Humble Ourselves and Act on Faith

8.31.15

Hey Y'all

We had a really great week over here, lots of interesting things happened but as much is expected being a missionary. On Tuesday last week we had the mission conference I had mentioned in the last email. It was really great! It was also very long but man was there lots of stuff in it. One thing that we did was role played, just random scenarios where we invited someone to do something, and our mission president pulled out his iPad and videoed us doing it and then he put it all up on the big screen. Talk about nerve racking. But it made me realized that our teaching elevated just because there was a video on us but really we should always be bold and teach with inspired questions because we are on the Lord’s errand. So that is something we worked on though out the rest of the week. We also talked about Alma 32. That is the chapter that lots of us associate with faith, it is the chapter that talks about faith being like a seed and how important it is to nourish it and if we do not, our testimony will wither away. But when I was studying it before we went to the conference I realized how much that chapter is also about humility. I underlined every time that the chapter said humble or a form of that word and it said it more than ten times in that one chapter. This really shows us that we must humble ourselves and act upon our faith to receive the blessings that we need and ask for.

One thing that we get to do in this area is help with the Bishop Store house and put food orders together for people. I love doing this and being able to put together something to help someone who really needs it. At the end of the service this week we took someone's order who was not able to make it to the church to get it. We went and visited with this lady and talked about Alma 32 and talked to her about a few of the things that we learned about the chapter while we were in our zone conference the day before and she really enjoyed reading scriptures and she came to church Sunday and it was a big step for her and her family. They had a little daughter that got baptized a little while ago and we were not able to see her on Wednesday when we dropped the order off but we saw her at church on Sunday and it was the cutest thing, after I gave her mom a hug she just kept looking at me and I told her she was allowed to give me a hug if she wanted to and she ran towards me and give me the biggest hug like she had known me forever and it was the first time I had ever seen her.

The lady who got married about a month ago, had her baptismal interview on Friday and will be getting baptized in about a week and a half. We are soooo excited for her! She is so sweet and has read though the triple (Book of Mormon, Doctrine and covenants and Pearl of great Price) and now her and her husband are working on reading the bible from the beginning. She attends church every Sunday and loves it. We love seeing her ever Sunday and we learn something from her every time we meet with her.

Yesterday we had a missionary Fireside and it was awesome. It was really cool because it was not just our ward but we had 5 sets of missionaries working together to put it all together. It was 3 wards coming together and the fireside was on "Recognizing the spirit" and it was really great. We showed the video "Because He Lives" which was the Easter video that the church put out this year. It was great, just a little video all about Christ and what he did for us. Then we showed the Patters of Light 3 part videos by Elder David A Bednar. Those videos are so amazing, I would highly recommend them, they are 2 -3 minutes. We also had a handful of members bare testimonies after each of the videos and the primary kids sang for the opening and part of the closing songs. Really a wonderful uplifting service!

Hope you all are doing well and learn lots from the studies you have. School starts over here at Virginia Tech today, so for all those who are getting ready to start school good luck this year! Have a great week and I will talk to you all again soon!

Love Sister Mauck

The Gospel Truly brings Happiness to ALL!

8.24.15

Hey there!

Sorry I didn't update you last week. It always throws me off when we have P-day on Wednesday. We have been having a lot of good things going on over here in the east though! We have 5 people who have accepted to be baptized in the near future and have a handful of others who want to do lots to change their life.

We had a lesson with a man this week and were talking to him about how important it is to turn all our challenges over to Christ. As we were talking about this I brought up a quote by Brad Wilcox, which I do often which is, "No unclean thing can dwell with God, But no unchanged thing will even want to." While I said this the thought came to my mind that Christ forgets everything we do if we truly repent of it. Christ has felt all our pains and sorrows and Christ knows all our sins and when we ask for forgiveness that means that he has to remember them know more. So as we repent we are letting Christ forget those sins when we truly apply that atonement and do not dwell on our mistakes and just let the atonement work in our life. I know that the atonement is real and that we can apply it, and when we let it work in our lives we will truly be blessed for it and will be happy again when we can let that guilt free.

