Lake Reams - July 22, 2013

Hey! So this week was way good! Ms. Shirley was baptized and the service was very nice, not a whole ton of people came, but the talks were very good and the musical number was sung by Ashley Keoppel and her father (Mary Eames’ friends) they sang beautifully. Ms. Shirley really enjoyed it too. After she changed and got dressed after the baptism she gave me a hug and said, "I’ve made it, Jesus I've made it" Haha she is so cute. K so amazing miracle happened this week. Since Ms. Shirley's baptism was this week we no longer have a solid investigator that has a baptism date, well this has been stressing Sister Low and I out very badly and we have been tracting like you wouldn't believe and trying to visit our potential investigators all the time to teach them and nothing was happening. Well we have obviously been praying like mad and fasting that Heavenly Father would help us to find someone to teach who was ready for the gospel and still nothing... So Saturday morning we are at the church filling up the font for Ms. Shirley and getting things set up and such and around 10:30 everyone was showing up to the church to take pictures and get ready for the service and all of a sudden a young boy who is 17 named Amir walks through the door.  The ward mission leader and I walk over to him and ask him if he is looking for someone and he says,  "Well yes kind of, my name is Amir and I always ride my bike by this church to see if anyone is here. So I decided to get up today and stop by to see if someone could talk to me about the church and give me a tour or something -k pause (my mouth dropped open in shock) and then he said, I am going to be moving out of my house when I am 18 and I want to find a church and get a strong foundation in Jesus Christ and every time I ride by your church I always want to stop by and go inside and learn more." Wow we were so surprised, we told him that he had come to the right place and that we were actually having a baptism and asked if he would like to stay and he said yes! It was so good, and what was even cooler is that some boys he goes to high school with were there and a big shot football player that goes to school with him is the one baptizing Ms. Shirley and he recognized all of them! It was so cool. After the baptism he said that he enjoyed it and that it felt warm and welcoming and good. He also said he wants to start coming to church and we said yes of course come on Sunday at 11 here in this building! Nothing short of a miracle here. Well on Sunday Amir didn't show up so we stopped by his house that evening and he said that his father had him go to church with him that morning, but that he really wants to come to our church and that he is going to this Sunday. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he would start on it right away, we also invited him to a temple tour on Wednesday night and he is very excited for that. Anthony Hernandez, one of the boys that was at the baptism that goes to school with him is going to come to the temple tour with us so that will be very good. Amir also asked us when we are going to come back and teach him and he said could I give you my phone number so you can call me and come back. Ha! I said yes of course and we got things set up to go and teach him this week. He seriously is like the golden investigator I am so excited about him, he really wants to learn about the church and Jesus Christ. He is a really good levelheaded kid and has got some amazing goals and plans for his life, very determined type that is awesome. Well that’s basically the coolest thing that happened this week. Supposedly there was supposed to be a big hurricane this past weekend, but all that happened was it rained a lot like it usually does. We have driven most of the week, but since we have limited miles we have biked too and we just get soaking wet which can be so annoying because we have to run home and change and throw our clothes in the dryer, but that’s ok I guess... Rain is good... Holy cow though one night we were riding our bikes to a potentials house and there was a gator in the pond we rode by and I swear the thing was 8 feet long, just huge!!! Kinda scary but cool, I wanted to take a picture but we were in such a hurry, I will have to get a picture next time.  We also had some J-Dubs knock at our door during our companion study the other morning. Ha they were trying to give us some hand out type junk and talk about what they believe, umm sounds familiar... But we just introduced ourselves and said that we were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and they felt so dumb it looked like haha they didn't know what to say to us and so we asked them about their belief in God and how they came to know for themselves. They told us a tiny bit and talked about how we don't earn our way to heaven,(they think that’s what we are trying to do) ya know tryin to stump us and we were like you are right! All we have to do is keep the commandants and have faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement and repent and be baptized by someone who holds the proper authority like John the Baptist in the Bible and receive the gift of the holy ghost and endure to the end, haha they felt so awkward, and we were like well we won’t keep you, would you like one of these pass a long cards to learn more about Christ and they said no of course, but it was funny. Well nothing else exciting, I have to go now! Love you all!

