"Brotheren Pray For Us" (1Thess. 5:25)

     Hello everyone! In case you were wondering I am alive and well! :) I can't say it was that way on new years but that is ok! Things are good now. Don't worry!

   This week was a really good one! I can't tell you what happened because I can't remember but I know it was good! (That is the best part about being a missionary...its always a good week.) So things that I can remember:

   Quote: "I can't save the world but I can try!" Also I had a cool thought. One of the sisters does homeless kits. Ok this is what you do. Well, what I am going to do at least. You get water bottles, granola bars, and socks and keep them in the car for when you meet homeless people. Genius right? I am excited to have those! I feel so bad for homeless people and even if it won't sustain them forever it is something. (I had a friend in Ventura who was homeless who said homeless people love new socks. So that is where that came from.)

     Anyway, that is my attempt to save the world after the mission. Onto mission stories. This week we had an experience with one of our investigators. It was one of my favorite moments where the spirit taught me as we taught the investigator. But first, we were kind of nervous about this lesson because this investigator was a particularly hard one. We love her to death though so we do so much to make sure that we have powerful lessons with her. This week our thought was to have all of the sisters in our stewardship and the members who know this investigator to pray for us and her as we taught. We sent out a mass text and called in the troops! We had about 20 people minimum praying for us in that hour. It was a cool feeling like we had the army of God behind us as we went in to teach. Talk about calling down the powers of Heaven. It ended up being a great lesson and one perfectly tailored to fit her needs. I love being able to teach her. She helps to strengthen my testimony and helps me to see the importance of keeping the commandments.

    Ok this week I was going to talk about Matthew 16:24-25 but I am out of time now. So I will have to do it next week. It is all about taking up your cross. A lot of times we think about that as bearing our burdens but in the scriptures it says that it means leaving behind the world and following the commandments. I thought that was interesting and it give new perspective to verse 25 because it talks about losing our lives and following him. The Savior literally lost His life on the cross and as we figuratively pick up our cross we are losing our lives to follow Him. Study that more. It is really interesting.

    Well, that is all for this week. I love you all! Be safe and have fun!

Ps: Congrats to Richard and Monica(?)! (That's her name right?) I am so excited for you both!! And Tay Tay have fun at college! You are going to love it! :)

Sister Skeeter

Phone Calls!

     MERRY CHRISTmas EVERYONE!! :) I hope you all had a great week! CHRISTmas in the field was as good as ever. I love being a missionary at CHRISTmas time. I can't imagine a better time to represent the Lord.

    For CHRISTmas eve we went to a members' home and had fondue which was super yummy! Not to mention a tradition we have in our family. That was a tender mercy for me. I loved being able to have those little bits of home while I am away. We did a lot of singing this year, but what else do you expect? Its me and Sister Arndt lets be honest here. We sing all year round. We had a devotional that was fun. Mom and dad I can't believe you kept things so quiet! We got into the meeting and Sister Felix gets up and says "You may have noticed the pictures in the cultural hall. Those are your baby pictures!" What? They gave us a piece of paper and told us to go around and guess who the baby was. Funny! There were some that were so easy! The faces of the elders and sisters haven't changed at all. Then there are those who don't look anything like their baby pictures. It was entertaining to say the least. After that we heard a lot of missionaries sing, which was really fun because we were in the cultural hall so we didn't have to be so serious about it all. Anyway, if you want to see My singing you can go look at the mission blog. Sister Felix posted pictures. ok, continuing on...CHRISTmas day we had a great breakfast at a member's home and then we raced over to District meeting. Why we still had district meeting...I know not, but it was great! We told CHRISTmas stories and testified of the Savior while we ate cookies drank hot chocolate and and put little foam snowmen together. The cool thing was how powerful the spirit was while we read the stories and testified. After that we raced off to lunch with a member and had eggs benadict, which is another tradition of our families'. Again a tender mercy for me. After that we went and sang to some investigators with the district and then sang for a family that is in the ward. Sister Arndt and I did our song for them and they loved it. They want us to record it in a little studio sometime before the end of the transfer. That would be sweet but we will see if it actually gets done. So after singing we went to dinner at another member's home and then went caroling with an investigator and ended up having a great lesson with her.  Oh! and how could I forget, we also got to call home which was fun! I still expect everyone to be on pause when I get home but when we call it hits me that they have kept moving forward without me. Oh well. That's how life goes! Sister Arndt and I got spoiled this week. We got so many presents from the ward. The people here love the sister missionaries. They do so much for us like it is nothing. Each home we went to had some kind of gift for us. It was such a nice change. 

