Yes, I Am Alive!

Hi Family!!

This is me out in the crazy snow storm yesterday right after we found out that church was cancelled.

This guy is just casually skiing down the street... haha.  That is how much snow there was!

Yes, I am alive.  You thought I would be buried in the massive amounts of snow that we got this weekend.  But we managed to make it out here to the library. 

Kind of a weird week this week.  We have been doing a lot of finding this week.  All of the investigators that we have had lately are either not progressing or have gotten baptized.  Haha so we have been trying really hard to find some new people to teach.  We gave away quite a few copies of the Book of Mormon this week so that was pretty exciting.  We are still following up with all of those people and hoping that something comes of it.  I know that the Book of Mormon has to ability and power to change hearts!  So hopefully we will be able to start reaping some of those seeds.

Tuesday we had a couple of lessons.  One with Sarah who just recently got back in town.  School here and UW didn't start back up again until last week.  So we finally got to see her again for the first time since the end of November.  She is doing well and has been reading a lot from the Book of Mormon.  We are planning to have a lesson this week with her boyfriend Vince that plays on the football team. So that should be good and we are excited about that.

Wednesday we had interviews with President Cutler!  Interviews are always a great experience.  I know that President Cutler is inspired of God to lead this mission.  In preparation for interviews, President Cutler asked us to study Elder Christofferson's talk from this last conference called "Free Forever, to Act for Themselves." He has really been pushing this idea to "act, and not be acted upon." I love the quote from this talk that says something about how we need to go out and get to work so that God has something to help us with.  The enabling power of the Atonement can help us as we are out doing our best and working hard.  Something that I learned and really want to start working on, is doing things more out of intention and not habit.  Or doing things for the right reason.  Do I go out and work everyday because I am supposed to?  Or do I go out and work because I love the Lord and truly want to help bless his children.  Are we reading our scriptures to cross it off of our to-do list?  Or are we reading our scriptures to change our hearts and learn more about the Atonement of Jesus Christ?  Sometimes it can be hard to figure out which reason it really is, but I think that is where the Atonement can come in and help us out a little bit.  It was so good to be talking to President about these things and I learn so much from him.  He said that things are going well back in West Allis and that Tubree is doing a lot better!  So that made my day.  He also said that an apostle is coming to visit the mission on March 21!  So that is exciting!  Who do you think it will be??  I told President Cutler that I have really loved serving here in Madison.  So hopefully he will let me stay here another transfer with Sister Kelley!  But we will see.  :) 

Thursday we got to see Ishmael which was really good.  He has been having a little bit of a hard time since his baptism.  But we taught him all about the power of the Atonement and I think that helped him to feel better.  He even ended up going out with the Elders over the weekend to help them teach some lessons!  So that was awesome!  He is pretty solid.  We also got to see Shay.  ( We have been trying to focus a lot on our recent converts lately to make sure that they are all still going strong.)  Shay is doing well!  We talked to her about fasting and the power that comes behind it.  I love Omni 1:26

26 And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved.

We talked about the role that fasting plays in this.  So then it was really cool to be able to fast with her this past Sunday.  :)

Friday we met with a few of our other investigators that haven't been progressing as much so not a lot to report on those.  We did meet a few cool people on the bus though.  One who said that she had met with missionaries back in 1999 in Chicago and was interested in started to meet with them again.  So that was a cool miracle to be able to run into her on the bus. 

Saturday we got to go to Sister Durtschi's card class.  This was great because we were able to reconnect with her friend Jeanne that has been reading from the Book of Mormon, and we schedule a time to teach her this week!  So we hope that all goes well with that too.

Sunday was CRAZY.  We woke up in the morning to probably around 5 new inches of snow or so.  Church ended up being cancelled which we were pretty bummed about.  Because no church on superbowl sunday??  A missionaries' worst nightmare!  Haha we didn't know what we were going to do all day.  But we made it work and there were actually a lot of miracles.  President Cutler gave the missionaries permission to administer the sacrament.  So we got together with the Elders in our district and had our own mini sacrament meeting.  It actually turned out to be one of the most special experiences of my mission and something that I will never forget.  While the Elders were preparing the sacrament, I was reading in 3 Nephi 18 when Christ institutes the sacrament to the Nephites and he says this,

10 And when the disciples had done this, Jesus said unto them: Blessed are ye for this thing which ye have done, for this is fulfilling my commandments, and this doth witness unto the Father that ye are willing to do that which I have commanded you.

