This email was sent by Sister Welker on January 23rd.  We received it on January 22nd.

Week 24: Memb 70, More Miracles

Elder Craig A. Cardon was our guest speaker at zone conference on Wednesday.  I was fortunate enough to hear from him while I was in the MTC, so now I've had the chance to hear from him twice!! Elder Cardon loves referencing scriptures to back up his talks.  He'll often give us a scripture to locate, then he'll make a comment or two and find another scripture to reference, which I quite like because you're never bored and it's interactive and provides opportunities for you to participate.  Today he talked a lot about the Abrahamic Covenant which is something I know very little about.  It's basically a promise that the descendants of Abraham (whether blood related or adopted) will inherit eternal life, which not only includes being able to live with our Heavenly Father, but gives us an opportunity to become more like him.  The purpose behind discussing the Abrahamic Covenant was to answer the question of "Who are you, and What does God expect of you?".  Unfortunately, the best I can do is summarize, but basically as missionaries, we are not only God's children but we have been found worthy as one to represent Him despite our weaknesses. According to the Abrahamic Covenant, we've been promised eternal life and are considered to be an extension of God's arm.  SO that's pretty cool if you ask me.

Elder Cardon also talked about the Spirt and being able to recognize it's influence.  One story that he mentioned imparticular, I found to be quiet spectacular.  He was describing a time when he got to shadow/observe one of the general authorities while assigning missionaries to their called missions.  He said there was a room with two monitors; one screen had a missionary application, while the other had a list of all the missions.  The general authority would greet the missionary as their picture pulled up.  One of the employees would then read out loud the application until the general authority would interrupt with the assigned mission ex: "Hamilton, New Zealand".  Then that employee would record the assigned mission and move on to the next missionary.  While reading one of the mission applications, the employee managed to read the entire application without being interrupted by the general authority.  There was a moment of silence and the general authority said "move on to the next application."  The employee then started reading off the next application when they were inturrputed with "Hamilton, New Zealand".  Confused the employee asked "for this missionary we just read?"  "No," stated the general authority "for that last missionary."  As the employee was juggling with assigning the missionary, the general authority turned to Elder Cardon and said "Sometimes it's just as important to know when the Lord doesn't speak, as it is to know when he is speaking."  He continued with "I will not make an assignment until the Lord speaks to me."

The Elders had a baptism on Friday and we got to help with leading the music.  During the baptism, one of the Birch girls (7ish years old) was sitting next to me and wanted a pen and paper to entertain herself.  I was trying to help her draw a CTR shield.  Then she drew everything from a sun to a flower to a fish.  After the closing prayer, she put her artwork in my planner and she told me that there was a surprise.  I opened up to the page with her drawing and looked for the "surprise" but I didn't see anything.  I then asked her what the surprise was and she pointed to the edge of the drawing where she had written the words "I love you".  I wanted to cry and I gave her a big hug!!  Sometimes miracles are right in front of us, but we need the Lord's help to be able to give us the eyes to see the miracles.

The best part of the night was when we went to one of our less-actives, Tom (named changed).  As we were leaving the baptism, we talked with Brother John Doe (name changed).  I felt impressed to ask him what he had planned for the rest of the night?  He told us that he was going fishing.  I then told him we were going to visit Tom and he surprisingly volunteered to come with us.  Bro John Doe followed us there.  As a last minute decision we decided to watch a talk by Elder Juan A. Uceda of the 70, "The Lord Teaches Us To Pray" given in this last conference Nov 2016.  After a couple mins of catching up with Tom I could see both my companion and Bro John Doe wishing they were elsewhere.  We then opened with a prayer and watched the talk we had chosen just before the lesson.  as I watched the video I thought to myself "Tom already knows all this, he's not gonna like this talk at all, why did I decide to watch this one?" These thoughts were cycling through my head throughout the entire video.  Once the video ended I looked up to see Tom with tears in his eyes.  Then I looked at Brother John Doe and my companion and they all had tears in their eyes.  It was such an amazing experience and you could definitely feel the spirit.  We found out later that Bro John Doe and Tom went to the same ward growing up and he has a picture to prove it.  Turns out  Brother John Doe had prayed "Lord I love serving thee, surprise me" and he ended up at that lesson with us.