     Well, sorry this is kind of a boring email this week. I don't really know what to even say. We had a great lesson with one of our investigators last night. We talked about the spirit and recognizing answers to our prayers and questions. It was a powerful lesson and it seemed that she was able to have a couple of great "ah-ha" moments. That is the best part of being a missionary; seeing the spirit speak to the people we are teaching. I love it!

    Other than that we went on exchanges this week and it was a blast! I got to go back to T.O. 4th and we were able to see some great miracles that day. That area is so prepared! We were able to see the members gain more trust in us by praying with them before we went out to work in their area, and then reporting back to them about what happened. We were also able to meet with people that the sisters had a hard time getting in contact with. So it was great! Exchanges are fun and totally exhausting. Good thing we have another one tonight!

  My time is up now, which I am sure you are happy about now because this email isn't super exciting so you are probably wondering when it is going to end. Hehe! I hope you all have a great week! Good luck with everything and remember who you are!

Sister Skeeter

ps. I had no clue what kind of spiritual message to put so next week hopefully I will have something for you to "study" Lately it has bee super hard figuring out what to do. Oh well! There is always next week!

So Excited I want to pee my pants!!

   Transfer calls came early again this week! I have been dying! I found out a day earlier than everyone else what was going to be happening to me so I couldn't sleep that night. But I am excited now and hoping that I will be able to do the things I need to do. Also I am excited to tell you about my new companion and area. So because I am me, we are going to wait until the end of the email to fill you in, or I might throw it in the middle so you can't cheat and scroll to the bottom :) 

  The area. Well, Jim the one investigator who was progressing got into some anti-mormon material. We are super sad about that. He hasn't dropped the missionaries yet but we are worried that he is going to. He was doing so well! But we can't just expect Satan not to come in when people are coming closer to Christ. That would be way to easy. We keep praying for him and hope that the spirit will be able to touch him as he reads from the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately there isn't much more to tell the area is slowly moving along. 

   Oh, I figured something out this Sunday. It isn't that the ward doesn't like the missionaries because we got a fairly good amount of people telling us they will miss us when we leave. I think the people here just don't quite know how to show the love that they have. And maybe we just needed to be better about taking baby steps with them and working more at their pace instead of expecting them to work at ours. I wish I had thought of that all earlier, but it is too late now. I will keep that in my mind in case I have any similar experiences in the future.

   Companion: She is great. She is definitely going to have a hard time leaving her first area, but she is going to be so great in Newbury Park! I am so excited for her to go out and experience a different type of people. This whole transfer she has really taught me not to worry so much. I can see the damage that worrying has and it prevents us from enjoying the moment and learning from the situation we are in. Obviously there are times when you can't help but worry. We all have stressful days but from watching her I have learned that we should make sure we are worrying about legitimate things and not so much about the little things that don't matter in the eternities. I have been privileged to serve with her and am excited to watch her grow over the next few months. Also I heard something that church that I really liked. There is a movie that shows an uncle Devil talking to a nephew devil and the uncle tells him that the key to making people miserable is not letting them live in the moment. I thought that was so good! It is so true! If he can keep us thinking that we messed up too much in the past and if he can get us to worry about the future then we won't and can't enjoy the moment that we are living in.

   drum roll please! sister arndt is my new companion!!!!!!!!!! (I didn't capitalize it because I didn't want you cheating and looking for the caps to see what was happening with transfers hehe). anyway, for those of you who have a memory like me, Sister Arndt was my trainer. And this is her last transfer so I get to be with her for one more Christmas. AND I get to go to the temple with her again!!!! I wanted to go this transfer but Heavenly Father told me to wait. So I did and now I am SO glad I listened to that voice inside my head. This will be a great transfer! Oh and I am leaving for Simi Valley! Yay! And one last suprise, I am a sister training leader.

