Monday, July 28, 2014

In Which Elder Christensen is Hit in the Face with the Title of Liberty and Sister Priddis and I Get Skin Cancer



It just keeps getting hotter. I hate that. 

And we're done with that. 

It's been quite the week. Kind of incredible, actually. It started off with some exchanges with Sister Bonner. She's just a really great missionary, guys. I'm trying to become as brave as she is, but that might be a life long pursuit. She's incredible, people. We were biking home and she was determined to reach her contacting goal (more to come on that later...) and she literally talked to everyone - including the pizza delivery man who was on his way from the door to the car. He was actually pretty nice, for the record. I always learn so much from her, and she loves being on a bike again. It's a win-win situation. 

We had interviews with President Mortensen on Tuesday, which were freaking fantastic. The Assistants gave their presentation while President Mortensen was in interviews, and it was really, really cool. They talked all about goals, and how our goals help us get spiritual power to go along with our authority. My entire mission, I've been planning for our day and then setting goals, and I never realized how backwards that was. It's been super cool to see how the Lord will bless us with ways to fill our goals when we allow Him to inspire us with certain goals. As Preach My Gospel says, "Goal setting and planning are acts of faith." Great stuff. We talked about the Title of Liberty and they introduced our new mission standard motto thing, which is taken from Preach My Gospel. It's on a banner, and the Assistants have been practicing unrolling it by throwing it to each other. It worked really well...until Elder Hillebrant hit Elder Christensen in the face with it. 

In interviews, President Mortensen challenged each of us to commit to invite 25 people each day to learn more about the gospel. I don't know how that sounds to y'all, but it's a lot. Prior to this, Sister Priddis and I would do 5 a day, tops. I was a little skeptical when I first started hearing about it, but being with Sister Bonner warmed me up, and Sister Priddis really wanted to go all out for her last few days. 

Guys. It's been so cool. 

I don't know if I've ever seen more miracles on my mission. We were headed home on Thursday after only making 19 contacts. We were a little disappointed, but had talked to some really cool people, so we were content. As we were locking up our bikes, Sister Priddis says, "There are 6 people over there. Should we go talk to them?" One thing that Elder Christensen said in training that stuck out to me was, "The more specifically we plan, the more specifically the Lord can bless us." We probably wouldn't have talked to those people otherwise, but because we had that goal, those random people turned into a miracle. 

Then, on Friday, we had one more invitation for the night and were on our way to talk to someone we had met the night before, so we were just hoping we'd find that one more. We were walking into our apartment complex when we were stopped by a woman...I think she asked about a cat. Anyway, she started talking to us about being missionaries, and told us that she felt lost and knew that she needed to build a relationship with God. We asked her what she was looking for, and she said that she wanted direction and purpose. Sounds a little bit like the Gospel of Jesus Christ, eh? We testified of the Lord's love for her and she started crying and said that she'd been looking for a church, but wasn't satisfied with anywhere she'd gone and just kept thinking about her Mormon friends. It was so cool. She doesn't live in our area, which is kind of a bummer, but we got all of her information to pass on to the Elders. 

That's kind of all. Sister Priddis flies back to the homeland on Wednesday, which is really odd. I'm pretty sure she's bummed that her watch tan hasn't gotten to be as good as mine, but we've both gotten our fair share of burns. #texasswag #bikearea

I miss y'all and hope that things are going well. Please let me know if there's anything I can do for you, okay? 

Love, 
Sister Liljenquist

No comments: