Hellooooo! I hope you all had a super duper week! Here are the highlights from mine . . .
Tuesday night we had a lesson with Jackie & Rachell. They both talked about how even among finals and midterms they found themselves not being able to put the Book of Mormon down. So cool! They are both starting to apply everything they are learning and to recognize the Spirit. It's so cool! We had a new sister stay with us tonight. She's 19!
Wednesday was transfers and my 9-month mark . . . I just can't even believe that. We didn't have a transfer meeting this morning though because no one at the Battalion changed areas or companions! Except Sister Brown and Sister Patterson went out full proselyting so they went to the other transfer meeting. We will miss them! We studied and then weekly planned and then got a California burrito to celebrate our 9 months. We had district meeting. Our district is now 2 elders and 5 sisters, haha weird! Our district leaders said he feels more like a Relief Society president. It was a great district meeting though! Elder Sims talked about how we need to be accountable to the Lord and how we should think about if we had to go home tomorrow, would we feel like we became who He needed us to be and served Him the best we could? There is definitely a lot I need to work on. We had a lesson with Arthur about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then we had a lesson with Patrick about God's plan for him and invited him to make Patrick's plan. He just is having a really hard time with tunnel vision right now. Next we met with Raquel and we began by telling her we just wanted to do a little review with her and we went over the baptismal interview questions with her and she answered everything perfectly. Probably the coolest part was that she said she now has a testimony that Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world. When we began teaching her she said that was something she wasn't sure about, but now she knows! Ahh, yay! We talked to her about talking to her parents. She said she needs more courage, and that this is what she wants, but she is really scared to tell her dad. We told her we'd keep praying for her to have the courage and for her dad's heart to be softened. We had dinner with Keri at La Pinata. She received her patriarchal blessing!! She said it was such a neat experience and there were things said that she is really excited about.
Thursday we had MoBat. It was pretty busy! Arthur came and took a tour and then he watched the Joseph Smith movie and we talked to him about prophets. We updated records and then had dinner and a lesson with Jackie & Rachell before they headed home for spring break. We taught the Word of Wisdom which was an interesting lesson with them. They both have a different issue with it, but we just bore testimony of the importance of it and invited them to pray about it and to live it and see if it will make a difference. Next we had coordination and then a lesson with David. He is still awesome!
Friday we had zone conference! Zone conference is so good. President talked about how we must utilize the Book of Mormon because it is the key. The assistants talked about having specific actions for our members. We also talked about creating a vision for ourselves, our area, and our investigators. For part of zone conference we split up into elders and sisters and got a talk about locking our hearts :) haha the mission president is just a little worried now that elders and sisters will be basically the same age, so he just wanted to give us a little reminder. At the end of any group meeting we have, the missionaries who will be leaving that transfer bear their testimonies. They were all super good and sweet, but one elder's testimony stood out to me particularly and actually was an answer to my prayers. I just think it's cool how Heavenly Father can answer our prayers through other people, we just have to be ready and open to receive it! We had MoBat after and I took the most adorable family on tour.
Saturday we studied and then we found out we had a full day because the temple is closed for cleaning. We had a lesson with Arthur and read with him from the Book of Mormon to try to help him see how it can relate to his life. He said when he reads it he feels different. We told him that's the Spirit testifying that it's true! We had a lesson with Taylor about her baptism and she said it was really hard at first because her family was against it, but she was grateful that they have come around. We immediately thought of how she needs to come to our next lesson with Raquel! Carli, a member in our ward, got her mission call! She is going to the Chicago, Illinois West mission, Spanish speaking! Apparently they just barely created the West mission. She leaves May 29. We are so excited for her! We had lunch and then tried to visit some less-actives. We met these two guys on the street and they are from Idaho and they were both super nice! We told them they should try being Mormon, they said they are happy with their religion, but maybe they would think about it, ha. We tried visiting some more less-actives but no one was home. We tried Kelsey again and ended up talking to her roommate Jack for like an hour. He is quite the character and has some very interesting views. He doesn't believe in God and thinks we are just here for this time and that we should make the best of it. He said he doesn't believe in living off of faith, that there has to be proof. It makes me so sad when people think that we are just here and we don't have any particular purpose and we aren't working towards anything. Hopefully we were able to soften his heart a little. We had dinner and then went to see the Ghanas. When we got out of the car this guy started talking to us. His name is Casmier. He's 25 and lives with his sister and her family. He said he's looking for something in his life so we did how to begin teaching and invited him to church and added him! We also taught just a little about the Restoration. We talked with Bright and Pizarro. They said they both want to learn more.
Sunday morning MoBat was pretty busy. I took two awesome families on tour. Church was great! Tyler and Caroline gave awesome talks about fellowshipping. Casmier didn't make it to church :( We had a meeting with the bishop and the ward missionaries and friendshipping committee. Bishop told us his vision which I am excited about! He wants there to be smoother transitions between the missionaries and these committees and to get more people involved. We talked to people after church to set up appointments. We tried stopping by Kelsey's. Someone was home, but they wouldn't answer the door. They kept looking through the peep hole. We tried calling her and she would answer and hang up. We just texted her and said we aren't sure why she won't respond to us anymore, but that we love her and we are here for her when she needs us. We had dinner with Matt, Cy, David, and Lindsay. It was delicious!
Monday we had MoBat this morning. I had a stressful tour because it was people from the school board coming to see if they want to allow the 4th graders to come as a field trip and we've been trying to get them to come for a long time and I just got lucky enough to take the tour! Ha, it went well though. After we had a lesson with Arthur about the ten commandments and keeping the Sabbath day holy. We figured out some of his concerns so that was good. Next we went to Pierre's. His friend was there who isn't a member and is agnostic so we ended up gearing our lesson towards him. He said he'd come to church sometime, but that we shouldn't get our hopes up because he too believes that this life is it . . . there's nothing after it :( so sad! Hopefully he can have an awesome experience at church though. Next we went to Casmier's with Ricky to see if we could get him to come to FHE and we were successful! There was a good turn out at FHE (they always do it combined . . . they don't have groups or anything). Everyone was super nice and welcoming to Casmier. We had a lesson with him after and he said he was super nervous to come, but that he felt a super good vibe from everyone and he really liked it. We taught him the Restoration and he was excited about it! He prayed for the first time and it was awesome. He texted us after and said that reading the Book of Mormon is his top priority now! I love miracles.
I had a lot of good scripture study this week. Alma 37 is one of my new favorite chapters and Helaman 10. Ah such good stuff everywhere! Heavenly Father loves us a lot to give us these amazing tools. Also Satan is a jerk. It occurs to me even more on my mission how it really is in the littlest ways that Satan tries to get us. That's why it's so important to do the small and simple things like praying, studying the scriptures, and serving someone every day! Those will give us the solid rock foundation that we need. The gospel is true :)
I love you all so much! HAPPY EASTER!!!
Love,
Sister Cassie Chea Rasmussen
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