-Sister Jamison

Lake Reams - July 15, 2013

Hey Family,

So this last week was good. We went on exchanges and that was way fun. I got to go and stay with Sister Higley and she is over the YSA area, so basically the whole stake. But it was cool, we had a good day, and some interesting things happened to say the least haha. So we rode our bikes out to go and see some YSA people and of course none of them were home  - it was the middle of the day, and there was this one apartment that we went to and we didn't have bike locks.  Don't ask me why those sisters don't invest in bike locks but they don't, and since we were on exchanges I was using another sisters bike, but anyways we were at an apartment and we left our bikes under the stairway and I did not feel good about it (we were in a very ghetto area) so we walked up the stairs and down the hall and went looking for the YSA and they weren't home and so we started to walk back to our bikes and I heard this tick tick tick noise and just ran for the stairs and as I looked down I saw this Asian guy lifting up my bike!!! UGH!!! really Sister Dunford’s bike, but the one I was using for the day, and I kind of yelled (haha) EXCUSE ME!!!! And he looked up at me and just dropped the bike and was uh sorry all casual like and I ran down and got the bike and he just slowly walked off and was watching to see if Sister Higley and I were going to leave the bikes again I presume, of course we were not.  And I told Sister Higley I did not feel good at all leaving our bikes out of sight when I don't have a lock and that we were just going to have to do street contacting because I was not about to let this bike get stolen by a weirdo! Well anyways she agreed and we went on our way and rode to a different neighborhood/apartment place and were talking to people and we ran into a Haitian family (haha ok) so we walked up to them and the one guy was so weird but nice haha I don't know well long story short he totally asked me to marry him! Ha can you believe that??? I was like umm no sorry I am a missionary umm so do you have a faith in Jesus Christ?? Ha I was a little caught off guard and so he responded to me some what about Jesus but just kept saying well girl I am looking for a wife and dang girl you are just so pretty and I was like I am so sorry I am not allowed to date and thank you but no haha and he finally kind of dropped it. But was cool, I started talking to his sister who is my age and we talked about Christ and what role he has played in her life and she was telling me all about what she thinks and she was very friendly and then she was asking me about myself and where I was from and so we got to talking about that and I told her a little bit about myself and she thought it was cool that I came out here to spread the gospel and I said ya I think it's pretty cool too. And then something way way way cool happened, so we were talking and she was telling me about herself and all of a sudden I got this way strong impression, talk about the temple, and so that's exactly what I did.  I told her about what a temple was and I told her about marriage and how when you go to civil marriages you hear the words "till death do us part" and I said in the temple we believe that we are married or "sealed" to our families for time and all eternity and that family bonds don't end at death. And I kind of explained it to her and then bore my testimony to her about it and the spirit was so strong and her countenance was so different when I was testifying to her about the temple and she got really happy and was like really? Is that real? And I said absolutely yes, Heavenly Father loves us so much he has given us the amazing blessing to be with our families forever, and she just had the biggest smile on her face and I left her a pass-a-long card and told her if she wants to learn more that she could look on the Mormon.org website and she was like I for sure will and then 2 seconds later she whipped out her phone and was looking up the website on her phone, so cool... So Then we had to go but it was so cool, I hope that she gets in contact with missionaries again! (She's from Tampa so I couldn't give her my number) But ya way cool. Other than that we pretty much street contacted for the rest of the time. We run into some weird people, who always make it interesting, and it also rained hard core on us, (always does) I was soaking wet.  Well so like I was talking about last week about the dinner with Elder Munz and President Berry, well it went SUPER WELL!!!! I was so happy, we gave a great lesson on receiving revelation and how important it is to write your impressions down so that you can receive more.  Elder Munz also asked us a lot of questions about how we are working with the ward members and how are areas are going, then at the conclusion we bore our testimonies and it was just such a good evening. Sister Berry loves me haha not to boast, her daughter is having a baby soon and then is going to fly to Florida so they can see and she was like I will take pictures for you so you can see, and I told her I had a way cute baby niece and she want's pics. haha we super hit it off! Then the next day was the meet and greet with President and Sister Berry for all the missionaries in this zone and when Sister Low and I got there Sister Berry walked straight to us and hugged us and was soo happy to see us.  President and Sister Berry are so great I love them.  They talked to us missionaries about being disciples of Jesus Christ and it was so awesome, they gave us way inspired council and it was just a great meeting.  Sadly earlier that morning I was throwing up and way sick (don’t ask me why I don't know) but I was and so I wasn't feeling to good that day. When we got home from the meeting I laid down for about 3 hours and then we went out and finished the evening out, I am better now but for like 3 days I was just throwing up and way sick.  I was able to receive a blessing from a man in our ward (Brother Andersen) it helped so much he is so amazing too. Well I love you all and this is all I have time for! Have a great week!

