Gresham, Wisconsin and Hmong food this week!

Hey fam!

Another week has come and gone.  I feel like this week went by especially fast because p-day was on Tuesday instead of Monday.  So it feels like not a ton has happened since I last talked to you. 

But a couple of highlights from this week:

We spent a lot of time with the Hmong people this week so I thought I would include a few pictures of what they feed us.  It is heaven on earth!  We met quite a few Hmong people this week.  It can be kind of hard to start teaching them because they don't really have a Christian background.  It is so cool to be able to teach people about Jesus Christ when they don't know much about Him.  Sometimes it is so hard for me to understand that there are so many people that don't know who He is because my entire life has been based on and founded in the teachings and example of the Savior.  It has been cool to teach people that don't know about Him because it has helped me to realize just how much He really does mean to me.  Grateful that I do have to opportunity to tell people about Him that don't even know.  Everyone deserves to know that they have a Savior who loves them!

This week I was also able to go on exchanges with Sister Dunlap to the good old town of Gresham, Wisconsin.  This area is a legend in our mission.  Gresham is a town with a population reaching a grand total of 586.  But they have a ward there because about 85% of the people who live there are members.  Most people in Wisconsin have never even heard of Gresham unless they are a Mormon.  haha.  Years ago there were two sisters that joined the church in Milwaukee and then moved the Gresham and that is pretty much how Gresham started.  So basically everyone in this town is related to each other in one way or another.  The sisters that serve in Gresham live with Grandma Rekow.  They help her do chores around the farm and house.  When I was there we got to go out and pick the asparagus in her garden and feed her baby chicks.  It was pretty much like camping for the weekend!  Haha.  Grandma is known for catching rabbits in her backyard and then having the missionaries gut them and cooking a rabbit stew.  So it was quite the adventure to get to go there for a little while.  A lot of fun!  We were able to teach a family that the sisters there are working with and help them to read the Book of Mormon together.  So the work is coming along slowly but surely there.

This is me with Grandma Rekow!

So sad to hear this week about Elder L. Tom Perry.  He was such an incredible man and a great example for all of us.  We are so blessed to be able to have living prophets and apostles on the earth today and it is so sad to have to see one of them go.  Weird to think that he almost came out to visit our mission just a few months ago.  I loved his last conference address that talked about how families are the basic unit for the structure of heaven and here on earth as well.  This transfer I have actually been studying the Christlike attribute of obedience and I LOVE this quote from Elder Perry. 

"Those who rely solely on themselves and follow only their own desires and self-inclinations are so limited when compared to those who follow God and tap into His insight, power, and gifts. It has been said that someone who is all wrapped up in himself or herself makes a very small package. Strong, proactive obedience is anything but weak or passive. It is the means by which we declare our faith in God and qualify ourselves to receive the powers of heaven. Obedience is a choice. It is a choice between our own limited knowledge and power and God’s unlimited wisdom and omnipotence."

Elder Perry was an incredible example of obedience himself.  He has faithfully served and basically devoted his entire life to serving the Lord and I hope I can do that very same thing. 

I am grateful for your examples of obedience as well.  I love you guys!  Keep up the good work!

Love,

Sister King

5.26.15

Hey Fam!

As usual, don't have a whole lot of time to write.  :( but this week was pretty crazy busy!  I was really sad to be missing all of Ashley's graduation festivities, but I knew that the Lord would bless us extra for our sacrifices and boy was that true!  We had such a miracle week!

Yes, the people here love their Packers THAT much!

A few highlights:

We FINALLY got back in contact with our investigator Linda.  She is the one that was a HQ referral.  She was all excited to work toward baptism, and then we fell out of contact.  Then she randomly showed up at church a few weeks later, and then we fell out of contact.  But this week we were finally able to teach her again!  She has had a lot of opposition which I think is the reason that it has been so crazy.  But she has been reading from the BofM every day and she told us that she received an answer that it is true!  So we are super excited to continue working with her.

