Wonderful Season for Missionary Work

11.30.15

Hey Y'all!

It really was a Crazy week! But lots of wonderful things! This coming week will not be as crazy but the week after that is going to be crazy but we are going to enjoy this week, it is only going to be a little crazy not super though.

Tuesday last week was great, crazy but great! We drove at 5:15 in the morning to this meeting. It was such a great and productive meeting. I learned so much from it and we were able to discuss the new Christmas initiative for this year that just started... #ASaviorisBorn, it is such a sweet short video, If you haven’t watched it yet...  check it out. www.mormon.org/christmas Just as sweet as the one from last year he is the gift. We also talked about how important it is to get those who are just baptized to the temple, for them to feel of the spirit. Our mission has a goal of getting everyone who is baptized to go to the temple with family names in 1 month! It will be hard work especially since there is not a temple in our entire mission but entirely possible especially if we are planning well and getting this done that we need to!:) The Spirit of the Book of Mormon combined with the Spirit of Elijah... now that is powerful! After our meeting we traveled back and got home a little after 7:30 and had a member come and pick us up and we went to see the Brother that got baptized Saturday and then went and saw someone who is really sick that we have been working with that has not been going to the church for 40+ years. The elders came to the hospital to give him a blessing and he said that he LOVED the spirit that he could feel with all of us there and he has called us often asking us when we were going to come again and wanting to learn more. He also came to church on Sunday but that lesson we had Tuesday right before we had to be home was wonderful and full of the spirit! As it says in Preach My Gospel... "When the Spirit touches the heart, hearts are changed." The day before he was not really excited about us coming and learning more and after that blessing and realizing that there are people that don’t even know him personally that love him. That is one of the biggest blessings of being part of a ward family!!

Thursday, Thanksgiving, was super busy. So the night before we were worried that we were not going to be able to make the day full of proselyting and full of purpose but man was it! I realized that I needed to have more faith in the missionary handbook that talks about holidays are prime proselyting times! So at 10 in the morning we left our house and went and had 2 quick 30 minute lessons with 2 of our progressing friends. And the second house we went to ... fair warning a funny story is coming... we knocked on the door and he had just woken up and when he opened the door a little dog ran out. My companion when she had went on exchanges the week before had chased this dog for like 30 minutes in Blacksburg and I thought that was what was going to happen with us and luckily it was not that way! I caught the dog in 2ish minutes and had it against my side and brought it back to the door. I tossed the dog back into the house and looked down and realized that the dog had peed on me... Are you kidding me?!? In the meantime my companion was pretty much rolling on the ground laughing super hard... thanks for that sister. Welcome to the life of a missionary. So we went inside and had a quick lesson with him and then we went home so I could change, not the end of the world but it would have been nice to go through Thanksgiving, not having a dog pee on me. But later in the day we made cookies and put cute thanksgiving bows on them and a scripture and handed them out to lots of people and we were able to talk to people that we had not talked to in a while and will be teaching them soon:) and we also had a lesson with someone after we had had our second Thanksgiving meal haha.

Saturday was amazing! We were able to watch one of our friends get baptized and his mom came as well!! All week we had been inviting people to come because we were worried that everyone was going to be out of town but we were able to have a wonderful service and felt the spirit soooo strong!

This season is really a wonderful season to do missionary work! The spirit that is in the air because of the hymns that are sung and the celebration of Christ birth is really a reason to be grateful for! I know that this is the true reason we celebrate Christmas! I know that our Savior still lives today and loves each and every one of us so very much. I hope you all have a wonderful week!!

Love Sister Mauck

'Tis the Season

11.23.15

Hey Y'all!

We had a great week this past week in Christiansburg, VA! Learned lots, went on 2 exchanges, volunteered at a Christmas clothing store, and one of our friends came up to us in church on Sunday and said that he was going to get baptized on Saturday! Yes you read that last little bit right, we have been teaching this guy for about a month and told us that he was ready to get baptized 2 days after Thanksgiving! Let the preparations begin! Now I thought last week was crazy, this week starting today, we had 4 lessons scheduled and usually we only proselyte 3 hours on P-day, tomorrow we have to go to Charleston, WV for a meeting and get home in time for one lesson. Then Wednesday is going to be our almost normal day, Thursday as we all know is going to be crazy because it's Thanksgiving, Friday we have a zone meeting where we have to teach a couple handful of missionaries and then Saturday we have a baptism. So sneak peek for what next email is going to consist of... the life of a missionary is CRAZY! haha

So this past week we have been trying to help one of the people that we are teaching quit smoking so last Monday when we went over we asked him what was holding him back from quitting and what could we do to help. He mentioned that he had one cigarette every morning around 5 or 530 and that was the one that he was having the hardest time breaking so I told him that we would call him every morning at 5 and we did and he had not smoked since then! getting up that early was not easy but when people succeed like that it makes it ALLLL worth it!