Another family that we have been working with is a single mother who is a less active member and her daughters are not members but have lots of questions about God and she has been interested in getting back to church. This week we went over and taught them, her girls are 8 and 12, and brought over our stake president’s daughter who is 16 and she worked with the girls really well. We talked about Alma 32 and how important it is to have faith in our lives and we did a little activity at the end where we put a box of animal crackers in a bag and my companion knew what was in the bag and she told the girls what was in it and they didn't believe her and we related it to faith. It was really cute and the best lesson we have had with the girls and the spirit was really strong there.

Yesterday we got a text from this couple who we tracted into the week previous and it was really interesting. So a little back ground knowledge, when we tracted into this family they told us we could come in and he said that he wanted us to tell him something that he hadn't already heard. He said that he knew all about Christ and that we probably didn't have anything new to tell him. And then we told him about the restoration. When we asked him to read the Book of Mormon he said no and then we told him how it is comparable to the bible and showed him the foot notes. He told us that when we showed him that they work together that he would read it. Then we invited him to be baptized and he said that being baptized was just a show for others. Um in the bible it says that it is a commandment to be baptized and we talked a little about how Christ was baptized to fulfill all righteousness. Then he said he would think about doing it again now that it would be his choice and if it was not in front of a whole bunch of people. So that was our first lesson then yesterday he texted us that he had God on his mind and asked us what he should do, may I say he texted us while we were at church. We texted him back and told him to read the book of Mormon Alma 34, and what he was thinking about. He told us that he was worried about going to hell for all the bad things he had done and that he wanted to make it all right but wasn't sure how to do that. Hello plan of salvation, right? This guy is really cool and wants so badly to follow Christ. I am so glad that he let us in instead of turning us away like he said he had done to lots of missionaries in the past.

Lots of good missionary work going on over here in Christiansburg and we have really learned lots. We have a conference this week with our mission president and our preparation for it was reading about commitments in preach my gospel and studying Alma 32. I am really excited about it. I hope you all are doing well and hope to hear from you soon!

Love Sister Mauck

Dare to be a Mormon

8.12.15

Hello all!

Hope all is well! We had a pretty great week this last week and have met some really cool people this week. These last couple weeks we have had lots of appointments that have been falling though and have prayed a lot to have people put in our path who are ready to receive the gospel and the Lord really has blessed us.

First off School in Christiansburg started yesterday (The 11 of august, yes that early) kind of felt bad for the kids having to go back that early but lots of them were excited to go. Anyways, during our dinner appointments with the members we have been sharing the Mormon Message, Dare to Stand Alone by Thomas S Monson, who have kids school ages and sharing the scripture Joshua 1:9 afterward. In the Mormon Message the prophet shares a rhyme that he remembered from his childhood memories:

Dare to be a Mormon,

Dare to stand alone,

Dare to have a purpose firm,

Dare to make it known!

I think it works with missionary work lots but it works well with just being a member of the church. It’s really cool to hear stories from the kids in the last year how they stood up for what they believe in. I love being able to relate with them because living in a place where there really are few members makes it hard sometimes but when we do so many blessings and opportunities come from it!

We have been working a lot with less active members here in Christiansburg lately and have seen a lot of miracles come from it! One of my favorite people I have met on my mission, Brother Laue, loves the church and has been a member for a long time but when he remarried he left the church because he just went with his wife. When we first got in the area him and his wife were the first referral we got to go and work with them. His wife loved the church but had so many obligations with her church, and it was the one she had grown up in. But sadly she just passed away like a week or so ago and we have been working with brother Laue a lot and he came to church on Sunday. He was afraid to leave the church he had been in for 32 years now because his pastor told him that if he left the church it would fall apart without him but we made a  promise to him that he will make a bigger difference, especially in his family coming to the Mormon church. He is a really sweet older guy who is raising a few of his great grand kids and now a few of them are our investigators.