I know the Lord really is look after us.  I know that miracles happen everyday we just have to have the eyes to see them.  You all mean so much to me and I'm grateful I get to spend 18 months serving the Lord.  He has done so much for me and this is the least I can do to return the favor.  I know my Savior lives and he loves each one of us.  I know Heavenly Father has a plan for us and that the Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ. 

Thanks for all the love, support and prayers.  Hope you all have a good week and I'll talk to you again soon.

Sister Mandy Welker

This email was sent by Sister Welker on January 16th.  We received it on January 15th.

Week 23: Blonde Moment, Budgeting, and Member Missionaries

For those of you who don't know me well, I can be quite oblivious sometimes.  My family and I like to call these moments "blonde moments".  Granted I also happen to have blonde colored hair, so it makes for a great excuse sometimes.  So anyway, Tuesday morning I woke up and said my prayers and then turned to my companion and realized she wasn't feeling well  She requested some painkillers.  So I ran down to the car and grabbed the painkillers from the glove box and came back up to the flat.  The rest of the morning went just like normal, getting ready, breakfast, and then studying.  After finishing our companion study, we packed up and got ready to go to District Meeting (meeting with other missionaries in our area).  We were about to head down our staircase when I realized I didn't have the keys!!  I looked in my bag, looked on the counter, looked in our bed room, looked on the table and they were no where to be found.  We informed the District Leader that we would be late and continued searching for the keys.  We looked EVERYWHERE in the flat.  It's not a very big flat, so it would be hard to lose the keys there.  Then we thought of the possibility of me leaving the keys in the car, but unfortunately, the car was locked.  All we could do was peek through the window and see if we could spot them, but we couldn't see them there either.  By this point it had been a good 20 minutes or so, and I was starting to stress.  Sister Fuggle and Sister Ah You left District Meeting to come and help us find the keys, but they couldn't find them either.  We called Elder McGregor, who's the missionary responsible for the mission cars, and explained to him what had happened.  We then arranged to have someone come and unlock the car for us.  Once they unlocked the car, the four of us missionaries searched the car and had no luck finding the keys.  I was super stressed by this point and was wondering if I had dropped the keys. Someone might have picked them up and walked off with them.  At noon (2 hours after I realized the keys were missing) Sister Reynolds and Sister Ofa meet us at the flat to come help look for the keys as well.  The six of us, then divided into groups of three to ask the businesses within the apartment complex to see if anyone had turned in any car keys.  Still no luck.  Just when I was about to give up, Sister Reynolds found the car keys!!  They were tangled up within the pages of my missionary planner in my bag/purse.  I was SOOO EMBARASSED!!  There I was with six missionaries spending hours looking for our car keys that were in my bag the whole time.  Though it was stressful in the moment, it's funny to laugh at, and now I have a great story to tell haha.

About two months ago, we were given a training on how to budget money.  So this last week, I decided I should try it out.  It was a complete and utter FAIL!!!  Now I have a lot of respect for Mom, and I understand why she's always trying to stretch the dollar and pinch the pennies.  Ironically, the week I tried to budget is the week I ran out of money on the mission card.  So we had to improvise with our meals including everything from scrambled eggs, to fried eggs, to eggs again.  My poor companion is probably sick of eggs by now haha.  However, the Lord is always aware of our situation, and on Friday every appointment or visit we went to, someone offered us either L&P or chocolate or some fried rice and noodles.  They had no idea that we had been living off of eggs for the past couple of days, but the Lord knew, and he was watching over us.