We have a Laotian investigator named Thim that has been working with the missionaries for a long time.  She had to cancel one of our appointments this week and felt kind of bad about it so she ended up inviting us to a family birthday party that they were having.  We got to eat SO MUCH delicious hmong food and then most of her extended family members asked for copies of the Book of Mormon.  Us and the Hmong elders in our ward have now started teaching much of Thim's extended family! 

My favorite miracle of the week was that we met this really cool girl named Jamaylah the other day and gave her a BofM and she invited us back to teach her more.  Well, went we went back yesterday to teach her, she was in the middle of a little emergency and had to leave right when we got there.  So we started talking to her older sister.  We ended up teaching her an entire Restoration lesson and it moved her to tears.  She accepted a baptismal invitation and a date to be working toward!  And invited us back to teach her husband and 3 children (who are all above the age of 8 might I add :) )  later this week! 

There were definitely a lot of ups and downs this week, but the ups always outweigh the downs and the downs make the ups taste that much sweeter.  

 

 

Don't have a ton of time- but here is a quote for President Uchtdorf's last conference talk that I LOVE:

I marvel to think that the Son of God would condescend to save us, as imperfect, impure, mistake-prone, and ungrateful as we often are. I have tried to understand the Savior’s Atonement with my finite mind, and the only explanation I can come up with is this: God loves us deeply, perfectly, and everlastingly. I cannot even begin to estimate “the breadth, and length, and depth, and height … [of] the love of Christ.”

I know that the Savior really does love us!  I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to share that love with others and feel it more abundantly myself as a full-time servant of Jesus Christ.

Love you all so much!  Until next week!

Love,

Sister King

Hey Fam!

Can't believe that another week has already come and gone!

We have been pretty busy and seeing so many miracles!  It is the best. 

The highlight lesson of my week this week was definitely with our investigator Rachel.  She is actually a lay minister in her Lutheran church.  She is a very good Christian person- probably one of the most Christian people I have ever met!  She was on her church's Facebook page the other day and someone posted something along the lines of "Please pray for the ____ family!  They have chosen to leave the Mormon church and we are so glad that they are finally able to escape.  We need to pray that they will be able to find the truth and to stay away."  Isn't that soooooo sad? Yeah.  Rachel thought so to.  She commented on the post and said, "Please remember that Mormons are God's children too."  Within 3 minutes the Lutheran pastor deleted her post and sent her a personal message about why what she said was wrong.  Well that just didn't sit right with her.  So she decided that she wanted to find out why everyone thought the Mormons were "so terrible"and she also wanted to understand the doctrine of the Mormon church so that she could correct any misconceptions next time she was in a conversation and Mormonism came up.  So she started meeting with us!  :)  We answered all of her questions and taught her about the Restoration of the gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith and the miracle of the Book of Mormon.  The first few times we met with her, she was very stand offish and made it very clear that she was only there to gather information- not to convert.  Well we invited her to be baptized anyway!  haha.  And we invited her to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it so that she could know for herself.  The first couple of weeks she hadn't been reading.  But when we met with her this week, something was different and you could tell right off the bat.  Her countenance was different. 

When we asked her how her Book of Mormon reading had been going, (expecting her to say that she hadn't and then to just move on) to our suprised she whipped out her Book of Mormon and a study journal where she had been taking notes!  All she had been doing was reading just one chapter every day and you could tell!  We spent our entire lesson just discussing the Book of Mormon and the amazing plain and precious truths that she had learned about just in the first few chapters.  Then, we asked her if she had been praying about it.  She told us that her and the Lord had been "chatting" about it a lot lately.  And that the whole time she has been reading from the Book of Mormon she has had a calm and peaceful feeling.  She knows that it is true! All this time she told us that she was not interested in converted, but now she has been considering and praying about the decision to be baptized.  She told us that she really wants to be, but she is just concerned about leaving her Lutheran church where she is a mentor for a couple of the girls.  So please be praying for Rachel that she will not only receive an answer, but that she will have the courage to act on it.  I feel so good about her!

