Waters Flowing but Missionary work keeps going

6.27.16

Hey there Y'all!:)

Hope all is well wherever you all are. It has been pretty wet here the last week but my companion and I have been safe from the floods. There were some crazy rain storms with beautiful/scary thunder and lightning storms. Really a testimony builder that this really is all of God's creations and he has stewardship over it all. All things are here for our enjoyment but we still have to be careful around it all!  We have been hearing often about the causalities around us often, seriously soooo sad, it really did rain like cats and dogs for days. Every time we talk to people about the floods the number for recorded deaths goes up, I think it was at 26 last time we talked to someone. But it has been really cool to see how much everyone is coming together to try to help their fellow west Virginians.  Even though we are in Teays "Valley" we did not have to deal with the floods which was a blessing for sure! We are super close to all the floods though. All the missionaries are accounted for in our mission but all the flooding was within our stake and there was flowing water on some of the back roads that we drive on and the river that we drive next too is super high and there are a lot of people that are without food and water and shelter for that matter in places little ways away from us. We just read in an email from our mission president that there are over 32 thousand without power:/ But that is not going to stop missionary work from happening for sure!! It will be a great opportunity to serve those around us!

Anyways our sharing of the gospel has been hastening the last few weeks!:) We have a lady that I have been teaching for a while, she will be baptized in the next few weeks and she is doing so AWESOME! She has quit smoking, quit drinking coffee and tea and has been working on overcoming her struggle in social anxiety. She loves learning about religion but has recognized the difference when she learns about the restored gospel, especially in the Book of Mormon. We have also been working a lot on the concert we are putting together... #PRAISE and I am seriously sooo excited for it. Sister Tippetts and I have been putting together a handful of songs to sing. We have been working on trying to find new people to teach a lot lately and a lot of the people that may be interested in learning has come by way of handing out fliers to people about the concert and people asking why, I love the question... WHY? A perfect opportunity to share the gospel:)

I hope you all are doing well! Have you tried any of the invitation that I have extended? I would love to hear some cool stories from it!! (Courtney.mauck@myldsmail.net) This weeks invitation will come by the story we have been sharing a lot with the people that we are teaching. Alma 37 (specifically vs 36-37) We read these 2 versus to an investigator this past week and she, for the first time and we have been teaching her for months, accepted the invitation to read a whole chapter from the Book of Mormon when we left! Pretty cool. Read the chapter, it is pretty great! Hope you all have a great week!

Love, Sister Mauck

Another Week in "Almost Heaven"

6.20.16

Hey there Y'all,

I hope you all had a lovely week! A shout out to all my family up in the mountains this week, hope you all have fun up there! I am so grateful to have such a big family and so many members of the gospel! The support that comes from family members and good friends is so important when trying to live a life in the way God wants us to! This past week was a great week for us and we are really excited about the concert we are going to be having soon! It has been a great opportunity for us to talk to a lot of people and has given us the opportunity to get out in the community! Even when people are not interested in learning more about our message they are still interested in coming to listen to gospel music! So because young missionaries are putting this together we are calling it... wait for it... #praise:) A Christian concert of hymns. We have had so much fun with it and I have never had so much fun in planning for something and talking to people about it. The concert has given us opportunity to talk to people about the music in their denomination and about Hymns that they grew up with. I love talking about hymns and about praising them who gave us the talent to sing!

We have been doing a lot more walking lately for lots of reasons. Our mission president has asked us to be out of our car more often and not pass those who may "be perishing in unbelief," as it says in the scriptures. But in the process I have realized how sensitive my feet are and have developed soo many different blisters on my feet which make the work hard but it has forced us to use our phone more because we do not want to walk to peoples house and them not be there or we have had lessons over the phone, but anything we can do to not let this take us out! I seriously love sharing the gospel to people who love learning about it! I can only hope that I have done exactly want Heavenly Father needed me to do and try to be the best instrument in His hands that I can be!

This week we have a specialized training and most of it is going to be based off Alma 5 and I am really excited to learn from our mission president about his insights from it. My invitation to you this week is to study Alma 5 and to try to answer all the questions and set some goals to become better! I have really enjoyed reading it and have found a really strong sense of hope from it! I hope you all have a lovely week and will see you soon!

Love Sister Mauck

Some Big Plans in the Making

6.13.16

Hey y'all,

Hope you all had a lovely week, and that you were able to think a little about your patriarchal blessing if you have one:) We had an excellent week this past week and have been seeing a lot of miracles lately! We had 2 investigators come to church this past week and one of them is hoping to get baptized in early July!:) We are soo excited for her. She had one of her kids there with her at church yesterday and he was so cute and even stayed in nursery for an hour and the second hour came to RS with his mom and took a nap:) Seriously the cutest kid!

We also were able to put a fireside together yesterday and it was on finding hope in trails. Sister Tippetts and I and the one elder that is serving in the same ward that I have done special musicals with before sang the song "Jesus Savior Pilot Me." I seriously love singing with guitars, not sure why I have never done it before!! I have decided that when I go home that I want to sing with someone that can play the guitar, seriously, I love it! So much fun! Nonetheless It was sweet because we had a handful of nonmembers there and we were excited to be able to talk to them a little after the fireside. One lady we tracted into a few months ago and go and visit her on occasion now because she loves when we come by and likes to ask questions and talk to us but will not accept a book of Mormon and is not interested in converting but she came to the fireside that we invited her to and have noticed the past few times we have seen her that she is opening up to the idea of a different church. I love her so much and hope that she will continue to open up enough that we can teach her and that she will read from the Book of Mormon.

So the title of this email came from the concert of hymns that we are putting together in the beginning of July and hope that it becomes a reality! We have a place to do it and lots of support from the ward to, so we just have a lot of planning to make it a reality and to get people there and excited about it. I have really found a love for music and hymns on my mission, I loved music before but for the harmony and melodies and now I am starting to really understand why we sing and how it can truly affect us. I love reading from the hymnal, the sacrament hymns, especially while partaking of the sacrament on Sundays! Hymns really just bring a light in to setting when the gospel is being discussed!

I hope you all are doing well and strengthening your testimony in the gospel daily! I have a goal this last transfer of mine and it is to live in thanksgiving daily, really recognizing the tender mercies of the Lord every day and thanking Him for those! I know that the Lord really does want to bless us and that He does, sometimes we just need to take a moment of our day to recognized that and thank Him for that!

Love, Sister Mauck