I was thinking about how Sister Kelley and I had trudged through the mounds of snow everywhere to be able to partake of the sacrament.  This was us "acting" and not being "acted upon." Christ says,  "Blessed are ye for this thing which ye have done."  We have to DO something!  And by partaking of the sacrament, we were keeping the commandments and doing what Christ had asked us to do.  I just felt to blessed and grateful that we had the opportunity to do that.  We spent the rest of the day trying to visit people but that wasn't very successful.  We tried to ride the bus a little but no one was on the bus because of the snow and the super bowl so that was hard too.  But there was a sweet family that had us over for dinner so that was a huge tender mercy.  I was feeling a little homesick because I wished so badly that I could have been out of the cold and wet snow and watching the super bowl with you guys.  But this family that we had dinner with had just returned from a family vacation to Disney World!!!  So I got to talk to them all about their trip and see all of their pictures.  Seriously the BIGGEST tender mercy.  We all know how much I love Disney and to be able to have that at the end of this hard and dreary day was exactly what I needed.  I know that there is someone up there looking out for me.

So we had a good week this week and I am excited to see what his coming week has in store!  Thank you for all that you do and for being the best family ever!

Love,

Sister King

Happy New Year!

Hope that you all had a wonderful New Year!  Can you believe it is 2015?  Yeah, me neither.  I am excited for the New Year.  I was looking back on 2014 and just thinking what an amazing year it has been.  With the exception of about 15 days, I spent the entire year of 2014 as a missionary and full-time servant of the Lord.  What an amazing blessing that is.  I am so excited to see what 2015 has in store.

Turning the clock ahead so we can celebrate the New Year before we go to bed!

Celebrating the New Year with Mexican Soda!

It has been pretty bitterly cold these past couple of days and is supposed to be getting worse throughout the week.  Or so we have been told by the members here.  When we left our apartment this morning it was -26 with wind chill.  So that is a little frigid.  But we are making it work. 

As for the week...

Tuesday was pretty fun!  We went out to lunch with the district to say goodbye because half of them were getting transferred.  And then Sister Kelley and I headed out to contact a referral from Sis. Durtschi (Sis. Merrill's sister-in-law).  She had given her a Book of Mormon so we headed over to follow up with it and see what she thought of it so far.  When we got there, she let us right in!  Her name is Jeanne and we had met her a couple of times before at Sister Durtschi's house.  We went in and started talking to her and got to know her a little bit better.  When we brought up the Book of Mormon, she told us that she had read the whole thing-cover to cover- in only a matter of about 3 days!  And then get this- she said, "It has got to be true!  It is all about faith!"  haha we were blown away.  Then she told us pretty much the entire story line of the Book of Mormon and how she learned more about faith by reading that book than she ever had before.  We then had this really cool discussion about faith and why it is important and asked if we could share a scripture from the Book of Mormon that talked about it.  We shared Ether 12:4 which says:

4  Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety   hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith , maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works , being led to glorify God.

Jeanne loved it so much that she ran to grab her Book of Mormon so that she could mark it in hers.  She opened up her Book of Mormon to the chapter that she had marked and it was Ether 12!  Jeanne took that as some sort of sign.  So we asked her if she wanted to learn more about the Book of Mormon and where it came from and why it is important, and she said yes!  It was seriously one of the coolest experiences on my whole mission.

Wednesday was pretty cool because we were already planning on having dinner at the Durtschi's with all of the other missionaries in the ward, so Sister Durtschi invited Jeanne over to have dinner with all of us too.  We had such a good time and a absolutely delicious dinner.  We stayed after to talk with Jeanne and Sis. Durtschi.  We read Moroni's promise in the end of the Book of Mormon and challenged her to pray about it to receive an answer that it is true.  She said that she would! So we are super excited about Jeanne!  More to come on her next week.

For New Year's eve that night we were given strict instructions to go to bed on time, plus we were completely exhausted anyway.  So Sister Kelley and I just moved our clocks back to 11:59 and ended up celebrating the New Year at about 10:17 or so.  Haha we drank some Mexican sodas and then went to bed.

Thursday was another really cool day.  We had a lesson with Ishmael in this really cool member family's home and taught him the Word of Wisdom.  hahahaha to teaching the word of wisdom on New Year's.  BUT- he committed to live it!  So Ishmeal is moving steadily toward his baptismal day.