Also- just wanted to point out that The Book of Mormon never ceases to amaze me.  It is the BEST tool to have as a missionary because if people don't really want to listen to us or if they have a lot of questions or concerns, we just give them a copy and let the book do the work! The Book of Mormon is a book with a promise.  Everyone can come to know that it is true for themselves.  So as a missionary it is so awesome to have a little book full of truth!  We have the ultimate trump card!  haha. 

Also- this week was...... my last zone conference.  Yeah I know, it is super weird.  At a missionary's last zone conference President Cutler invites the departing missionaries to bear their testimony.  i remember at my very first zone conference seeing all the missionaries that were about to go home giving their testimonies and thinking to myself 2 things.  First, they must know everything!  And second, that day is never going to happen to me.  well that day came, and I don't know everything.  Not even close.  But I have learned a lot though.  I bore my testimony of the Atonement.  You know, the Atonement is a pretty incredible thing.  I NEVER would have been able to get this far on my mission without it.  It has changed me and enable me to do things that I never could have done on my own.  I am so grateful for the Atonement. 

This Zone conference was focused on something very interesting.  It is a very important commandment that I think we don't take as seriously as we should.  Keeping the Sabbath Day holy!  I love this commandment!  I thought that I understood it, but President and Sister Cutler really opened my eyes. 

 In Ezekial 20:12 it says,

12 Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.

That is kind of an interesting phrase.  That the sabbath is a sign between us and God.  But what is it a sign of?  It is a sign to God of how much we really appreciate the Atonement.  The most important thing we do on the Sabbath day is to partake of the sacrament as a reminder of his sacrifice for us.  With the sacrament, we renew our covenants.  People tend to think that the sacrament is only a renewal of our baptismal covenant.  But that is not true.  Modern day prophets have taught us that the sacrament renews ALL of our covenants!  So that is pretty neat.  President Cutler also taught us that all or the ordinances that we do in the church we only do for ourselves once, and then we do them for other people.  For example, we are only baptized once and then when we do baptisms for other people in the temple.  Except for the sacrament!  The sacrament is the only ordinance that we repeat purely for ourselves over and over and over!  That is how important it is. We need the power of the Atonement in our individual lives so badly.  We can not make it back to live with God again and with our families forever without it!  I love this quote from Elder Petersen:

Our observance or nonobservance of the Sabbath is an unerring measure of our attitude toward the Lord personally and toward his suffering in Gethsemane, his death on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead.

So think about the Sunday that you had yesterday.  Were you showing God just how grateful you are for the Atonement of His perfect Son?

Definitely an area that I need to improve!  haha.

I am so grateful for how much I am learning.  I have learned so much!  And grown so much too.  But I know that I still have a long ways to go.  That is why I am so grateful for the Atonement.

I love you all so much!!!  HAve a great week!

Love,

Sister King

Greatest moment of my life and I wasn't there!

Family,

Can you even believe how amazing the tender mercies of the Lord are in our lives?  I know that the Lord loves us and is so aware of us!  His hand is in the details of our lives!  Ashley meeting Kendall is one of the greatest moments of my life and I wasn't even there!  Haha.  So amazing! 

So transfers are on Wednesday and we just found out transfer information.  I am going to be staying here in Wausau.  My new companions name is Sister Karlsson.  I don't know hardly anything about her...  But I hear she is from Sweden or something.  So that should be interesting!  Excited to get to meet her this week and get to work.  A little nervous to take over the area.  I have done it a few times now but this time I am going to have to show her the ropes with leadership stuff.  So hope that all goes well. 

So last week for p-day we hiked Rib "Mountain."   Here are some pictures.