-Sister Jamison

July 8, 2013 - Lake Reams

Hey Fam,

So this week was good! I am so super worn out because we worked like crazy, pretty much a lot of our lessons fell through and we did a lot of tracting.  I am getting a nice tan from it though!;)  Ms. Shirley is doing so well, we went and taught her a lesson this week about the prophet and she loved it. Usually she gets way distracted in the lessons and talks about her grand kids or other things, but she was super focused in this lesson and was excited and so ready to learn.  She also has been so good about reading her Book of Mormon; I am a little shocked on how dedicated she is about reading, but way way happy. She is already midway through Alma!! And it is so exciting because when we go over she always tells us what she has been reading and I love hearing her read to me and talk about it. She also has told her whole family about her baptism and has invited them all.  I am excited and I can't wait to see them all there.  I really hope that they come to the confirmation too on Sunday.  We have talked to Ms. Shirley about inviting them to that, but I think we are going to have to remind her about it. We also had a good lesson this week with Jacobus and Jessica. They are both awesome and we were able to get a member (Brother Malquist) to come with us to the lesson. Well the totally cool thing about that is Brother Malquist is the main director of the animation engineering at Disney and Jacobus used to work over there for Disney in the animation engineering department. Well Jacobus now does his own work and his own business type of thing but he still knows Brother Malquist, but I don't think he had ever really formally talked to him before. Well when we all showed up at Jacobus’ door with Brother Malquist, Jacobus was so shocked and happy haha you could tell he was just like oh my gosh the director is in my house.... haha it was so funny he was so smiley and I think much more willing to listen if you know what I mean haha. But we had a solid Restoration lesson and Brother Malquist really was so amazing he gave a lot of great personal stories and he is very charismatic and so everyone enjoyed that.  The spirit was so strong as well and everything just flowed and was awesome.  We invited Jacobus and Jessica to start reading the Book of Mormon and they said that they would and so we are super excited for them. The only bummer thing is that they work a ton and so they told us that they would be busy for the next 2 weeks because I guess they have some big projects and so we are going to go back in 2 weeks for sure, so we have also been stopping by their house and texting them every other day too, to keep in contact. Jacobus has started reading the Book of Mormon when we talked to him the other day and I am so happy for him. I don't know if Jessica has started, but I hope so! We also were able to set an appt. with a man that we have literally been trying to contact for about 4 weeks now. He finally answered the door and we asked if we could come back and teach a lesson so we are very excited about that! Gene is still doing well.  We visit him now just once a week.  The ward missionaries also visit once a week with him, he is preparing to get a temple recommend and the priesthood and we are very excited for him. Please keep him in your prayers though, things didn't go according to plan this week for him, and he lets it bother him too much and I am worried about him and staying active. But other than that he is doing very well.  It is crazy how the missionary work is slowly changing; we are working with the members so much more and really getting them excited about missionary work. Our district leader Elder Duffy, in a coordination meeting one Sunday morning, had prayerfully come up with suggestions on how we can work with the ward members more effectively and then two weeks later we had the world wide training and we learned exactly what Elder Duffy had been inspired to tell us to start doing already.  It has been so amazing, we always leave the members with commitments and it really helps them refocus themselves and family's on the Lord, we then follow up with them that Sunday or the following and they get excited to tell us that they are keeping their commitments as a family and it is so cool to see. We also leave them commitments to have a non-member friend over for the next time we have dinner with them and they are totally committed to inviting their friends.  We have BBQ's with investigators every other Monday night for FHE and the ward is working really hard together to invite friends over for a lesson and to meet the members and just chill and eat.  It really is so effective it kind of blows my mind.  When the members are involved missionary work goes so much better.

Well we got a new mission president, President and Sister Berry and they are awesome. Sister Low and I got to briefly meet them the other day at church and they are so nice and so ready for missionary work.  Tonight Sister Low and I have been asked to go and eat dinner with President and Sister Berry and Elder and Sister Munz of the 70. Crazy uh!!!! The Elders in our ward were invited too and we are all very excited. We are eating at Elder Munz house and Sister Low and I were asked to give the lesson, can you believe that!?!? We are such newbies and out of the 200+ missionaries in the mission, Sister Low and I were asked to go and teach the new mission president and his wife and an area 70.  I was so shocked when we got the call 2 days ago but I am very excited to be able to have this opportunity. Pray for us!!! Haha we are very nervous.  Tomorrow at the stake center is the official meet and greet for the missionaries in this zone to meet President and Sister Berry, but Sister Low and I and Elder Duffy and Jensen are so lucky that we get to meet them a day early! This really is so cool, I think I might actually get ready tonight and do my hair hahahaha Well I've go to go now! I love you all and have a great week!!!