This week we've been really focusing on gaining trust with the members, and trying to get them excited about missionary work.  Thursday we were visiting with two members.  I'll use the names Sister Adams and Sister Woods.  The two of them are roommates and live in the same house.  When we arrived to have lunch with them, you could tell they were annoyed with each other.  We had a nice lunch with them (which happened to be New Zealand Samon and was super yummy!!) and tried to change the tense atmosphere into a nice conversation.  At the end of our visit, we asked if it was ok if we shared a message with them.  Of course they agreed, and listened as we explained how my companion and I were working on giving better spiritual thoughts.  So rather than opening our scriptures to a random page and reading a scripture, we took some time to think about the message we wanted to share with them and read from Moroni 7 (Book of Mormon), which is the chapter that talks about charity.  We had such a good discussion and Sister Woods even shared an experience she had this week with an elderly gentlemen that she works for.  This elderly gentlemen has dementia and so he'll, at times, forget important details.  This time he had forgotten his pin number to his card and had a stack of groceries in front of him that he needed to pay for.  They asked the cashier if they could leave the groceries, go talk to the bank, and come back to pay for the groceries, but a lady behind them interrupted and offered to pay for his groceries, which ended up being a total of $85.  A complete stranger was willing to help an elderly gentlemen pay for his food, so he wouldn't have to stress with coming back to pay for them later.  It was such a cool story!!  We committed them to pray to have charity, and after putting our shoes on and leaving, you could hear Sister Adams and Sister Woods complimenting each other and helping each other out with the dishes.  I turned to my companion and said "Sister Jabeque, I think we left them better than we found them."  During relief society, Sister Wood told us of a time later that week when she bore her testimony to the Jehovah witnesses.  Afterwards, she told Sister Adams how excited she was that she participated in some of her own missionary work.

That's all the time I have for now, but I just wanted to bare my testimony that I know that God is aware of us and knows what we're going through.  He is watching over us because he loves and cares about us.  I know that missionaries can't do this work alone, that we need the help of every member just like Elder Dallin H. Oaks said in the last talk he gave in general conference.  Thomas S. Monson says "Now is the time for members and missionaries to come together, to work together to labor in the Lord's vineyard to bring souls unto him."  I'm so excited for the progress that we've made this week, but I know that without the Lord none of that would have been possible.  He lives and loves each and every one of us.  In the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Hope you all have a good week.  Keep smiling and keep being the amazing people you are. 

Sister Mandy Welker

This email was sent by Sister Welker on January 9th.  We received it on January 8th.

Week 22: Exchanges, Lemonade, My Purpose

This week was really really rough, but nobody can say that we didn't try our best.  Plus we did it all with a smile on our faces :D

Tuesday night, I went on exchanges with Sister Fuggle who is the new STL (Sister Training Leader).  We had a great start to our morning and then after lunch everything seemed to fall apart.  The people we went to visit weren't home and our appointments were canceled.  I was so excited to show Sister Fuggle how amazing our area was just to have everything not go according to plan.  I was pretty embarrassed, especially since I was with the STL, but luckily Sister Fuggle helped me to see the positive side.  She also mentioned something that I've been thinking a lot about.  She told me that there's 4 reasons why you'd be sent to a specific area 1-for your companion/other missionaries, 2- for someone/investigator in your area, 3- for your ward, 4- for yourself.  Lately I've felt impressed that my purpose in this area at this time is for my ward.  My area, at the moment, is on "holiday mode" and doesn't want much to do with the gospel right now, and it seems as though the number one reason why someone would go less active is because they feel judged or offended.  So my companion and I came up with a plan to help strengthen the ward by focusing on the members, and to get them excited about missionary work.  We are gonna try it out this week and hope it works, so wish us luck. :)

The other experience I wanted to share happened this last Saturday.  It had been a long day of nobody being home and doors slammed in our face.  We were driving to our next appointment when we saw two little girls selling lemonade on the side of the street.  We turned around and went to go buy some lemonade, oops, sorry, HOMEMADE lemonade. :)  It tasted really good, especially on a hot summer day, and I found out later that my companion said "God must really love me because I was thirsty and then we passed by the lemonade stand." 

That experience just helped to strengthen my testimony that God really knows what we are all going through, and he really does care about us. 

I'm so grateful to be on a mission and to have the gospel as a part of my life.  I know that I'm meant to be here at this time, that this is where God wants me to be. 

I love you all so much!!! Thanks again for all the prayers, love, and support.  Have a good week and talk to you again next week.

Sister Mandy Welker