Sister Weaver is getting transferred to Madison 1!!!  I am so stoked!  She gets to go meet all of my very favorite people!!!!!  And Sister Kelley got transferred to be a Sister Training Leader in Green Bay so I will get to see her at MLC and stuff like that.  So lots of fun and exciting things happening with this transfer. 

So JT got baptized this week!  We weren't teaching him, the Elders were.  But we have gotten to know him pretty well and his story is pretty amazing!  He has been a flaming atheist his whole life.  The Elders met him tracting 6 months ago.  He told them not to waste their time because he didn't believe in God.  But the Elders were persistent and finally convinced him to come to a baptismal service a few months ago.  He felt the Spirit and couldn't deny it.  He has spent the last couple of months changing his entire life and entire way of thinking to now believing that there is a God.  And he is SO HAPPY!  When he bore his testimony at his baptism he said, "I have always sort of been a lone wolf, but I now have found my pack!"  He also said, "Now, it is REALLY hard for an Asian to say the word LOVE.  But I can honestly say that I love you guys and I love God!"  So that was pretty neat.  So grateful for JT's example to me.  He is a kingdom builder! 

We also got to have our interviews with President Cutler this week.  He talked to me about the importance of powerful personal prayer.  As I was studying and preparing for this interview, there was a line in PMG that really stood out to me.  It says, "No one can know of spiritual truths without prayer."  It really is so true.  God can't give us answers if we are not asking Him questions!  Heavenly Father wants to hear from us.  I know that the power of prayer is real.  I couldn't get through a single day of my mission without it. 

Sorry that I am running short on time again but I have to be quick because of transfers this week.  I love you all and CAN NOT EVEN WAIT to get to talk to you on Sunday!

Love you!

Sister King

Prayer is a supernal gift of our Father in Heaven to every soul. Think of it: the absolute Supreme Being, the most all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful personage, encourages you and me, as insignificant as we are, to converse with Him as our Father. Actually, because He knows how desperately we need His guidance, He commands, “Thou shalt pray vocally as well as in thy heart; yea, before the world as well as in secret, in public as well as in private.” ¹ 

^{-Elder Richard G. Scott}

Shout out to Ryan!

Hey Family!

First of all I would like to give a shout out to Ryan!  He is now a return missionary!  How cool.  Can't believe it has already been 2 years since he left.  Hope that I can be the kind of missionary that he was!

The weather has finally been getting nicer here, almost into the 70's!  But then we woke up this morning and it was snowing.  So we will have to see what the weather has in store for us this week.

We were pretty busy this week!

We visiting with a lot of less actives in the ward this week that we hadn't been able to get in with before, so that was pretty awesome.  The Wausau ward is pretty big and retention is definitely an area that can be improved so Sister Weaver and I are working hard to help with that.

On exchanges with Sister Peel, the Nou Vang's had us over for dinner.  They are one of the Hmong families in our ward.  Last time I told them that I love somtum, so they made me a plate!  Thought you might like that Mom.  Both of us ate authentic somtum on our missions!  Good stuff!  :)

Exchanges with Sisters Payne and Cook.  (Check out my hair cut!  I got 4 inches off.)

Got to go on exchanges with Sister Cook.  She is from McGrath, Alberta, Canada.  That is one of the places that we went when I went up there for my soccer tournament so it was fun to reminisce about fun times and fun places up in Canada.  We saw a lot of miracles.  We were out tracting and met this guy  from Brazil.   He already had a copy of the Book of Mormon! I think he may have met with missionaries many years ago. We told him that the Book of Mormon was a record of people on the American continent, somewhere in central or south America. That really caught his attention! He said that he would read and that we could come back and teach him more. It is so cool to me how the Lord prepares me.  Maybe he wasn't completely ready to accept the gospel when he received the Book of Mormon before, and the Lord led us to find him now that he is ready!  So hope that all goes well.

