John 5:39

5.31.16

Hey there y'all,

Hope you are doing well and that you are staying cool. Where I am at it has been in the 90's for the past week and humid... ewww! I am not a fan of the humidity, all the more motivation to find people to teach the gospel to, to get into homes and out of the heat and humidity:) The bugs are coming out too and the other night we got eaten alive by the mosquitoes, thanks for that bugs! But I am super grateful it has not been snowing anymore!!

Last Monday we were supposed to have one of the families that we are teaching, follow us over to a members home to have a family home evening and were supposed to teach the family home evening but the people we are teaching were sick so we went over to the members home and were able to talk to them about missionary work and set up a time for them to bring their 2 youngest kids and have a lesson with them and we actually ended up scheduling it for the next day so the dad of the family and our bishop could come over and give the lady we are teaching a blessing. That blessing was so sweet and the lady we are teaching loved it and felt the spirit of it. She was supposed to come to church but was not able to make it so hopefully we will see her at church soon.

We also had exchanges this week and I stayed in the area again. As we were getting ready to drive home and make phone calls I had a strong prompting to turn into this apartment housing that has someone living there that is a potential investigator and he was not home and when I turned in I knew that he was not going to be there but I went in anyways and the apartment one over this lady that we had never met before and she seriously had a light about her and we went over and started talking to her and she accepted a book of Mormon and we set up a date to go and teach her and when we were leaving she was flipping through the book, super cool!:)

Saturday we did a lot of walking and we walked to contact this referral that was a little more than a mile away from our house and the reason they were a referral was because the family was from Wyoming. We were visiting a member and they told us that they had moved from Wyoming after I told her that is where I was from and she told us that we should go talk to them and so we knocked on their door and I think their daughter answered and told us that we could come back and she was soooooo excited to meet someone else from WY! They were from Pinedale... not as cool as the east side of the state but I guess they were still pretty cool;)

Fun Story of the week. So yesterday was P-day and we could not email and we received permission to do it today because the library was closed for memorial day. But we were over at a member’s house yesterday and helped her with a few things and she bought us Pizza and then we tried to make milk shakes out of ice cream bars... well She did not have a blender but she told me to try to use the juicer.... yes you read that right. She said that she had had it for months now and never used it and probably was not going to use it, that it was a gift from someone. Just to let you know so that you never do it, it did not work very well, it just made it pretty much into milk. I put milk into it so it would not mess up the juicer but we put it in the freezer for hours and it tasted fine but I would not do it again, I bet it would be really good if we actually had a blender!:)

I have been thinking a lot lately about how important it is to read the Book of Mormon and study out the scriptures and how important that is. It is such a simple task and it is so easy but sometimes we just put it aside like it is not that important. In the scripture I put as the subject, Christ is telling us to do it... For me when Christ says we should do something I now realized how much it should be at the top of our list of things to do!! Anyways I hope you all have a great week! Remember to read your scriptures say your prayers;)

Love Sister Mauck

Being sick never slowed anyone down!!

5.23.16

Hey there Y'all!:)

Yes from the Subject I would assume you are thinking I am sick, and you would be right but that did not slow us down toooo much from getting out missionary work done!

So last Monday during emails Sister Tippetts looked a little rough and couldn't wait til we got home so she could go lay down because she had a super bad head cold. We went out that night and taught a lesson and had dinner with a member. We also invited the investigator we were teaching to be baptized and she accepted a date and hopefully we will see her baptized on June 25!:)

Tuesday we stayed home most of the day and Sister Tippetts slept. I felt great and studied for hours. I studied the talk that I mentioned last week, "Beware of Pride," such an amazing talk and hope that a few of you all were able to read it!! I was able to read a little in the Book of Mormon and have decided that I want to finish the Book of Mormon one more time before I finish my mission which won't be hard at all because I am almost halfway though it again!:) I seriously love the Book of Mormon so much!! Every morning when I read it I can feel the spirit so strong and learn something or am reminded of something that I am slacking on or want to improve in! This book Truly testifies of Christ and makes me want to be a better person!

Wednesday when we woke up Sister Tippetts still wasn't feeling great but we had a zone conference that day and we were not about to miss that!! I learned so much from it and we sang a hymn that I did not know very well and it had a line in it that says "and have done away with lesser thing." Though out the conference our mission president invited us to heed that often. He also said "Therefore, what..." often and make us really think about having purpose to everything we say and do. We learned so much that day and I loved it so much. It was a long day but good, we also had a meeting that night with our ward mission leader so we did not have often to proselyte but we did teach one lesson and were in and out quickly and taught about how important it is to keep the Sabbath Day holy! I love teaching that commandment because of the blessing associated with it because there are soo many!

Thursday we had a weekly planning session and then were able to proselyte a while that day. Super cool story from that day though! So at Zone conference we received a referral from some missionaries who got it from a member who had talked to this guy and gave him a book of Mormon a year ago. I am not sure why he waited so long to give the referral to missionaries but nonetheless we went and tried to find him got lost on this road and called a couple of members because our GPS was useless at that point and a member was able to tell us that we were way away from where we needed to be so we drove to the road and couldn't find the house. So we parked and started walking and a lady yells to us from her door and asks if we were witnessers and I said, yes? we are missionaries and then she said that she was a JW and then the witnesser question made perfect sense. We told her who we were looking for and she told us that he didn't live there that his ex wife did. We were not sure if we should still go but we went anyways and told her the story of trying to find her and she was super open to listening and we had a return appointment before we left!:) Also that night we were able to pick up a new investigator and put him on date for baptism July second! One of his best friends is Mormon and had given him a book of Mormon and invited him to come over to her house for a lesson with the missionaries and he accepted. It was the coolest lesson ever!! When he said the closing prayer he said that he thought he had found his path!!:) pretty cool!

