Week 49 - Independence Visitors Center

 

Wow, so first of all, this will probably be shorter because my head is feeling a little funky today...I don't know. But that's ok! This week was awesome and amazing and full of miracles. Parts of it were sad, because I hardly got to see my companion, but it was also great. I mentioned last week that she was going to a 4-day conference. So from Tuesday to Friday each morning we got up early and picked up the other leader sisters that were going and dropped them off, then I went with the other 2 sisters staying back and we would go to one of our apartments to get ready and going. We switched off which area to go in each day, which was kind of fun. Thankfully I still got to sleep in my own bed every night and got to see my companion from 9 until we went to bed...then it was repeated the next day. So you can imagine by Saturday we were all pretty tired! Thankfully we will get to take a little nap today, which will help. But anyway, I know that Heavenly Father knew this would be a crazy week for us all and it seemed like miracles were falling into our laps every day. Just little things, but still miracles. Things like appointments happening all day and no cancellations, contacting investigators or former investigators that we haven't been able to contact in weeks or months, people suddenly starting to keep their commitments, and just really cool things like that. One of our investigators who wasn't really doing anything much to change really started to turn around and now she is serious about getting baptized and being ready. It was just really cool. And at the conference my companion had a great time as well. In all the missions they are starting to implement a new way of training the missionaries based on Preach My Gospel to help us be better teachers and follow the spirit better and stuff like that. So there are 8 kind of lessons to go over, and at the conference they would have a training by the mission president for a while, then practice what they learned for an hour and a half. Craziness. But from what she has told me, it is going to be awesome. One other cool thing is that every night she would come home every night and tell me about the topics they worked on that day, and inevitably one of them at least was something I had been learning myself that day. Like one day they talked about how to begin teaching, and that had really been a

theme for me in the day. There were some teaching situations that were kind of different that I had to start the actual teaching, so I had been thinking about it. And then the day she came back and they had talked about the Book of Mormon in conversion, that had really been a theme for me at the VC that day in my tours. It was just really cool to see how mindful Heavenly Father is of us, even when our companions leave us for days. I was with Sister Walters and Sister Ika for the 4 days, and we called ourselves the orphans. On Thursday night we were all outside the VC going home and the 3 of us started humming It's a Hard Knock Life from Annie just to be silly (I know, not approved mission music!:). Our companions thought that was pretty funny.

Besides the crazy exchanges this week we did finally get to meet with Roberto last Monday. It was so good! So we hadn't seen him for almost 3 weeks because of sickness and crazy work

schedules with him, but finally it happened. The last time we had met with him we really committed him to pray, because he hadn't really prayed since he was a kid. And when we met with him, he had been praying! Basically every day for 3 weeks. It was really cool to see how even that changed him a lot. He was struggling with a lot of crazy things in his life, and still is, but prayer really helped him to make some goals and get some direction and guidance that he really needed in his life. Before, it was life he knew what he needed to do and even wanted to, but didn't feel like he had the strength to do it. Now, he does. It was almost a visible change that took place, which was pretty awesome. He still needs to get Sundays off for church, so that is what we will be really stressing on now. I tell you, miracles. And speaking of miracles, yesterday in church a man in the ward spoke and it was amazing. He and his wife have been married for like 5 years or so and can't have kids. So for the past 2 years they have been trying to adopt. They had two super hard situations where they were almost chosen once and were chosen but then the mom backed out on it before a couple of weeks ago when they finally were able to adopt a baby. They are just the cutest couple ever and I have always been impressed by their faith and obedience and willingness to do anything the Lord asks. Anyway, one of the things he said in his talk was that during the 2nd big heartbreak when they still weren't sure if they were going to get the baby they asked family and friends to fast and pray for them. And he said they did see a miracle. But the miracle wasn't that they got the baby, which was really hard for them. The miracle was that the Lord was able to heal their hearts and help to increase their faith that the Lord has a plan for them. I thought that was so incredible. There really are miracles all around us. Yes, as a missionary sometimes the miracles we see are more noticeable or maybe visible than some. But they really are everywhere. If we have the faith to see and notice them, we will find them all around us.

Anyway, that is about all I have this week. Happy 28th anniversary to my mom and dad! Happy going to high school for Tanner, and happy college for Conner! And happy getting home soon from Italy for Jourdan. Big week for my family. And for me I guess, happy 2/3 of my mission gone this week, but actually that isn't so happy. Life changes so fast.

I love you all! Have a good week.

-Sister Hafen