Also got to go on exchanges with Sister Peel.  She is from Mt. Pleasant, Utah which is where Jessie Jorgensen's farm is so it was fun to reminisce about that as well.  She thought it was cool that someone actually knew where it was because it is a pretty small town.  She finishes her mission in about 2 weeks so it was fun to be able to learn from her.  We met with some less actives and then tried to find some new investigators.  We got a referral from one of our investigators to visit her sister.  She told us the street that her house was on and that is was the 2nd house on the left and it was blue.  When we went to try to find the house, the 2nd house on the left was white and the one next to it was blue.  So we didn't really know which one to try.  We decided to try the blue house first.  We knocked on the door and this guy answers.  I asked if Patty was there and he said no.  I said, "Oh no, we must have the wrong house then.  Sorry!  But what is your name?"  And he said, "It's- get off my porch!  Do you need a spelling for that?!"  hahahahahahahahaha man I have been rejected my fair share of times but that has got to be one of the most interesting. 

I also got to speak in sacrament meeting yesterday.  Perks of being a missionary- they ask you to speak just a couple of days before the meeting!  Yay!  But I was actually very grateful for the opportunity to speak because the topic that they gave me to speak on was my very favorite- The Atonement!  Man, I could just go on talking about that and how much I love it forever!  I have been studying a talk that Elder Holland gave a while back called "Missionary Work and the Atonement."  Man, is it a good one.  This is one of my favorite quotes:

"Anyone who does any kind of missionary work will have occasion to ask, Why is this so hard? Why doesn’t it go better? Why can’t our success be more rapid? Why aren’t there more people joining the Church? It is the truth. We believe in angels. We trust in miracles. Why don’t people just flock to the font? Why isn’t the only risk in missionary work that of pneumonia from being soaking wet all day and all night in the baptismal font?

You will have occasion to ask those questions. I have thought about this a great deal. I offer this as my personal feeling. I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience.‍ Salvation never‍ was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionaries and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary.

Now, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about anything anywhere near what Christ experienced. That would be presumptuous and sacrilegious. But I believe that missionaries and‍ investigators, to come to the truth, to come to salvation, to know something of this price that has been paid, will have to pay a token of that same price.

For that reason I don’t believe missionary work has ever been easy, nor that conversion is, nor that retention is, nor that continued faithfulness is. I believe it is supposed to require some effort, something from the depths of our soul.

If He could come forward in the night, kneel down, fall on His face, bleed from every pore, and cry, “Abba, Father (Papa), if this cup can pass, let it pass,” ¹⁶ ‍ then little wonder that salvation is not a whimsical or easy thing for us. If you wonder if there isn’t an easier way, you should remember you are not the first one to ask that. Someone a lot greater and a lot grander asked a long time ago if there wasn’t an easier way.

The Atonement will carry the missionaries perhaps even more importantly than it will carry the investigators. When you struggle, when you are rejected, when you are spit upon and cast out and made a hiss and a byword, you are standing with the best life this world has ever known, the only pure and perfect life ever lived. You have reason to stand tall and be grateful that the Living Son of the Living God knows all about your sorrows and afflictions. The only way to salvation is through Gethsemane and on to Calvary. The only way to eternity is through Him—the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

I don't think we will ever come to understand the Atonement perfectly.  However, I have come to understand it on my mission better than I ever have before and in ways that I never could have experienced if I wasn't here.  

 

As a missionary, I understand to a certain extent a small degree of some of the things that the Savior felt.  He was rejected, mocked, spit upon, judged unfairly, ignored, and persecuted.  He worked diligently all the days of his ministry and still there were many, many people that did not want to listen to the amazing and beautiful gospel message that He had to share.  I have felt some of those same feelings on my mission.  But because of the Savior and His Atonement, I don't have to endure it alone.  I can find strength, peace, and joy throughout anything that may come my way.  And I am so grateful because I appreciate and understand that part of the Atonement in a very personal way now.  I love my Savior.  I am so grateful for the example that he set for us to follow and that He has offered divine help along the way.  I know that He loves us.  That is why He endured everything that He did!  He loves us, and He loves God.  That is his motivation for perfect obedience.  I love this gospel and I love the ability that I have to tell people about Christ's Atonement every single day, whether they choose to listen or not!

