The first of Lasts

Hiii!!!!!

 

This last week.. Man. I just don't know where to start. Partially because we are just in finding mode right now haha. We have been trying to find less actives, new gators, actually just ANYBODY who will listen to us. Which some of them do. We have been meeting with a lot of the members and getting to know them better which is so fun! I love the ward so much! So I'm not leaving. Hahaha I might be a little hick now but it's great :D

 

We have been meeting with this one family for the last few weeks and they're amazing!!! The girl was baptized when she was a teenager and remembers the first time that she knew the Book of Mormon was true and her husband is very open about learning and he's praying to know if these things are true. We love them so much! And they have the cutest little girl in the world. Oh my gosh.

 

Oh. So the worst thing in the world happened. We had zone conf which was great. I love mission conferences. BUT it was my last one :/ So the WHOLE TIME I was just panicked and my heart was beating so fast because I had to bear my testimony in front of our zone and President and like the whole world pretty much. After lunch we had to switch our phone and it took a little longer than we thought so we were late to the next half of the meeting and we walked in during the departing missionaries testimonies so I just sat in the back and I thought I was going to blackout I was so nervous and I had missed my cue to go up there with everybody else. So I sat there and all of the sisters around me were telling me to go up there but it was so awkward and in the middle of everybody else's so I just sat there. Hahaha it was ughhh. After everybody was through I wasn't going to say anything so as President got up to move on everybody had to let him know that I was leaving. Grrrrrr!!!!!! So I was really awkward and you'd think I know how to bear my testimony by now because I've been doing it for over a year/my whole life but I'm still so awkward. I don't know what I said and I'm pretty sure I just rambled on about something and how weird I felt. Hahaha I needed so rescuing at that point. But it's done! Now, I just have to do it 100 more times before I leave and that's like forever away so I don't know why everybody is making me do it now. I'm just so afraid of going home! I don't know how to be normal!!!!

 

Heavenly Father will help.

Sister Maynard.

I Love my mission

I Love my mission.

We had the best weekend ever. Ohhhhh man. R got baptized/confirmed and it was so cool. So many people were there and the spirit was strong and it was so great to just know that Heavenly Father loves us! Especially R and his family :]

We have been seeing so many miracles. It's amazing! We have been trying to clean up our ward list because it's super outdated and nobody knows who like half of the people are so we're just trying to help the ward out with that. We stopped by a man with a sign on his door that said "DO NOT DISTURB IF THE LIGHT IS ON!" Of course, the light was on ahaha so we stood there for a few minutes rummaging through our stuff to find a pen and card to write on and he opened the door to see what we wanted. We barely got out "We're missionaries" before he said "I'm a pagen!" And slammed the door in our faces. I have never met a pagen before so that was a first.

Then we knocked on the door of girl who we had never heard about before. She was in the middle of dinner so we set up an appt for that night. We went back and she was so cool! Her husband and little girl came in and talked with us as well and we asked if we could practice our new way of teaching on them. They were nice and said yes :] So hopefully we can start teaching them soon!!

This library is so whatever and we have to get off now. But, I love you guys and hope you have an awesome week!!!

Love,

Sister Maynard

 

This past week has been great. We have been working really hard and searching and searching for the elect.

 

R is getting baptized! We were at sites this weekend and got a random text saying he wanted to get baptized on Sat so we're doing it :] I have been studying about the faith to see miracles and it's really neat that when we work hard and do what Heavenly Father asks us to do, He blesses us with amazing miracles. That's something we have been seeing a lot of this week :] Miracles upon miracles.

 

So there is this really cool Mormon Message that I watch over and over again because it's that cool.

http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?v=1789679612001

It's about sharing the gospel through technology. The cool part is that I have been called by a prophet of God to do that on my mission! We get to chat with people and call people everywhere and it doesn't seem like we do a lot because we get a lot of trolls and pranks. But this past week when we were there we chatted with this man from Africa who knew a lot about the church. He asked about the priesthood and why we need it if people who don't have it can perform miracles anyways. It was a pretty rough chat. He wasn't super open.. So at the end he asked if we had anything else to say because he was going to leave. I just bore my testimony of the priesthood and it didn't change his mind but he did say we were powerful. Isn't that crazy that people can feel the spirit over chat?! Technology can be used for soooooo much good! We can share the gospel so easily with people and we don't even really have to do anything.. SOOOO will everybody who reads this find their favorite Mormon Message and post it on facebook or some other social network or just some other way to share the gospel through technology?? That video is very inspiring (I think..) and I know if you do your best to share the gospel with others Heavenly Father will bless you :]

 

He loves us.