-Sister Jamison

   

Claire’s pictures are soooo cute! I wish I could come to her birthday party!  

July 1, 2013 - Lake Reams

Hey Family,

So this week was good, we had a lot of our appointments fall through but we still saw miracles. So Ashley fell through on us again and that was way disappointing because we taught her an awesome first lesson and she has a Book of Mormon and now she just can't seem to meet with us. We are going to try and contact her again this week but if nothing happens we might end up dropping her. We also had an awesome turn out at our "investigator BBQ" we have every other Monday night, a lot of the members that were there invited non-member neighbors and friends and it was so good.  We watched a Mormon Message and Sister Low and I gave the thought, and it was about the Book of Mormon and it was really good.  One of the guys that came to the BBQ is a man named Bobby and he is the Elders investigator, he said he really enjoyed himself and he ended up coming to church on Sunday which was so awesome. We also have found some new investigators ourselves - this week we found the Louis family through tracting.  They are way nice and the dad is so cool, he is the one that answered the door and he said that we were welcome to come back and teach the family which will be so good because the wife is into this too and they have a lot of young kids. We are going to go and see them tonight and I am way excited.  I think that they will really like what we have to say.  We also came across a woman named Nancy.  She is one we found about 4 weeks ago, but every time we would go to her house, she was never home.  But finally this last week we went by and she was home and was so friendly and let us in and we were able to teach her the first lesson, so that was sweet. She liked our lesson and she told us she wants to come closer to Jesus Christ and we told her we would be just the ones to help her do that,  We were able to give her a Book of Mormon and we committed her to reading and she said that she would and so we are way excited. We are going to go and see her on Friday.  Then on Wednesday we were tracting and we happened to come across this house and a man answered and his name was Jacobus (Jah-Kobe-us) he was way cool too. His wife wasn't home so of course we didn't go inside, but we told him about what we did and who we were and he said that his wife would like to listen to us because she has been trying to find a church, so we set an appointment and ended up going back on Friday. Well so cool, so we went back on Friday and his wife Jessica was way cool too, she told us about her religious history and her thoughts and how she hasn't ever been baptized but would like to be and we told her basically what we told Jacobus and she and he both sounded like they were interested in meeting with us more. So just before we left we invited them to church and they said they would think about it and we were just praying that they would come. Well MIRACLE!!! We were at church on Sunday and about 5 minutes after sacrament started guess who we see, JACOBUS AND JESSICA!!! WHOOO!!! And an even bigger miracle is that sacrament meeting was all about the Restoration and the speakers gave such good talks, Sister Low and I were so so happy! Well this week was awesome! Ms. Shirley is way excited about her baptism and Gene is receiving the priesthood this Sunday at church. Things are going way good here, I hope that we will be able to get Jacob and Jessica and Nancy to be baptized on July 20th but we will see how that goes. Well I Love you all, Claire's pictures are so cute.  Talk to you soon!