I love you all!

Love,

Sister King

Spirit Tracting

Hey Fam!

Man!  What a week. As usual I am short on time so I will just tell you about a few of the highlights of the week

Our Zone Training Meeting went really well!  Giving trainings is still really scary and stressful to me, but I feel like I have gotten better than when I was first thrown into it.  So that is a blessing.  

Something interesting that President Cutler taught us that we got to teach the other missionaries in our zone is that there are 3 different kinds of obedience. First, you can obey out of fear.  You obey because you are scared of the consequences that will come if you are not obedient to what God wants you to do.  For example with tithing- D&C 64:23 tells us that if we don't pay our tithing is like fire insurance.  So some people are obedient because they are afraid of being burned.  

Second, you can obey out of want of blessings.  There are lots of promised blessings attached to the commandments that God gives us!  This is especially important as a missionary because we need the blessings of the Lord that come from obedience if we are to get along.  Or if we continue with the tithing example, Malachi 3:10 tells us that if we pay our tithing then the windows of heaven will open and pour out blessings that we won't even have room enough to receive them.  So some people obey the commandments because they desire blessings.  

Or the last reason for motivation behind obedience is love.  We simply love the Lord.  Do we really love the Lord?  when I wake up in the morning on time right at 6:30 and throw myself onto the floor to pray, am I doing it because I am afraid of what will happen if I don't?  Am I doing it because I want the blessings that will come?  Or am I doing it because I love the Lord so much and am excited that I have another day ahead of me to devote to serving Him.  Why are you being obedient to the commandments?  It is an interesting thing to think about.

John 14:15

If ye love‍ me, keep‍ my commandments.

Also- you should watch/listen to this talk!  Elder Holland can say it better than I can!

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/the-first-great-commandment?lang=eng

We got to go on exchanges this week.  I went to Stevens Point to be with Sister Clawson for the day.  She is finishing up her mission here in a couple of weeks so it was cool to get to learn from her.  We have served around and near each other in the same zones almost our whole missions so it was fun to get to spend the day together working.

We had a cool experience this week.  It was about 8:30 at night and our last appointment had fallen through.  Pretty much the whole state of Wisconsin goes to bed at like 7:00pm so knocking doors didn't seem like the best use of the half hour that we had left of the night.  So we decided to go on what I like the call a "Faith Walk."  We said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father to place someone in our path that needed to meet us that day so that we could make the best use of our time.  We started walking and knocking on a few doors that had lights on, when we passed by this woman named Angie sitting outside of her apartment.  We approached her and started talking to her and she completely broke down and told us of the struggles she had been having with her son.  We answered SO MANY of her questions with the Book of Mormon.  It was incredible!  She told us that the Jehovah's Witnesses had knocked on her door a couple of days ago and that she was thinking of meeting with them, but now she wants to meet with us instead!  It was seriously a miracle!  I KNOW that Heavenly Father needed us to meet her that night.  We will be teaching her again later this week!

Also this week we were working at the food pantry that we volunteer at every week and ended up meeting an undercover less active that volunteers there!  He is currently in jail so we aren't allowed to visit him... haha.  But we did give him a Book of Mormon that he can read while he is there!  Apparently he joined the church when he was 12 with his older sister without their parents back in California and had been ordained a Priest.  But he had gotten into a little bit of trouble... and now he wants to turn his life around again!  So that was pretty cool.