We also had a lesson scheduled with Shay.  We had been asking her for a referral for a while now and she surprised us and brought her friend Amanda to the lesson!  Amanda told us that she could tell that Shay was different and happier and wanted to know why and how that was.  So we told her about the Book of Mormon and gave her a copy and are going to start teaching her this week!  We are super stoked!  Amanda has had a reallllllllly hard life.  Shay has gone through a lot too so she bore her testimony to Amanda about how learning about Christ and his Atonement has helped her to move past those hard things.  It was a very powerful lesson and Amanda began to cry a little bit when we told her about how Christ suffered all things so He knows how she feels and wants to help her through.  Also- Shay is doing absolutely amazing as well. 

Friday was pretty slow.  We just did some service and some planning and a little bit of contacting.  Nothing too crazy.

Saturday we made lunch for our recent convert Janet.  Isn't she just the cutest?  She is doing well but getting a little old.  I think she really appreciated our visit.

Also- haven't been able to get ahold of Sally and she wasn't at church.  Hopefully we will be able to see her sometime this week.

Overall- we had a great first week of 2015!  We for sure met a lot more drunk people on the bus than usual.  But that's ok.  It makes for good stories to tell you when I get home. 

I had been thinking a lot about the New Year and read Elder Holland talk called "Remember Lot's Wife."  If you haven't read it, it is definitely worth a read.  Especially at the beginning of the new year.  Basically he talks about the council that Christ gives us in Luke 17:32:

  32  Remember Lot’s wife.

That is kind of some interesting little advice.  If you remember, Lot's wife is the one that was commanded to leave Sodom and Gomorrah and not look back.  But, Lot's wife looked back and became a pillar of salt.  Elder Holland goes into a lot more detail about why this is so important, but this is one of my favorite quotes from the talk.

"So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind."

I hope that you all have had an AMAZING 2015 so far.  You are constantly in my thoughts and prayers and I love you very much.  Until next week! 

Love,

Sister King

PS- I will see you this year!  :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello Family! 

We've got a good couple inches of snow!

It was so good to get to hear all about your Thanksgiving!  Thanksgiving is such a wonderful time of year.  I sure did miss all of you.  But it brought a lot of comfort to know that I will be able to share next year's Thanksgiving with you.  Thank you so much for sending updates and pictures of your week!  It always means a lot to get them.

We had a pretty good Thanksgiving week back here in Madison too!

Having a little fun on p-day

Tuesday we had district meeting and we talked about the Holy Ghost's role in conversion.  It is amazing how vital that really is. As a missionary, it is so important to always have the Spirit with me so that others can feel it.  That is something that I have been trying to work on lately, always having the Spirit with me.  We also had a really cool lesson with Sarah that night.  We have been sharing stories with her from the Book of Mormon to help her have the courage to tell her family that she wants to be baptized.  We shared the story of Ammon and how when he went to the Lamanites, all he did was serve and love the people there.  Eventually their hearts were softened and an entire nation was converted!  That is what we challenged Sarah to do.  Continue to love and serve her family and let them know that she loves them.  As she does, I know that their hearts will soften.  We haven't been able to talk to her yet so I will have to let you know next week how telling her family went!

Wednesday was a really good day!  It is so weird, nothing super crazy or special happened.  It was just a good day to be a missionary.  We were working really hard and managed to find some really cool people along the way.  A goal that Sister Kelley and I have for this transfer is to pass out more Book of Mormons.  We are kind of doing like a "25 days of Christmas" thing by trying to give away 25 Book of Mormons!  We found 2 really cool people that we were able to give a copy to that day.  So we are off to a great start!  So many people were placed in our path that day.  It was just amazing.  I KNOW that the Lord's hand is in this work.  We also had a really cool lesson with our returning less active named Emily.  We taught the Plan of Salvation and talked about how none of it is possible without Jesus Christ.  He is the center of the plan.  It has been really cool to learn and grow with Emily as she starts coming back to church.

Thanksgiving with the Thurston's

Thanksgiving with the Durtschi's

hursday was THANKSGIVING!!!  What an amazing Thanksgiving day we had!  Obviously I was feeling a little homesick, but I didn't let that take away from the day that we got to have here.  We got to go over to the Thurston's for a Thanksgiving lunch.  That was really fun because I guess technically the Thurston's are family.  4th cousins totally counts, right?  The thought of spending Thanksgiving with "family" brought me a lot of comfort anyway.  Also, I have grown so close to them and they mean so much to me that they are as family as it gets for me out here in Wisconsin.  So it was super cool to be able to spend Thanksgiving with them.  Plus the food was absolutely delicious.  And GUESS WHAT.  As we were about to eat Hayley was telling us what all of the food was and she gets to this one dish and says, "and this just some raspberry stuff."  So I was like, "Wait, what is in the raspberry stuff?"  She said, "Just eat it.  You will like it."  So then I said, "Oh, because my Mom always makes this really yummy pretzel raspberry jello stuff every year for Thanksgiving."  YEP, THAT'S RIGHT.  Hayley made the raspberry pretzel stuff for Thanksgiving!  She didn't even know!  So I still got to have our family's Thanksgiving classic out here.  Such a huge tender mercy.  But seriously though, how could that NOT be a tender mercy from the Lord? 