    Testimony: This week my testimony was strengthened on our need for a prophet. I feel so bad for those people who don't think we need one. How else would we know how to live in this crazy time? In one of the most spiritually dangerous times in history why would God leave us alone? He wouldn't. Yesterday we were talking to this guy and he was telling me that I didn't understand the true character of God because I thought we needed prophets. I won't lie, at that point I had no clue what else to tell him. I testified to him of Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ and that was that. As I was walking away though I realized how grateful I was that we have a prophet today who can help us understand the character of God and Jesus Christ even better and because of that we can have a stronger relationship with both of them. I know Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God and that he truly is inspired by God to do His work.

   Well, my time is up, I love you all! Pray for me!

Sister Skeeter

"Plus I'm Like A Fish"

 

The area is doing pretty well! Yesterday we had a great miracle. Well, lets actually start with Saturday. Sister Barnes and I felt like we needed to go see Jim and we had some things we wanted to talk to him about. When we got to his house he told us that that day wasn't a good day and that he wasn't going to come to church because he was in so much pain. We talked to him for a little bit about Heavenly Father and how much He loves Jim. We then talked about faith and how we can exercise our faith. Jim, told us that he really wanted to come to church but that he just didn't think it would be possible with how much pain he was in.  We said a prayer for him and after talked about how important going to church was to Heavenly Father. We talked about praying for the health and strength to be able to get to church. At the end of our meeting Jim said the closing prayer and prayed that he would be well enough to come to church. We told him that we would be praying for him as well. Sunday came and as we were walking into the sacrament meeting room Jim walked in with one of the members of the ward! We were so excited to see him there. He sat through sacrament and loved it. Here is where the real miracle is. Jim never stays longer than sacrament meeting but this week he stayed for second hour and our teacher taught about the Book of Mormon and we listened to Elder Hollands powerful talk about it. Jim loved the talk and recognized that the power behind Elder Holland could not have come from himself, but from God. Jim then talked about how he loved the Book of Mormon and how he has been reading it. He said that he has really enjoyed it and has recognized peace from it. He bore his testimony of the Book of Mormon without even knowing it. When I first got to the area he really didn't like the Book of Mormon. Then to make things even better our ward mission leader and his assistant offered to give Jim a blessing of healing. The blessing was beautiful and Jim loved it. Jim then stayed for Priesthood and came out of class so happy. It was so great to see him progress so much in such a short amount of time!

Did you all get to watch the CHRISTmas devotional? It was so great! My favorite part was that I was able to watch it in a member's home this time! But that isn't the best part. This member had a brand new CHRISTmas tree and it smelled so good! The whole time we watched the devotional I could smell it. What is better than that!? Nothing. So my favorite part was when Elder Christofferson talked about how Christ is a spirit child of God as well as us. So when we came down to the earth it was a sort of condescension for us as well. He then went on to talk about how if Christ had to descend below it all and suffer to learn then why wouldn't we have to descend below some of it to learn for ourselves as well? It just makes sense! I feel bad for those people who turn against God when things go wrong. I wish they could understand that we are here to learn. If we didn't have any hard times we wouldn't grow at all! Duh! Those trials are there to turn us toward God not away from Him. I have loved being able to turn to Heavenly Father during my times of stuggle. And there is actually a quote that that reminds me of, it says "Do your prayers at times sound and feel the same? Have you ever said a prayer mechanically, the words pouring forth as though cut from a machine? Do you sometimes bore yourself as you pray? Will prayers that do not demand much of our thought merit much attention from our Heavenly Father? When you find yourself getting into a routine with your prayers, step back and think. meditate for a while on the things for which you really are grateful. Look for them. They don't have to be grand or glorious. Sometimes we should express our gratitude for the small and simple things like the scent of rain, or the taste of our favorite food, or the sound o a loved once's voice. Thinking of things we are grateful for is a healing balm. It helps us get outside ourselves. It changes our focus from our pain and trials to the abundance of this beautiful world we live in." ok funny story that isn't the quote I was thinking about. oh well. I already have it typed out, might as well keep it. That quote was by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin. The other one spoke about enjoying Heavenly Father as we pray. I love being able to have a real conversation with him and hearing His answers. It is the most comforting thing when I know that He is listening and I can and will receive answers. Either way prayer can fix so many things.