Sister Jamison

June 24, 2013 - Lake Reams

Hey family,

How are you? I hope everything is going well for you. Well this week was pretty good, we found 2 new investigators and that was awesome. The woman's name is Heather Hill; she is a friend with a family in our ward, the Shoffs. And we were able to go to her house this week and start teaching her, she really has liked our lessons and she really loves that we believe that families can be together forever, and that we have a place to go after this life. She said she used to get really bad anxiety when thinking about death and what was going to happen to her and her family to the point where she would have a total panic attack, so you can only imagine that she absolutely loved what we had to say. She really wants to learn from us and progress but she really wants her husband and 2 kids to be on board too, that shouldn't be a problem for the kids, they are friends with other kids in the ward, the daughter actually went to girls camp with the Stake this last week so that is awesome. I think her husband would be the only struggle, but I can't judge that yet because I haven't met him. Heather also is the only one working in the family right now and that really stressed her out, her husband just lost his job, and so she works on Sunday, I pray that things will work out and that she will be able to come to church with her family. I know that the whole family will be able to grow together in the gospel and come closer to Jesus Christ, I know that, that will bring them closer to one another and the love and unity that will grow between them will be amazing. The other woman is named Ashley, and she is quite the find too, we were tracting about 3 weeks ago and a boy answered the door, about 15 and we asked if a parent was home and he said no, but that his mom is religious and he gave us her number and said we could come back. So we left and just thought, that's going nowhere. Usually when kids answer the door they just don't know what to say and usually say uh well talk to my mom or whatever, but non the less we decided to come back and for weeks we tried and nothing. Well finally one day we came back to her house and Ashley answer the door and said my son told me about you, what are you doing? And so we explained that we were missionaries that we were spreading a message that Jesus is the Christ and that His gospel has been restored through a living prophet and she was like really? and we said yes and she was like you really come out here to do this? How old are you and so we said we are 20 and we are out here full time for a year and a half spreading the gospel and she was very amazed, she sais that is very impressive that us young girls choose to use our time this way, teaching people about Jesus Christ, and she said she would love to meet with us and ask questions and see what we were all about, and Sister Low and I were a little shocked, but very excited. So we set an appointment with her and it fell through, and for 3 more appointments we set they fell through, until finally she called us one night and said I am so sorry I've been busy can I meet you tomorrow at 11, and we were like YES! So on Saturday we met in the park and taught a really solid restoration lesson and she thought it was very good. We gave her a Book of Mormon and committed her to read it and she said she would, it was SO AWESOME! We also were able to meet with 2 potential investigators this week, one named Nancy that we have been trying to see fro weeks and has never been home and another woman named Barbra. They both really like Sister Low and I and we have been going by and visiting them when they have actually been home and we have been able to share short messages with them, I think they could become investigators real quick:) On Thursday we got to go to the temple and do temple service again, I love doing temple service.  We trimmed hedges and pulled weeds and just made the grounds look really clean and sharp, it is so nice to be there with all the missionaries in the zone hanging out doing service, seriously my favorite day of the week. We also had an awesome world wide training last night, I hope you guys went to it and if not look it up online and watch it! It is so inspired and has a lot of great council on how we are to be forwarding missionary efforts.  One thing I have realized very clearly on my mission is that tracting is about 2 % effective and really the work and progress comes from working together with the members and ward council. President Hinckley talked about in one of his conference addresses that missionary work is going to be most effective through working with the members and that is absolutely true.  I am almost mad that I didn't do more to help the missionaries while I was at home; there is so much I could have done to help the work.  The prophet Joseph Smith says in D&C that the most important work we can do is to preach the gospel and that is 100 and a million percent true.  We should always be looking for ways that we can spread the gospel and help lift others and bring them unto Jesus Christ.  In Moroni 7 verse 48 it says when he shall appear we shall be like Him, and is it a coincidence that charity is talked about so much in that chapter? I think not!  When we have true charity, we are truly concerned for the eternal salvation and happiness for those around us, we love others and we do what we can to build up the Kingdom of God, our will literally becomes Moses 1:39- our work becomes to help to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. Of course we cannot give eternal life and immortality, for only God can do that, but what we can do is have charity and help build the Kingdom. We literally will be like God, that is what it promises and when we are like Him we will be doing exactly what His will is, that is why Charity is above all, because that is the very center of what the gospel is. I challenge all of you to think of what you can do better in our life to help you come closer to the Savior, repent and ask for help that you can do better, and as you try you WILL feel the hand of the Lord in your life and pray for missionary experiences.  Missions are not only for the missionaries, they are for every single person, and we should all be doing missionary work everyday. I am going to expect all of you to e-mail by next week telling me what you have done to help you come closer to the Savior and what miracles you have seen with having missionary experiences that you pray for.  I promise as you do this the Lord WILL give them to you. Don't forget to pray and read your scriptures, in Matthew 10:28 it gives us a clear warning; we need to avoid Satan because he is one who truly brings destruction and unhappiness. Satan is too cleaver and he knows exactly how to carefully bit by bit lead us away from the Savior. We cannot be lazy in our scripture study and church attendance, we need to do things that are going to keep the spirit always, anger, misunderstanding and discouragement are some of the most powerful tools he has.  Do not let anything create a wedge between you and the Savior because that is exactly what he wants.  It is amazing to see how little things can sway people so easily, I hear people talking about crude, awful things everyday, yet when we come around to talk about the Savior, it then becomes awkward or weird or something "we don't talk about".  The Savior gives us the easiest guidelines possible to keep ourselves clean and pure, and standards to help us become better and to draw closer to Him, and I know they will do exactly that. I love you all and I hope that you are doing well. I love being a missionary even though it is seriously the hardest thing in the world, there isn't anything on this earth I would rather being doing right now. I hope that as you pray for miracles and exercise your faith that you will be able to see the blessings that come, I know Heavenly Father is just waiting to bless us, but unless we ask we won't receive. I love you so much, have a wonderful week!

Love, Sister Jamison