Another less active we have been working with is the sweetest lady. She is an RM who has one of the strongest testimonies I have ever heard. She loves the church and as we have talked about the atonement a lot, she told us she will be to church next Sunday! Yeah!!

One other less active we have been working with is Awesome! He just randomly came to church and he had not been since he was younger, was baptized at the age of 8 and didn't go much after that so he is almost like an investigator and he loves the church and wishes he would have gone with his extended family more when he was younger.

One of the most recent converts in the ward we got and visit once a week just to keep up with her. Anyways last week at the end of the week she called us and asked if we could change where we were having our lesson and she asked us if we could have it at the laundry mat. Weird but we went. But it ended up being a tender mercy because we met this really cool guy in the process. This guy was waiting around for his stuff to finish and we started talking to him. He told us he was raised catholic but didn't love it the older he got. And just a year or so ago he came out gay... but when he told us he said he didn't agree with it. He told us that he was a republican and that he voted against gay marriage being legalized. He wanted to learn more and wants to do anything he can to follow God. He told us that at one point in his life he didn't believe there was a god but now he can’t deny that there is a God.

Also last week, on Saturday, we attended a wedding of one of our investigators and it was the sweetest simplest wedding. There was like 9 or 10 people there. She is the investigator and he has just recently started going back to church. She is really excited to now be baptized in the next couple weeks. She is another one of the favorite people I have met on my mission!:)

There really is a lot of cool things going on here in Christiansburg! So in Christiansburg we have to share a building to the town directly north of us, Blacksburg and lots of people in the ward have talked about how they really want a new building especially the older group, the ones who have been there for a long time. And this past week we had over 170 people at church and when we first got here I am pretty sure that there were only 150 some attending church and it is really exciting to see the growth of this ward in just under 2 months. It is really awesome to have elders and sisters in one ward and being able to work together so well with them and with the ward who really wants to do missionary work. I love being a full time missionary!!:)

Hope all y'all are doing well and would love to hear from you!

Love Sister Mauck

 

 

The Lord Watches Over Us

8.3.15

Hey!

Hope y'all are doing well! I had a wonderful week, crazy but great! It was more the end of the week that was crazy. One of our crazy experiences we had on Friday, we(me and one of my Sister training leaders, we were on exchanges that day) were driving home from Pembroke, from a zone meeting and we were about a mile out of the city and the girl sitting in the back of the car yells, "It's a baby Bear," the other 3 missionaries in the car, including me thought she was talking about a statue and as I continued driving I looked in the rearview mirror and there was a real baby bear, upside down in the air and it had been hit by the car right behind us, along with the baby bear in the air was a large part of a car as well. The sister who saw the bear first said that it was running towards our car. It was the craziest thing, I am really glad the Lord was watching over us that day because it really was a close call.

Later that day we had some wonderful lessons and the spirit was really strong. We went to one more lesson that night and in the middle of the lesson our phone was going crazy with calls. And it was one of my family members and when we got home later that night we called our mission president and got  very special permission from our mission president for me and my companion to go to lunch with Donna and her family and Sam and his family the next day. So Saturday we helped a family move in, went to lunch with the family for an hour, exchanged back and then went and moved another family. It was the craziest exchange I had ever been apart of. But nonetheless it was a great experience!

Yesterday after we had church we went to see this guy who said we could come back and he was home so we told him we would be back soon. We got a hold of some members to come to the lesson with us and it was a great lesson. Toward the end of the lesson I asked him how he could come to know what we had thought him was true. He said that he already knew it was true. He said that he had a friend when he was younger that talked to him about the book of mormon and that at this time in his life he had been trying to quit smoking. It was really cool to see how the Lord really had prepared him for the message of the restoration!

Hope you all are doing well and spreading the gospel too:) Have a great week, hope to hear from y'all soon!

Love Sister Mauck