oh wait! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKAYLA!!!!! Next Birthday I will actually be able to come celebrate with you! I hope you have a great day! You are going to be 22! Weird! (Also if any of you send me a letter with T-swifts lyrics in it I will not be happy. Kiera already did that and it wasn't good. Hahaha) Well, just know that I love you tons! I can't wait to see you again!

And another birthday side note...happy birthday to Tanner and Kenny. Why I still remember their birthdays I don't know, but their birthdays were last week.  

Well, my time is up! Love you all! Have a great week!

That's It! New sign!

Guess what! This week we tried something new! It was so much fun! We went a a quick blitz (with permission from the president of course) so Sister Wilson and I went to the busiest street we could find (State street in Downtown Santa Barbs) and held up a sign that said "Ask a mormon!" It worked surpisingly well! Now before you start to think this is a good idea I have to tell you that it was not my own. One of the elders in the mission started doing it. I didn't know if I would be brae enough to do it but I did. At first it was super awkward because of course people are going to be looking at you and reading what you have written on the sign. So you automatically become the center of attention. I was super nervous for the comments that we would get and I was hoping that we wouldn't get too many angry people who have been pumped full of anti material. This wasn't the case at all though! We got out there and we got to talk to a good amount of people! The most common question we got was "are you christian?" Of course we told them that we are and pointed out the name of the church on our name tags. "The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day Saints" I don't know why that confuses some people. Oh well! We were able to set some misconceptions straight which was nice. The people loved it too. We had so many people laugh as they walked by. I asked one of the people why they were laughing and they told us that it is because they had just never seen anyone do that and it was different that what they were used it. A lot of people came up and simply gave us kudos for being different. So we had a good time with that. I think we are going to make a few different signs and use them at random. We are thinking about putting up thought provoking questions. Any good ones you can think of? They need to be kind of short so people can read them at a glance. That is the hard part. Making it a thinker but keeping it short. So there was our adventure for the week.

    Thanksgiving was fun! We went to a member's home and had some really yummy food! My favorite was the mashed potatoes and the green beans! Her green beans were so flavorful and yummy! Anyway the members that we were with had their parents there and one of them is an older guy who isn't quite all there. He was SO funny! We were having a conversation with the members and out of nowhere this old guy looks at sister Barnes and says "You have the most beautiful smile!"then he looks at me and says "Yours is ok too, but yours! (turning to sister Barnes again) It makes me happy just looking at you." hahaha Brother Dunn (this guys son) started cracking up. He and I had a good laugh about how nonchalant this guy had been when he said mine was "ok".  I wish you could have seen this man.Just looking at his face can tell you how devious and funny he is.

     As far as other things go that is about as eventful the holiday was. We only had the one dinner which was kind of odd. Normally missionaries have a few to go to. Oh well. We are finding that this ward has no idea who Sister Barnes and I are. They know the other two sisters really well and they love them but they forget and don't even know what we have four of us. Which is really sad because they say our names all of the time in sacrament meeting. We are all working on changing that. Kahuna has done a decent job at helping with that. 

    As far as my message goes...I haven't been able to study the past two days (don't ask why) so I haven't been able to put one together. But I will say this. The day before Thanksgiving I wrote down something I was grateful for for each week of my mission. There was 59. First I can't believe it has been that long but second the cool part for me was being able to see that I couldn't have gone a lot further. I have so many things to be grateful for including family, friends, and a place to go home to, but I think the thing that I am most grateful for is the fact that Heavenly Father has trusted me to take care of His children out here and to help them return to Him. That is a huge responsibility and He has given that to me. How great is it that He wants me to feel the joy that He was when He sees His children turning to Him and gaining a relationship with Him. That is the best gift anyone could give.Anyway, I don't know if that even makes sense. I hope all of you gets to realize how blessed you are and how much our Heavenly Father Loves you.

