Dear Mom and Dad,
Hey, So I don't know why my
e-mail didn't send last week. President gave me permission to send it today. I
leave the MTC tomorrow; today is my last day! I
will call home around 8:30 AM from the airport. Hopefully you
are home, if not I will call dad at work. I don't know the Dollarama number, so
that will have to do J Can't wait to hear from you. I will fast for Jeremy on Sunday and
Mom, it is great that you were able to escort Caroline through the temple for
her own in endowments. MTC is great! I will miss it, but am so ready to get
into the field.
Love, Sister Luening
Last Week (July 2):
Thanks so much for your Dear Elder letter 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, like Tom Walker. 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 was 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 an 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 took pictures with them and have 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" and by verse two I was bahling 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 about
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 went to Temple
Square this week and received a tour and were 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! It has 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 enjoying 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 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 went online and actually talked 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 almost a 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 became 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 Savior 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 is crazy that he was able to feel the spirit even through a
computer screen, ha-ha J!
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 11:00 PM, and we talked for an hour. Curfew is
usually 10:30 PM, 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 6:00AM would have been
brutal to get ready for class. So we were able to sleep in until 6:30AM (the
stated arise from bed time). Itis so sad to hear myself say that 6:30AM 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 acted as an RLDS Investigator on Wednesday. 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 though 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 on 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 is the prophet, not Brigham Young). She told him that 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 in love and really ask ourselves how can we help them come closer to Christ and how will the doctrine we are teaching him, help him (the investigator). 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, also I fly from Utah to Missouri on Wednesday at 9:30 AM. So I will try to call you from the airport at 8:30 AM J 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 has 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!
Actually Brother Green acted as an RLDS Investigator on Wednesday. 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 though 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 on 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 is the prophet, not Brigham Young). She told him that 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 in love and really ask ourselves how can we help them come closer to Christ and how will the doctrine we are teaching him, help him (the investigator). 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, also I fly from Utah to Missouri on Wednesday at 9:30 AM. So I will try to call you from the airport at 8:30 AM J 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 has 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
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