Here we go! (April 14 - 20)

First exciting news: we have a car!!!  Like full time now!  At least until transfers on May 5!  I'm gonna get spoiled. haha 

Next exciting news: we have exchanges this week!  From Friday night to Saturday night, I'll be going to Diamondhead with one of the Sister Training Leaders.  I think the area is pretty close to Louisiana and it includes Pass Christian, which is where Katrina actually hit.  The Sister Training Leader is awesome, so I'm totes excited.

Okay so let's hear about last week: Tuesday was SOGGY.  We walked to the library to email and then a member picked us up and (after we went home to change because we were SOAKED) took us to the sailboat museum.  

It was so nice of them to take us!!  We didn’t really know ANYTHING about boats or seafood, but it was still awesome.  There was a whole room about hurricanes, including news coverage from Katrina.  The 10 year anniversary of Katrina is August 29 this year and I'm wondering if I'm gonna be here for it!

This display reminded me of my Dad!

 Later, after we ate dinner, another member brought us cinnamon rolls and that was amazing.   J  

On Wednesday we had district meeting and then our investigator had his baptismal interview! Yeah, we had a baptism last week!  It was exciting! 

Thursday was interesting.  We met again with a lady we gave a Book of Mormon to a few weeks ago.  We were talking to her and chatting and she was talking a lot about "the baby" aka her grandson who died when he was 8 months old.  So we asked if we could share just what we believe about "the baby" and she said sure.  So we started with a prayer and opened the scriptures and then she said, "Well you aren't going to convert me! I don't want to change and I don't want you to waste your time trying!" and we said, “Oh no, we don't want to force anything on you!”  Then we taught her the entire plan of salvation and she loved it.  She still isn't interested in changing religions, but she LOVES us and agreed with everything we said about the spirit world.  Oh she's so great.   She told God she'd stop smoking if He would save the baby but she hasn't smoked since the baby died because who is she to say whether He didn't save the baby?  Oh she's so great.   We love her. 

Also on Thursday, while tracting, we met a man who chewed and spit tobacco as we talked to him.  As soon as he opened his door, he said, "Mormons."  We said, "Yep!"  We found out that he has family who are members and he knows all about the church.  He has read the Book of Mormon 12 times but...He doesn't want to do anything.  We asked him, “Why don't you pray?” and “Why don't you come to church?”  His answer: "Because I'm stubborn."  So that might be an instance of just planting seeds.  It was cool talking to him, even though he was kinda rough.  He even told us what streets to avoid in the neighborhood, so that was nice.

On Thursday we taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ through a jumping game my companion invented.  It's called Jumping to Heaven and you put a paper with "Celestial Kingdom" on the ground really far away and tell someone to jump to it.  They can't do it.  So then you put down stepping stones of faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost and endure to the end down to get closer,  but you still leave a pretty big gap between endure to the end and Celestial Kingdom to show that it still takes work to keep going to get there!   My companion asked, "What would you say if Jesus was here and asked you what you need to do to get to the Celestial kingdom?" Then it really hit me: “WE'RE representatives of Jesus Christ!!  That's what we do.  That's why we're here. That's what we want for you!"  So that was something.  It was really powerful.  It was a great lesson.

Friday was our day of miracles.  We decided to try tracting a little differently.  Instead of just being like "Hi, we're missionaries!" we had a scripture already prepared to share with people (Ether 12:27).  We said, "Hi, we're missionaries!  Can we share a scripture with you?  Great!  Can we say a prayer?  Great!  Well, first, let's tell you about the Book of Mormon!"  Oh, it worked so great on Friday!!  We met a guy who broke his arm this week (weaknesses made strong) and was a history major in school (history of the Book of Mormon!).  Oh, it was perfect.  He seems genuinely interested and had a lot of questions and we talked to him for a long time! We're going back this week to talk more with him and his family!  

Then we had a return appointment set up from tracting last week.  They were just leaving when we got there so we went back an hour later and they still weren't home so, instead, we taught like all the neighborhood kids.  Seriously.  We sat on the driveway and SEVEN kids sat against the garage door and we taught the Restoration and they LOVED it.  All SEVEN of them wanted their own copy of the Book of Mormon and took ALL of the pamphlets that we had!!  Oh man.  We're going back again today to teach them more!  (They were all either in high school or middle school.)  That was the weirdest thing though.  There was just a bunch of kids hanging out around the driveway and my companion just walked up to them and asked, "Do you like Jesus?" "Do you want to hear a lesson to learn more about Jesus?"  And the oldest one (who's about to graduate high school) rounded up everyone and enjoyed the lesson.  Most of them had questions (some better questions than others...) and they kept yelling to the other kids on the street to come and listen.   It was hilarious and random and awesome. 

Then we had dinner with a family in the ward and they had invited a non-member!  The elders are going to teach him but it was great that he had been invited when we would be there!!  That's actually something we wanted ward members to start doing (and it's in the ward mission plan - to have members invite nonmembers over for dinner with us), but it's not something that we've talked to that family about!  It was kind of humbling that we didn't even do anything and he was there.  Heavenly Father knows best how to do His work.  He doesn't really need us to do anything, but He lets us help out. 

New church signs this week: 

"If God is for it, so are we. If God is against it, so are we." 

"A good example speaks louder than good advice."

"God is stronger than my circumstance."

"Easter was awesome. What happened next??" 

When we saw this sign, my companion yelled, "THE BOOK OF MORMON!!!"

And that's a wrap! 

Love, 

Sister Nash

  

We bought these flowers on our last P-Day! 
They've been loving all the rain!

  

A scripture from Isaiah on a bag of FROZEN BROCCOLI. #righteous

Just making a phone call!
(We had lunch with a member family that has a lot of awesome antiques!)