Afterward, we got to go to the Durtschi's for another Thanksgiving dinner!  It was so fun and absolutely delicious.  It was cool because the less active lady that teaches us to knit came and I have gotten really close with her.  So we got to spend Thanksgiving with her as well!  So that was really fun.  After the Durtschi's, we headed back to the Thurston's again for dessert.  :)

Even though spending Thanksgiving on a mission is REALLY hard, it was an amazing experience.  It is so amazing to be able to have a time of year that we can reflect on the things that we are grateful for.  Back at home when we have Thanksgiving and we all go around the table and say something that we are grateful for, my answers have always been the gospel, my parents, my sisters, my extended family, my home, Sadie, school, etc.  But this year, I was pulled away from all of those things (except the gospel of course).  But being away from those things has given me a greater appreciation for them.  It has also helped me to focus on the one thing that I still do have that I am oh so grateful for.  And that is the gospel.  The gospel has always been a constant in my life.  I am so grateful for it.  But this year, there is one more major thing that I can add to the list of things that I am grateful for- MY MISSION.  I am so beyond grateful for my mission.  I haven't loved every minute of my mission, but I have been grateful for every minute of it.  My mission has taught me and given me so many things that have changed me so much.  My mission has given me a greater appreciation for family.  It has strengthened my testimony of my Savior Jesus Christ.  My personal relationship with Him has grown exponentially on my mission.  My mission has given me lasting friendships that I will cherish forever with companions, other missionaries, ward members, investigators, recent converts, and so many others.  My mission has given me a greater knowledge and love for the scriptures.  My mission has taught me how to be a better wife and mother which is one of my greatest desires.  I owe so much to my mission.  Making the decision to come on a mission was one of, if not THE, hardest decision I have ever made.  And it continues to be very difficult.  But I am so grateful that I , with the help of my Father in Heaven, made the decision to come.  I am so grateful for my mission.

Friday was a pretty good day as well.  We met some more cool people on the bus on our way to a few different places which was super fun.  We met this guy on the bus named Ishmael who ended up coming to church yesterday.  So that was a HUGE miracle!  More to come on him next week.  When we got home that night, we made ourselves some yummy dinner and then we decided to keep up with our family's tradition of watching a Christmas movie.  We weren't able to watch That Santa Clause... :)  But we were able to watch Mr. Krueger's Christmas.  So I was able to keep that Thanksgiving tradition alive out here as well.  :)

Saturday we were able to meet with Shay.  She is still doing so well!  And guess what!  She have her very first talk in Sacrament meeting yesterday!  She is so amazing and is continuing to grow in the gospel.  Gosh, I love her so much.

So that was pretty much my week!!

Ok family, before I sign off I have a very special challenge for you.  This is something that has been on my mind a lot that I have prayed about and that I really feel is a good idea.  Here is the challenge:

Starting on December 3, read one chapter of the Book of Mormon every single day.  If I have done my calculations correctly, then you will finish reading the Book of Mormon on the day that I get home!  The Book of Mormon is so important.  Being able to read from the Book of Mormon so much on my mission is what has truly helped my testimony to grow.  Even though it might be easy to let a day or two slip, make it a priority RIGHT NOW to read one chapter every single day.  It should only take about 5 minutes out of your day.  Elder Scott told us this last conference that reading from the scriptures is even more important than sleep sometimes.  So if it means that you need to get up a few minutes earlier or go to bed a few minutes later, I promise you that it will be worth it.  This is something that I feel is really important, so take this challenge seriously!  Doing it as a family would be cool, but I think that you should do it individually.  That way you can all share with me some of your thoughts in your weekly e-mails.  And you can share thoughts in family home evening and at dinner and stuff because we will all be in the same place in the Book of Mormon.  It would really mean so much to me if you would do this.  I love the Book of Mormon so much and I really want to be able to share this cool experience with you.

I love you so much!  Thank you for all that you do for me!

Can't wait to hear how your Book of Mormon reading is going!

Love,

Sister King