We also were out contacted a couple of people in these indoor apartment complexes and with the way that the doors were set up and with the amount of time that we had left we weren't going to be able to knock on every single door.  So we decided to do what I like the call "Spirit tracting."  Pray to figure out which of the doors we needed to knock on!  We ended up meeting the 15 year old boy named Ricky.  He is Hmong though so we referred him to the Hmong Elders in our ward.  They taught him twice this week and just yesterday they set a baptismal date with him!  YAY SPIRIT TRACTING!

Ok we also met another cool lady named Teresa this week.  She was a headquarter referral that requested a Bible and a Book of Mormon so we thought that was pretty interesting.  When we went by to give her the books we started talking to her.  And apparently she had been meeting with Elders 6 years ago until one day she came home to find her house burned down!  Her Bible and Book of Mormon were completely destroyed.  Because of all the chaos between trying to find a new place and dealing with insurance and trying to salvage anything that was left from the fire, she fell out of contact with the missionaries.  But now she feels that it is time for her to start meeting with the missionaries again!  So she is going to start reading the BofM again and we are going to start meeting with her this week!

See- so many miracles are happening!  So I didn't even miss you guys in Cancun.  :)

But really though, I LOVE this work.  There is no place I would rather be.  The hand of the Lord has never been so prevalent in my life than it is now.  I see it everyday and I am so grateful for that.  This truly is the Lord's work and "no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing!"   "Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go for boldy, nobly, and independent until it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear."  I know that this gospel is true and that it is real.  It changes lives!

Love,

Sister King

Sorry!  Only one picture this week and it is from my exchange with Sister Clawson

2nd Mission Leadership Council

Hey Fam!

Happy Easter everybody!

Easter package from the world's best family

I know that I always say that I don't have much time, but this time I really don't.  Haha we have a meeting that we have to go to and we have to prepare our training for Zone Training Meeting tomorrow. 

But for an update of the week- we were pretty much just doing a lot of tracting and contacting again all week trying to push the churches "Because He Lives" campaign. 

We also had a lot of meetings this week.  I got to go to my second Mission Leadership Council and it was not as scary or intimidating this time, so that was good.  It was fun because our zone had that miracle week where we doubled our number of baptismal dates so we were the topic of much of the meeting.  We were also trained on the things that we need to train the rest of the missionaries on this week.  This month we are talking a lot about sacrifice and consecration, so that should be interesting!  Also, the Cutler's daughter Hannah got back from her mission to El Salvador the day before MLC so we got to meet her there!  That was pretty fun and a super special weekend for the Cutler's.

Group of the some of the sisters that I came out with at MLC

Courtney's second Mission Leadership Council - I got these from the Wisconsin mission blog that Sister Cutler updates.

Sister Cutler's picture of the STL's from the Wausau area: Sister Weaver and Sister King

A couple of quick thoughts from conference before I have to jet out of here-

The 2 talks that stood out to me the most were Elder Clayton and Elder Pearson.  Man, sometimes these seventies that you don't really know just pop out of no where and tell you exactly what you need to hear!  I loved that Elder Clayton talked about how faith and belief is a choice.  That is something that I have really come to learn and understand on my mission, both in my life and seeing it in the people that we get to work with.  He said something about how faith doesn't just happen to us.  We have to go out and do something about it!  And when our prayers are answered, we need to choose that that was an answer to a prayer.  I don't know if that really makes sense.  Just something that I have been thinking about.

Man I really wish that I had more time to talk to you about our week and how special this conference/Easter weekend was.  :(

They named a street after Ashley out here!

Some Easter traditions never die :)

 

But just know that I have a testimony of our Savior.  He really did suffer for our sins, pains, afflictions, sicknesses, sorrows, and anything else that we have to deal with in mortality.  And most importantly, he really did rise again!  Christ's Atonement is central to God's entire plan for us and I am grateful for that perspective that I have gained.  It affects all of the decisions that I make everyday not only as a missionary, but also as a daughter of God.  I love this gospel so much and am so excited to be able to go out and continue to share it this week.

Sure do love you!

Sister King