Dear Mom and Dad,
Thanks so much for your Dear Elder and for your e-mail. I am
glad to hear that you are doing awesome with Relief Society. Mom you are
amazing!! Dad I love you so much and really appreciated your e-mail last week. It
made me cry, lol! That is so awesome that you have been able to meet up with
old friends. It gets me excited to have those experiences later in my life.
Meeting up with my mission buddies will be so awesome! I heard from Chris and
got some other unexpected e-mails which were so awesome! Also, please tell the
Champagnes thank-you from me for their Dear Elder letter. It was so sweet of
them and I love them so much!
I am loving it here. This week
has had its ups and downs, but definitely a lot more ups than downs. On Sunday
we watched a MTC Devotional from 2011 by Elder Bednar about the Character of
Christ. He really emphasized that missionary work has nothing to do about us,
it is about others. He pointed out that the character of Christ is that in
situations when the natural man would normally turn in and only think of
themselves and be selfish, Christ would turn outward and only think about
others and how he could help them. It was soo good and really changed my
perspective and made me realize that I need to be less selfish and less
self-centered.
On Monday evening we had to say
good-bye to the Elders in our district. It was so hard. They are such great men
and have treated us sisters so well. We got pictures with them and their e-mail
addresses. They are going to Carlsbad, California. They are so amazing, though.
I had them write in my journal if they wanted and they are so sweet. At the end
of the day we shared what we all love about each other and then they walked us
back to our dorm. In front of our residence hall we sang "God Be With You
Till We Meet Again" by verse two I was balling like a baby and even Elder
Daniel and Elder Parker cried. It was so sad!
The Elders leaving really made
me start wondering if I was really ready to head out into the field, and I was
worrying way too much about it. Luckily in classes we learned more on how to
teach better and my confidence in teaching started to improve. I began to
realize that I need to have more faith and trust in the Lord and I can't demand
the Spirit to be with me, because then he won’t come. The way to receive the
Spirit is to prepare and then have faith that the Lord will help you know what
to say; listen to the investigator intently instead of worrying about what you
will say next and then the Spirit will prompt you in what to say.
We also got to go to Temple
Square this week and receive a tour and be taught more about what we will be
doing in the Visitor's Center. It was re-emphasized that our purpose as Visitor
Center Missionaries is the same as any other missionary: to invite others to
come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in
Jesus Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Gift of the
Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. The only tricky part is we only have 5-7
minutes to get to know them, figure out what their spiritual need is and help
teach to that and help them see how it applies to their life. Our goal isn't to
have them leave the visitor's center having a "great experience", but
it is to have them leave feeling CONVERTED unto Christ! Its been really amazing
gaining a better understanding and testimony of the doctrine of Christ and how
everything in life comes back to it. I have been loving having opportunities to
see how the doctrine of Christ can truly help us in any situation.
I love it here so much and I
feel so blessed. This week in visitor center training, one sister told us the
process of how sisters are assigned to visitor center missions, it is so cool!
So our picture comes up and then looking at our face, the apostles can tell if
we should be in a visitor center. Elder Perry (in Quorum of the 70) said that
they know because of what they can see in our faces" the light they see in
your smile and the testimony of the atonement that shines in your eyes".
That is so cool!! That makes me feel so special. They know that we only have a
limited time with the people we meet and we need to be able to influence them
to come unto Christ. After they set our pictures aside to be Visitor Center
sisters, they then do the process again in deciding which visitor center we
should be assigned to.
This week we got to work in the referral center. So we
got to go online and actually talk to real people who had questions about the
church or wanted to learn more. Sister Anderson (my companion) and I got to
talk to an investigator and we also talked to a less active member. In short we
invited the less active member to attend church this Sunday. He has just moved
to Texas and his wife is not a member. The missionaries stopped by his house a
few weeks ago, but his wife was very opposed to them coming in and she sent
them away. He is schizophrenic and because of that changes religions on an
almost daily basis. He said he has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and
prays about it every day. He wants his wife to learn more about the church but
knows she is not ready yet. We invited him to come to church, read the Book of
Mormon and pray to Heavenly Father, because God can help work with him in
softening his wife's heart. He said he will continue to read and pray and he
will come to church on Sunday. I asked him why he went less active and he said
about 25 years ago he was baptized but after he was baptized he was struggling
to support himself and so he wasn't paying a full tithe. The ward members
judged him for that and basically shunned him. I thought that was so sad. I
told him I was sorry to hear that and that wasn't right of the members to do,
but I told him if anyone knew about what he was going through the Saviour did.
I emphasized that God loves him and wants to hear from him, so he can always
pray. What I said I didn't think would impact him as much as it did. But he was
so thankful and appreciative of what I told him and testified of. It’s crazy
that he was able to feel the spirit even through a computer screen, haha :)
Well, the 4th of July was
awesome. We got to cut class early and watch 17 Miracles, sing national anthem
songs and then we ended in watching the fireworks. Us 4 sister missionaries
coordinated our outfits. So all of us wore red, white and blue...so patriotic!