Anyway, I love you all! Have a great week!

Sister Skeeter  

I Just Want Sparkles OK!?

 “One of the ironies which is fostered, at times innocently, in the Church, is the feeling we have that the spirit of the law is superior to the letter of the law because for some reason it seems more permissive or less apt to offend others. The reverse is true. The spirit of the law is superior because it demands more of us than the letter of the law. The spirit of the law insists that we do more than merely comply superficially. It means, too, that we must give attention to the things that matter most and still not leave the others undone.” 

This was a quote that My president sent us this week. We had zone conference and talked about the spirit of the law verses the letter of the law. I loved it! All of us really needed to have that conversation. Some take things WAY too seriously and others don't take things serious enough. Its all about finding the happy balance and being able to follow the rules and do something different if/when the spirit directs.

    Anyway this week was pretty good. Not much happened.

Wendy is doing so well! She loves learning about the gospel. We taught her the Plan of Salvation this week and when we were finished she said she was so energized and could find nothing wrong with it. At first she scared me because when we taught the spirit world and the fact that everyone gets second chances she seemed mad that the murders and "bad" people would get a second chance. I hoped that wasn't going to be an issue for her but after we explained the atonement more thoroughly the spirit testified to her that it would all work out. The spirit was so powerful as we taught about how the atonement covered all of us and that none were too far below its reaches. It testified to me how loving the Savior is and how merciful He and Heavenly Father are. To let even those that we feel have done too much to hurt others can still be forgiven and can be changed from the atonement. It was a neat experience for me. Wendy is so great and is making progress toward baptism which is really exciting! 

   Here is the sad news for thanksgiving. One of the investigators we are teaching doesn't have a place for Thanksgiving. Sad right? Well it gets worse. Not a single member wants to have her come to their home. I can 100% guarantee that not everyone is going to be out of town. Why the people don't want to be Christlike is beyond me. Anyway I was thinking about that last night and thinking about how sad it is knowing that someone is going to be alone because other people are too selfish. Then the thought dawned on me "If you are so Christ-like why don't you feed her?" I kind of laughed at the thought and then seriously said "Yeah why not?" so the plan right now is to see if we can get permission to take her out with us on Thanksgiving night. We have dinner at 3, we could easily go get something at denny's or ihop and share a meal together. Obviously it wouldn't be your typical thanksgiving meal but hey ITS NOT ABOUT THE FOOD! Its all about being together with family and being grateful for what I have. And what do you do when you are truly grateful for something? You share it! So Sister Barnes and I are trying to get permission right now. Hopefully things work out. I think that would be really great for this investigator. Mom I hope you aren't crying right now! Haha 

   Ok I don't have much time but I wanted to share part of a talk from conference that I absolutely LOVED! 

This is from the talk by Elder Klebingat. Its all about gaining spiritual confidence and how we can do that. That part that I loved the most was when he speaks about learning to "Embrace voluntary, whole hearted obedience as part of your life." I think I said this last week but I all of the sudden love the idea of exact obedience when you are home from a mission. Here there are several reasons why we are exactly obedient and we mostly think of the mission rules when we think about exact obedience. But here is the deal, we need to be exactly obedient when we are home too! We still have commandments that we need to keep and people to love! So here are a few of the quotes that really touched me. 

"Selective obedience bring selective blessings. Choosing something bad over something worse is still choosing wrong. Faithful observance of some commandments doesn't justify neglecting others. The Lord knows why you go to church-whether you are present in body only or truly worshipping. You can't sing on Sunday "O Babylon, O Babylon, I bid thee farewell and then seek or tolerate its company again a moment later. I love that last sentence. I think it might just be because that is my favorite hymn right now (Elder of Isreal #319). Really though! We can't be saying one thing on Sunday and do something totally different during the rest of the week! Do we wanted to be taken care of or not? When we are exactly obedient we are giving the Lord the ability to guide us to the places we need to be. We are showing him that we want and need his help every day. 

