Week 46 - Independence Visitors Center

Hello everyone! Well, if you can believe, I 1) wasn't transferred, and 2) didn't get a new companion. Crazy! I get to stay in Lee's Summit with Sister Finlayson. When we got transfer calls I was shocked! For some reason I was almost sure I was going to leave, even though I didn't want to. So when I heard we were staying together, it made me so happy! It has been really weird for me this week though- usually I am either getting to a new area and meeting people or trying to orient my new companion to the area. This is just like there wasn't even a transfer at all, except for the new people at the VC and in my zone. Really nice though! I feel like now I can focus more on some personal goals and improving things than getting to know my companion and area, because I already do! Pretty great. Only us and one other companionship at the VC out of 8 companionships stayed the same, so there are lots of new people to get to know. That is probably one of my favorite things about the VC- getting to know all the amazing sisters. We had 3 sisters that were serving at the VC go home this last transfer, so they will be missed! I remember when I first came out thinking how much more experienced and mature those sisters seemed to me- soon it will be me in their shoes! Except I don't feel all that much experienced and mature. Anyway, we had a farewell breakfast for them on Wednesday, transfers on Thursday, and training meeting on Friday morning, so I have been getting up pretty early this week- earlier than usual, which is saying something for a missionary. So I am pretty excited for a nap today!!!!!

Besides that, my family asked me about Roberto, the guy we are teaching with a baptismal date. Unfortunately we haven't seen him for a week! We had an appointment with him last Monday, but he called and left a message saying he had been in bed sick for the last 4 days and finally his friend was taking him to the hospital. He said he would call and let us know, but we haven't heard from him. I am not too worried though, he is super reliable and I'm sure we will hear from him soon. We tried to go by his work and see him, but he hasn't been there for days. Sometimes missionaries are super stalkers. But we will find him! It will all work out the way it needs to. We are teaching some other people right now, but recently have had to drop (or stop teaching) a lot of our investigators, just because of not answering door/phone or missing appointments, or just they aren't making it a priority. So pray for us to find some great new people! This transfer will be very interesting. Not only do we have the usual amount of exchange days (probably 8 or 9), also all the leaders in the mission are going to a 4-day leadership meeting in a couple of weeks to train on some new Preach My Gospel stuff the church is doing. So that will be another 4 days of crazy exchanges/splits/being at the VC a lot I guess. Probably Heavenly Father is allowing us to be companions for 2 transfers because we feel like we never spend time together! Especially now at the VC- we are in the peak of our busy season, with people getting their vacations in before school starts. I love being busy, but sometimes it gets a little tiring to take tour after tour after tour. So I am actually pretty excited to get a little slower. The end of this transfer even gets into September, when things really start to slow down. But I am trying to enjoy all the people while I can!

Well besides all that, I want to share a cool experience I had this week. One morning this week I was doing my studies and I had started to read the Book of Mormon, something I do every day. I read about a chapter and then just felt like I needed to study something else. Next obvious choice, Preach My Gospel. I turn to something in there and it just doesn't feel right. At this point I am getting a little frustrated, because I didn't know what I needed to study. But then I decided I would get my binder of talks out and read a talk or something. So I open it up and start flipping through my talks, and decide on “Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence” by Jeffrey R. Holland. I had never read it before, and I like Elder Holland so I started reading it. It was funny because as I was reading nothing really life-changing or earth-shattering happened. I gained a couple of pretty cool insights, but nothing too new or that I hadn't thought of before. Anyway, we finish our studies and go out and things are good. So a few hours later we went to an apartment complex to visit one of the members in our ward. We talk to her for a minute and then she mentioned that the mom of one of the other members just moved right down the hall from her. Since we knew her through the other member (her mom is not a member), we decided to go visit her. She answers the door right away and invites us in, and another daughter (also a non-member) is also there helping her out. Anyway, we chat for a while and then share some scriptures and start talking about faith and making goals and doing what the Lord wants us to do. As her daughter is talking, I realized exactly who I read the talk for that morning! I used the scripture the talk is based on in Hebrews 10:

“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.”

We just talked about what I had learned and how Satan uses fear a lot as a tool to destroy us. One day we will be all happy and awesome and feel like we are receiving this great personal revelation and guidance and then the next day we second guess ourselves. We question the feeling we had before. That is not from God! That is just Satan being a jerk-face and trying to stop us from progressing. Anyway, we had a great conversation about all of this and the spirit

was really strong. They kept saying things like, "wow, that is really funny that we are talking about this" and saying what a coincidence it was. It wasn't a coincidence. Having experiences like this on my mission really helps me to see that Heavenly Father is mindful of all of his children, and He often uses others to answer our prayers.

Well, I will wrap it up. Another highlight of this week was visiting this 65 year old inactive lady who doesn't come to church because it is too far away and her friends just take her to their churches. We asked her when the last time was that she came to church, and she said, "Well I don't go to the Moron church, but I go to church every Sunday." I definitely started silently laughing, but thankfully she was 90% blind so she couldn't see me. I just love it.

Anyway, life is good! I am enjoying the time here and learning something new every day. I hope you all have an amazing week!

-Sister Hafen