Miracles in West Allis

Miracles are happening here in West Allis!  It is amazing!  I am just going to dive right into the week.

Monday-  Best P-day yet!  We got to go to the Milwaukee County Zoo. The Dominguez family invited us to go with them.  They are an awesome family in our ward and they take such good care of us.  I love them so much!  They are also AMAZING member missionaries!  I want to be like them when I get home!  Anyways, so we got to hang out with them all day at the zoo and it was the funnest thing ever.  Milwaukee has a pretty cool zoo!

Preaching the gospel to every creature!

Milwaukee County Zoo

 I thought of you Mom the ENTIRE time I was in the aviary.  Seriously.  And thought of Dad when we saw the moose.  I thought of all of my sisters when I saw the turtles... Do you remember last time we went to the zoo???  Haha anyways it was super fun.  We had dinner with them at their house that night too and they had Sarah over.  Sarah is AMAZING.  I don't remember what I already told you about her, but I am just going to have to tell you again if I already did.  Sarah has so much faith.  Her story is amazing.  It all started because Sister Dominguez was prompted to leave a Book of Mormon in Sarah's mailbox.  They barely knew each other!  So Sarah started coming to church with Sister Dominguez.  We'd been meeting with her a little bit and on Monday night at dinner we set a baptism date with her!!!! April 12!!!!  THIS IS SUCH A BIG DEAL. 

 I will have to ask her to write down her story so that I can send it to you or something because you won't even believe how amazing she is and all the spiritual experiences she is having.  I love Sarah so much and she is totally one of my best friends now too.  Helping her to strengthen her faith is helping to strenghten my faith.  I feel like that is what missionary work is all about. 

Tuesday-  Sister Tanner woke up sick so that was a bummer.  We were able to stop by Lake Michigan with our district.  It was absolutely breath-taking.  It is still really cold so a lot of it was frozen.  The pictures simply don't do it justice.  Looking at all of the different animals and then at the beautiful lake was such a testimony to me that there has to be a higher power. 

Lake Michigan!

My District at Lake Michigan

The Earth that Jesus Christ created is absolutely beautiful.  And amazing.  We visited some less-actives and then had dinner with another amazing family in our ward.  When we got home there were sisters from Stephen's point there waiting for us...  It was the night before transfers and we are the sisters that live closest to the stake center so they came to stay with us because they live 3 hours away.  But no one told us... so that was weird.  Haha anyways Tuesday was great!

#boredatthebusstop

Wednesday- TRANSFERS!!!  But it didn't really affect us at all since we are staying together in West Allis.  We tried to make it over the the stake center to see everyone and so that I could see Sister Osmond.  But it didn't end up working out... :(  I was so sad.  We called some people that were at the Stake Center so I got to talk to her for a little while so that was fun.  I was super sad that I wasn't going to be able to see her.  Anyways, we headed to the mission office because I needed to go pick up the package from Mom,  which I LOVED by the way!!   Thanks so much Mom!  It was so crazy that you were so close to me yet so far away!  Haha I loved the package and I love you!!!  So we headed to the mission office to grab the package and some other supplies and you will never guess who I saw when I walked in the doors... SISTER SOPHIA OSMOND!  What a tender mercy!  It was seriously the coolest thing.  So good to get to talk to her.  She is just as beautiful and kind as ever.  She is going to be a stellar missionary.

Got to see the one and only Sister Sophia Osmond!!!

As we were out and about on Wednesday, we decided to stop at our investigator's house, Cliff and Aretha.  They had been investigating for a while and have come to church before and they seem so promising!  But we haven't been able to get ahold of them at all pretty much the whole time I have been here.  We decided that we would stop by and leave them the Restoration DVD and then we would have to drop them.  As we were walking home, we were really sad about it.  We felt prompted to just leave them the DVD and we knew that we were going to have to drop them.  And right as we were talking about dropping them, you'll never guess who texted us!!! ARETHA!!!  It was so cool.  I know that that was a tender mercy from Heavenly Father.

Thursday-  We had dinner and a lesson with Sarah.  It was so fun!  We taught the Plan of Salvation.  It was amazing because even though the plan of salvation can be a little complicated, Sarah completely understood everything and agreed with everything too.  To her, the gospel just makes sense.  She talked about how she knew that going back to live with Heavenly Father would be like returning home.  I love that.  It really made me think.  I miss my family so much, but I love what I am doing here.  It is really hard sometimes.  I feel joy and I feel sadness.  And even though I love it here, I can't wait for the day that I get to return home to Provo to be with my family again.  That is what it is going to be like when we return home to our Father in heaven.  Obviously it will be a little different, but I feel like being on a mission is giving me a little sneak peek into eternity.  I can't wait to return to my heavenly home!  And my home in Provo too for that matter.

Friday-  I woke up sick.  It was inevitable.  Oh the joys of having a companion.  I knew when Sister Tanner got sick that I was going to have to be next.  I totally remember the day that she woke up sick and saying to her, "Wow.  You look like death."  But then I woke up on Friday and thought to myself, "Wow.  I feel like death."  But being sick wasn't going to stop us from doing missionary work!  Friday morning we had interviews with President.  They went really well.  I love President Cutler.  He talked about having a broken heart and a contrite spirit.  Having those qualities is so important as a missionary.  One interesting thing that he told me as I was leaving is that I shouldn't be afraid and that the Lord will protect me. 

 I thought that was interesting because I am often scared for my life...haha.  Going from Provo, Utah to Milwaukee, Wisconsin was a pretty big change for me. We do have to go pretty deep into the ghetto sometimes.  It may sound silly but it actually is pretty scary sometimes.  So I thought it was interesting that President told me that.  On Friday night one of my absolute favorite people in the ward, Sister Lundberg, took us to dinner.  She took us to a Friday Fish Fry at the Polish Community Center in Milwaukee.  It was so awesome!!!!!  During lent Catholics don't eat meat on Friday so they have these huge parties where they eat a bunch of fish.  It was way fun and because it was at the polish community center it was all cultural and stuff too.  I loved it.  Before we left, we went to check out the polish library that they had.  They had a bunch of polish artifacts and cool things like that.  Sister Tanner and I thought that people probably come in there a lot asking about their family history.  So we decided that we would ask one of the ladies working there if we could leave some family search cards there with the churches information for her to hand out to people.  So we went up to the lady working there and asked, "Hey, do people come in here a lot asking about their family history?"  Before we could even give her cards or tell her that we were missionaries she replied,"Oh yes all the time!  But we don't usually have the answers so we just send them to that Mormon Church down on 96th and Grange.  They have a great family history library."  HAHAHAHAHAHAAH!  They already had been sending people to our family history center.  We left the cards with her anyway and left. 

The Polish Community Center in Milwaukee

Saturday-  My two month mark!!!  Can you believe I have been gone two whole months??  Crazy.  The Oak Creek ward had a baptism and we brought our investigator Lenier.  I really think he enjoyed it. The spirit there was amazing.  It was cool to see other missionaries get a baptism because it makes me want to work harder.  And it also made me so stoked for Sarah's baptism! 

Overall, things are going pretty well!  It seems like the best weeks are usually some of the hardest too.  But it's ok!  I came across this quote from President Monson.

"So much in life depends on our attitude.  The way we choose to see things and respond to others makes all the difference.  To do the best we can and then to choose to be happy about our circumstances, whatever they may be, can bring peace and contentment."

Isn't that great!  Our attitude really makes a difference.

I love this gospel! 

Love,

Sister King