    He can't change our hearts if he does not have our hearts. That is against our gift of agency. It doesn't work that way. 

Unfortunately my time is up but remember who you all are! Keep doing the things that strengthen you and most importantly...remember WHO you are and WHOSE you are! You all should go and read the rest of the talk! He goes on to talk about how Satan tries to tell us that Heavenly Father doesn't love us because we make mistakes. He says "Ignore that!" I don't know if that is a direct quote but you get what I mean. No one is too far gone. All it takes is a willing heart. I  love you all!

Sister Skeeter

kahuna!

    We made THE coolest message this week. The four of us Sisters have been working together to create a message that is going to get the members motivated to read their scriptures and pray together. Something that has been lacking with almost all the families here. So we made Kahuna! He is a life sized cardboard man who has a shield of faith breastplate of righteousness sword of the word of god truth girded about his loins and the shoes of the gospel of peace. He is so cool looking! So our message is on the armour of God and how we need ALL of the pieces to be completely protected. We read from Ephesians 6:11-18 and discuss each piece but focus on the sword and shield. Think about it. Without those two pieces you really have nothing. I love that the sheild is faith because it is through faith that we pray to Heavenly Father knowing that He will answer our prayers. So we talk about D&C 10:5 which says that as we pray we are protected from satan and his followers. It makes sense that the shield would be faith. Anyway it is a fun message that took hours to prepare.  After we share the message we are taking a picture of the families with Kahuna and we will be making a big poster with all of the families to help the members see they are all in it together and can strengthen each other as they go. Pictures of Kahuna to come after the mission :)

 This week was a weird one for me. We did 10 hours of service which was fun and we were able to see miracles because of it. But first fun story. We were at this lady's home and it is not very sanitary to say the least. Mold and cat hair in places you wouldn't imagine. Anyway while we were there I was just picking things up off the floor and all of the sudden I realized I couldn't breathe very well. Of course at this point the lady comes in and starts telling us these long stories. The whole time I am trying not to be rude but eventually I told her that we just needed to go have our lesson outside. Don't worry mom! I am fine now I left in time so I wasn't weezing and my breathing went back to normal. We have face masks that we will be wearing now so it won't get that bad again. Anway, on to the miracles.

    On Tuesday we went to Thurley's house and while we were cleaning she says that her neighbor would like us to come serve her. Thurley told us that she has loved having us there to serve her and has told others about how great we are. The only problem is that this lady is in the Mesa Vista ward so we will have to see how that would work with the elders. That was just the small miracle. After we cleaned on Tuesday we were having a lesson outside and a lady came up to us and asked if she could talk to us. She has seen us around the apartment before and wanted to get some things off her chest. She told us some problems she has been having with her boyfriend and that she was scared to stand up to him. We told her of Heavenly Father's love for her and how He would give her the strength that she needs to do what is right. We were able to set up a return appointment and meet with her on Thursday. Just minutes after we started talking about doing how to begin teaching she looks at us and says "It feels like he is healing me already." We explained that was the spirit and that the healing she felt comes from this gospel. We were able to teach her about the Restoration and had a great lesson with her. She is excited to continue learning and really wants to know the truth for herself. She has a lot of great potential and we are excited to continue teaching her.

    As for my testimony: This week my testimony of keeping the commandments was strengthened. One of my biggest fears is going home and not having changed at all since I left for the mission. This week when my sister told me about the decisions of my other sisters I realized that I have changed. I was frustrated because I wanted them to know how important it is to keep the commandments and to desire to keep them exactly. I realized that when I get home I will still be trying to be consecrated to the Lord and keeping the Spirit with me always. I realized that I need that companionship all day every day. I was reading a talk by Elder Oaks called "The Challenge to Become". He talks all about how we need to be striving to become something and be truly converted instead of having a testimony and not letting it change us. I realized that I have changed. I have learned this week that we will still need to be consecrated when we go home. It will be in a slightly different way but it will still be drawing my nearer to the Savior and staying in the world but not being of it.

Ok, I think that is all I have to update you on. Love you all! Make good choices and make me proud!

Sister Skeeter