 

Sister Maynard.

Happy Birthday Morgan

Do you know how cold it is here?? Like it hasn't stopped snowing in 3 days.. My toes have yet to thaw out since Nov.. Except one day last week it was in the 60's. Ohio is so strange!!!!!

So I don't know if I told you about my chat experience with D.. She is a convert and her son never wanted anything to do with the gospel for years. I guess one day in Dec he decided to see what it was all about and met with the missionaries a few times. After the holidays he moved to WA so D came online to see how to get in contact with the missionaries in his son's area. She gave us all of his info and we called the bishop and he didn't answer. So I left a message and called D to update her. I guess he wanted to meet with them that night and if they didn't show up then he was going to give up.. I tried to explain that there wasn't a lot I could do from Ohio so I ended up giving her the bishop's number and then remembered I could get her the mission office's number. So after that she was super friendly and we talked about my mission and how awesome it is and how she wants to go on a senior sister mission.... I told her that I would call her in a week to see how things were progressing and we hung up. I called her a week later and she said that she called the mission office and the elders were able to meet with her son. In that week he had met with them a few times and something the elder said really struck him and he knew it was true! The next morning he read the Book of Mormon and new it was true! Then he called his mom and he said he didn't want to meet with missionaries anymore... Grrrr. So I told her  I would pray for him and call her back in a week to see what happened. When I called her she seemed really frazzled but she was so excited because HE WAS GETTING BAPTIZEDDD!!!! Hahaha It was so cool! And I am so excited for them because his poor mom had prayed for years that he would accpet the gospel and finally his heart was fully prepared. Now, I had very little to do in all of this. But D was so sweet and just kept telling me how much she appreciated me and I tried to explain that I just called and left a message for the Bishop, but she told me that she was led to chat and she was desparate and I was able to help her and it's so cool. I love working on chat. I actually very rarely see amazing things come from it but I know that they do. And phone calls as well.. They're harder but we are able to share the gospel with everybody around the world!! It's SO COOL!!!!!!

Transfers were AW-FUL. I was fine until we pulled into the church parking lot and I lost it. For the rest of the day. Hahaha. Pathetic. But I am now with Sister J who is amazing! She is such a good missionary and I have a lot to learn from her. Seriously.. She's amazing. We have already seen a lot of miracles this week and we will continue to see a gazillion more this transfer. I am looking forward to it :] I feel like my faith has grown a lot just in the last week. Pshhhhhh. She's exactly who I and the area need right now. Heavenly Father totally knows what He's doing. 

It is so cold here. I can't get over it. I'm really trying to. Hand/toe warmers are the biggest blessing here. If we didn't have those then tracting would be a nightmare. And it's been snowing like crazy. And I'm driving this transfer. We left at 630 Friday morning to get to Kirtland. It usually takes about an hour but I had to drive in a white out on hilly roads and it definitely took us 2 hours hahahaha. I was following this truck for most of it and felt very comfortable behind him. He seemed to know what he was doing. But then we had to split up and as he came to this stop light he started to swerve a little and of course, I have no idea what to do when I swerve so I started yelling at everybody to pray really hard that we didn't die and the car wasn't stopping like I wanted it to and it was so scary. It probably wasn't as scary as I made it out to be in the moment but what else was I supposed to do?! Hahahahah the car eventually stopped and we were fine. The car was fine... We definitely went 19 mph the rest of the way and were totally safe :] AREN'T YOU SO PROUD OF ME?! 

So Sister J doesn't like cheese.. At all. And I love cheese but I'm lactose intolerant so I can't have it anymore. So she has been praying that I will stop liking cheese. hahaa I have absolutely NO real intent to follow through with that. We'll see what Heavenly Father does about it. I have been cutting dairy out of my diet a lot though. It's so sad :[ 

The greatest suprise came to Kirtland!!!!!! H. P.!!!! She was in the Solon ward and I love her so much and it was the best. I almost cried I was so happy. Jeezzzzz. I'm so emotional. But it really was amazing to see her. I miss the Solon ward so much. Especially H. 

I'm glad Morgan had a great birthday! Crazy she's 20.. Pretty sure she's actually 15. 

It has been an awesome week. Looking forward to this one too. As long as the snow stops :]

Love you,

Sister Maynard.