Friday is when I got sick and it hit me hard so we stayed home and I slept all day but we were able to have a lesson over the phone with one of our investigators who we put on date Sunday. I had cabin fever soo bad though!

Saturday we did all the things we were supposed to do Friday but took it kind of slow because I still not feeling the greatest but I did not want to stay in the house any longer!

And Sunday was not bad! We have been working with this lady who is a member but has not come to church for a while, before we went to her house and she came for the 5th sunday in a row yesterday and told us that she had really had her mind set on the temple!!:)

Even though we were sick it was not going to keep us from seeing miracles and trying our hardest to do the will of the Lord! I hope you all are doing well and also enjoy all the pictures! Have a great week!!

Love Sister Mauck

1st John 1:5-10

5.16.16

Hello!

Hope you all had a great week! We sure did, it was actually quite crazy! So first highlight of the week is we have been calling this investigator of ours and lost contact with them for like a month or so and Sunday they actually answered last week and then we called them again Tuesday and they asked if there was any way we could have a wedding this weekend... yes in less than 7 days. They asked for Saturday but we had stake conference this weekend so we were going to try for Friday night but that didn't work so we met them at the church on Wednesday and met with bishop and decided that we were going to have the wedding on Sunday at one, and hour after the general session of stake conference, lucky for us they were broadcasting the session to our home building but there wasn't much to put together because we had done it mostly on Saturday. We have an amazing Relief society president and she was able to get refreshments and some people in the ward that do weddings to have some simple decorations and had a really pretty program made up, seriously such a sweet wedding. My companion and got a call from the bride the day before and asked if there was anyone that could help her with her hair and we told her that we could do it and so we did her hair in like 10 minutes, in between the times we were running around making sure no one else needed help with anything. She looked pretty great:) And the groom’s parents came and the spirit was so strong during the wedding. The Bishop did a really cool sand analogy right before the ceremony talking about how important it is to keep God in our relationships. It was really cool to watch everything unfold and see how much everyone was willing to help!! So the day before the wedding we taught them the restoration and put an emphasis on the importance of priesthood authority, choose a date for them to be baptized, around the end of June, and talked to them about Eternal marriage and they were so excited about everything! Sadly, we found out that they do not live in our area, still in our ward boundaries but they live in some other missionaries’ area so they will teach them to baptism. But it was cool to be able to be a part of that part of their conversion and we are excited to see them at church and see their baptism in the near future. I love planning weddings, it’s pretty fun, 3 in one mission is something I guess I can handle:)

Funny story of the week. So we are teaching this sweet single mom of 2 kids. She has been telling us she will come to church and every time she doesn't come to church it is usually a pretty acceptable reason for not coming to church, like being up all night with a teething baby, or running her SUPER pregnant friend that lives with her to the hospital because of premature labor or many other ones. So we told her we would come Sunday mornings and start waking her up so she could come to church because she wanted us to. So we go to wake her up on Sunday morning around 8:30 and we knock on the door and no one answers the door so we go back to our car and to save miles we study in our car for about half an hour planning lesson plans for those we were going to teach during that day. Anyways we go back up at 9 and she opened up the door and let us in and then went and laid back down on her couch and we asked her if she had been on a trip during the week (because we hadn't seen her car all week every time we had come to teach her) and she said yeah and it was all by myself. She was half asleep when she said that and then we just asked her if she was going to come to church and she fell asleep all the way and didn't answer. So my companion and I awkwardly stood there for like 2 minutes and then I just asked her with a loudish voice if she just wanted us to come back later in the day to teach her a lesson and then she was like, "Oh, I forgot you all were here... sure come back.... lat..er..."  We left and waited til we got back to our car to laugh pretty hard. Then we went to the church and made sure everything was set for the wedding. Later that night we went back to her house and she asked us if she had let us in earlier that morning and we told her definitely that we would never come into her house without her letting/asking us to come in. We told her of the short conversation that we had... she died laughing especially since she told us she had not gone on a trip that she was just working hahahaha. But she is the sweetest and told us that when she gets to church the first time it will not be hard to come back it is just the getting there the first times that is the hardest, AMEN to that sista.

Anyways to say the least we had a pretty good week and have seen some pretty great miracles. We also got to talk to this family that live like a mile away from the church and she is really interested in the gospel. She has just recently been working on her relationship with God. She has a son that is almost one-year-old and he had been though 9 surgeries and it a miracle baby and the doctors have put it. She said they had a church that had really been helping them through this hard time but it is like a 20 minute drive and it was too hard for her to commute that, she wants to be going more than once a month but she felt like that was all she could do with having to make sure that her son had absolutely everything he may need and then some. She seemed pretty excited for us to come back and is really excited to learn more about the Book of Mormon too. We were also able to talk to another young mom that was pretty busy but we were able to teach her the restoration in like 5 minutes on her porch and she said that she would read it and that we could come back in a week and she would tell us if she wanted to continue learning. But she had also told us that if she found out it was true that she would be baptized. Pretty cool stuff!:)

Time is flying by but one thing I know is how important it is to find everything that Heavenly Father needs me to do while I am in this area. I would invite you to do the same thing where ever you are living. There is a reason that we are where we are, and a lot of the time it is for others. Make friends with your neighbor and find out about them and how you can help them. One thing my companion and I have been working on is trying to find why we are in an area, a little area like a specific street or a reason we wrote a name down in our planner, there is a reason for everything! I know that Heavenly Father places us in areas for a reason and that if we ask him where we are supposed to go it is not only the best place for our family but sometimes for us to help others as well! I hope everyone is doing well and that you are continuing to come closer to Christ every day! I know that it is a daily thing that I work on! Have a great week!

Love Sister Mauck