Sunday the one friend of ours that is getting baptized this weekend came to church for the 5th time in a row and we were going to push his baptism back a few weeks because we were not sure if he was understanding the doctrine but he came up to us at the end of church and he told us that he really wanted to be baptized this Saturday and he said that he was willing to do whatever it took. We went over that night and finished teaching all the commandments and explained to him that we would see him everyday this week. We met him at the end of October and he had been studying before we even met him and went over the baptismal interview questions with him and he is super excited for this weekend!

Hard things really are possible! So our friend that got baptized in September had surgery, like life or death, a week and a half ago and the Sunday after she had it she was in a lot of pain so she didn't come to church. We went over on Friday to check on her and she was doing better and was trying to not take any pain killers, She is crazy and is way tougher then she needs to be, but she asked us to call the elders in our area to give her a blessing and they went over later that night. Then when we went to church Sunday We had planned to go over to her house after church to see how she was doing and she was at church because she did not want to miss taking the sacrament. She is amazing!! Hard things are possible when we keep in mind what really matters!

So we went to a fireside on Saturday that was all about Family History and we had one of our friends there with us that we have been teaching for about 2 months and it was really cool to see the spirit of Elijah work on her. She struggles believing that Jesus Christ is more than a prophet and has a hard time with the basics. But when she was there she felt the spirit and got really excited to do more of her family history. On my mission I have really under estimated the power that it family history has when teaching people about the restored gospel. She is progressing and Hopefully we will get her to church in the next few Sundays.

Those exchanges we went on this week were really cool. The first one I left my area and in the other sisters area we were able to find like 4 new people that were interested in learning more and also had dinner with their bishop which was super fun!! Then the second exchange I stayed in the area and a brand new missionary came into our area, she has only been in her area for 2 weeks. Before the exchanges we always ask the sisters to come up with something they would like us to study for them and then in return ask them to study something for us. I asked both the sisters I work with to study hope in missionary work. The new sister asked me to study confidence for her and as I did that I realized that it has everything to do with hope. Hope is an abiding trust in the Lord, that he will keep his promises. Hope is sure when it is referring to the gospel. Hoping for the weather to be good is a different kind of hope because there is uncertainty there. Confidence is trusting in ourselves and not worrying what is to come. Having faith that the things that we mess up will be taken care of by the Lord if we are trying our hardest!:)

Funny story from this week! Sunday night (last night) we went home and I was not driving because I had a pretty bad headache and I was moving pretty slowly and my companion had already gotten out of the car. So as I go to pick up my bag that lied at my feet I hear this super scream and look up and open my door really fast to see what had happened to my companion and I saw her stop dead in her tracks and start running toward my side of the car. "did you see that??? There is something under our porch!" I about died laughing. She said she thought it was a dog and I told her that it was probably a skunk just joking around. I sat there for another minute trying to get myself together and then as soon as I stood up to walk toward our house, low and behold a skunk walked out from under our porch... What the?!?!? My companion ran toward the door and was having a hard time unlocking it after that, pretty funny.

Funny story #2 from earlier in the week. So on Thursday night we had correlation and so there is a member that lives in town houses and then another member that also lives in town houses, the house that we were going to and the second members house has no parking and their house is down the hill from the first members house who we parked at. So Sister Kelly and I were walking to correlation, laughing and joking about something and all the sudden I stepped in a hole and slide halfway down this hill. My companion looks back and run back as I sit on the grass looking like I was trying to slide down the hill, needless to say it was dark and not much light from the street and we were trying to see with our phone light that is not very bright. She was sure that I was not going to be able to get up but I got up, limped down the hill a little and then during correlation we were not able to keep it together because we were laughing under our breath half the time haha.

I hope you all have a wonderful gratitude filled week! Thank you all for who you are! Thank you for the examples you are to me and keep up the great work!

Love Sister Mauck