The fireworks ended at about 11pm, and we talked for an hour. Curfew is usually
10:30, but the whole MTC received permission from the MTC president to stay up
past it to watch the fireworks. We didn’t get to bed until midnight, thank
goodness today is P-day, because getting up at 6:00 AM would have been brutal
to get ready for class. So we were able to sleep in until 6:30 AM (the stated
arise from bed time). It iss so sad to hear myself say that 6:30 AM is
"sleeping-in", lol!
Anyways, I am still loving it
here and I can't wait to use everything I am learning in the field. I honestly
feel like Ammon in Alma Chapter 26. I am just amazed at how much God has
blessed me and how much love missionary work really brings me! At the beginning
of the week I felt kind of sick of being here and just wanted to get out in the
field to use what I have learned. I know I felt that way because of seeing the
Elders go, but at the same time I was feeling very inadequate. I have been having
such great teaching experiences that are helping me to humble myself and truly
trust and have faith in the Lord. If I prepare and don't demand the Spirit to
be with me, but go into teaching by listening the investigator and being
prepared the Lord will bless we with the Spirit and it will prompt me in what
to say.
Actually Brother Green on Wednesday acted as an RLDS investigator. That was interesting. We asked what his views were and then tried to teach him. The problem is we went about teaching him entirely wrong. We weren’t' really getting anywhere with him, because we were focusing too much on trying to help him see how wrong his beliefs were instead of focusing on what beliefs we had in common and then building on that. We were teaching for about 15 minutes and then Brother Green stopped us and asked why we thought it wasn't going anywhere. We told him we felt like we were trying too much to convince him, instead of enlightening his view on some truths. With that in mind he invited us to start over again. Sister Hunter blew our minds. She taught totally out of love, she built on top of his faith and testimony of the Saviour and God. This RLDS member also had a firm belief in the Book of Mormon, but they believed in the succession of prophets through lineage. Sister Hunter invited him to pray about the Book of Mormon and to pray to know if Brigham Young was a prophet. ( in the RLDS faith they believe that Joseph Smith's son was the prophet, not Brigham Young). She told him if he was sincere in his desire to know, that he could find out for himself, because it would be revealed to him through the Holy Ghost. It was very humbling to us to see that when we teach, we need to go about it in love and really ask ourselves how can we help them come closer to Christ and how will the doctrine we are teaching will help help them (the investigators). It was just amazing!!
The Visitor Center training is bringing back my fire and desire to continue to learn J! I am so excited to have the opportunity tomorrow to spend 6 hours at temple square GIVING TOURS!! I can't wait to apply all I have learned and use it on REAL people in Indepenence.
Actually Brother Green on Wednesday acted as an RLDS investigator. That was interesting. We asked what his views were and then tried to teach him. The problem is we went about teaching him entirely wrong. We weren’t' really getting anywhere with him, because we were focusing too much on trying to help him see how wrong his beliefs were instead of focusing on what beliefs we had in common and then building on that. We were teaching for about 15 minutes and then Brother Green stopped us and asked why we thought it wasn't going anywhere. We told him we felt like we were trying too much to convince him, instead of enlightening his view on some truths. With that in mind he invited us to start over again. Sister Hunter blew our minds. She taught totally out of love, she built on top of his faith and testimony of the Saviour and God. This RLDS member also had a firm belief in the Book of Mormon, but they believed in the succession of prophets through lineage. Sister Hunter invited him to pray about the Book of Mormon and to pray to know if Brigham Young was a prophet. ( in the RLDS faith they believe that Joseph Smith's son was the prophet, not Brigham Young). She told him if he was sincere in his desire to know, that he could find out for himself, because it would be revealed to him through the Holy Ghost. It was very humbling to us to see that when we teach, we need to go about it in love and really ask ourselves how can we help them come closer to Christ and how will the doctrine we are teaching will help help them (the investigators). It was just amazing!!
The Visitor Center training is bringing back my fire and desire to continue to learn J! I am so excited to have the opportunity tomorrow to spend 6 hours at temple square GIVING TOURS!! I can't wait to apply all I have learned and use it on REAL people in Indepenence.
I still see Jeremy every day, which is awesome
and I hope everything works out with his Visa. Oh yeah, I fly from Utah to
Missouri on Wednesday at 9:30. So I will try to call you from the airport at
8:30 :) Just dear elder me and let me know if you will be home. Mom if you
won't be home I will call dad at work J! Anyways I can't wait
to talk to you and let you know more about how it has been here. It’s so hard
to really explain everything that is happening here and what it really is doing
for me. The spirit is amazing and I love learning more about the Doctrine of
Christ. I love you all so much!
THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!
Love Always,
Sister Luening
Sister Luening
