Teri and Mark, they aren't super solid, but it was really nice being able to help them with their yard and talk to them about the gospel! Hopefully we will be able to see them again soon!

We also got dropped by six of our investigators this week, that was way hard, but I guess that means that we are just going to have to find new people to teach!:) This week we are on bikes again too, so that helps with our street contacting so that's a plus right!? Well I love you all so much! I hope that you have a good week and I will let you know next week how Nathan's baptism goes! Please, please, please keep him in your prayers this week, the week of baptism is the hardest because the adversary works so hard to stop it! So pray extra prayers!

Thank you so much for all that you do for me! I miss you all so much but I am sooo glad to be out here, missions are the best thing in the world!

Sister Jamison!