Week 50 - Independence Visitors Center

Hello all,

Well, this has been a good/sick week. I mentioned last week that my head was hurting...yeah well that was just the beginning of a really bad cold I have had all week long. Kind of annoying. I was functional until Thursday, but by then I was pretty much just weak and congested. Even after sleeping most of the days Friday and Saturday, still by yesterday I was pretty weak and shaky. Probably the best part of church was sitting in Sacrament meeting and having my companion have to tap on me twice to get my attention enough to grab the sacrament tray. I just wasn't able to focus my mind on more than one thing at a time. It has been a joke all week for her to wave her hands in front of my face and ask if I am there. Then after church we went to the VC to be on shift and our director's wife comes up to me, grabs my face and feels it, and says "no." Then she made me go home again to sleep. She is pretty much my mom away from home, which is nice. But thankfully I went and rested again and now even though I am not quite all the way recovered my mind is kind of back and I have enough energy to do more than just sit around all day. It is basically the most frustrating thing ever to be sick as a missionary. In normal life, if you feel sickness coming on or if you don't feel good you just take the day off and sleep and get better. Here, you don't always have the option of doing that, but even when you do you kind of feel useless and guilty about it. By yesterday I was just so frustrated that I wasn't feeling better yet. This is the third time I have gotten sick on my mission! And before my mission I seriously hardly ever got sick. But now, I mean, we are working all day every day and always stressed and worrying and it just

makes sense that my body would have some objections.

But anyway, enough about that. I will be just fine. Some miracles did happen this week! I got a blessing this week and in it he said that the work will continue to move forward in our area even though I am sick. That was a comfort, and it is true. On Tuesday we had an awesome meeting with our investigator Amanda and her sister, and also a member of the ward that is suddenly their amazing fellowshipper. I don't know why we didn't think of it before. But we took them on a church tour, which was awesome. Of course they had all been to church before, but it was awesome to talk about why we come and why things like the sacrament are important. And then the best part- we sat them in front of the baptismal font and talked about baptism. Amanda is super excited to be baptized. And we had her sister and the other member who is a pretty recent convert talk about their baptisms and how they felt. The spirit was so strong! Baptism is so real, and they could both really feel the difference when they were baptized. It was just a good meeting. Amanda and her sister are just both doing so well. So many changes are taking place in their lives for the better. It is really awesome and humbling to see the difference from the first time we met them to now- but to know it isn't really us. All we do is love them, teach the gospel, try to follow the spirit, and invite them to act. Then the ball is completely in their court. They can either act and change their lives for the better, or decide not to act and stay the same. We can only encourage and invite. So cool to see it happen.

We also had an awesome meeting with Roberto this week. Some really crazy and hard things have been happening in his life lately. The Lord is really humbling him, not that he wasn't humble before, but I think the Lord is really testing his dedication and willingness to come closer to Him. Also just Satan being stupid. But we met with him and he told us how all these crazy things have been happening, but he knows now more than ever that the Lord has a plan for his life and he just knows he needs to come closer to God and learn all he can. This is a guy that 3 months ago thought he was for sure going to hell because he hadn't gone to church in 10 years. It has been really great to see the process of change in him. This last week he had a lot of time to ponder and pray and the Lord was able to teach him a lot of really important

things. He pretty much has the strongest faith of anyone I have ever seen. We were talking about baptism, which he really wants to do, and how he has to come to church in order to be baptized. He told us that he has really been thinking about it, and he is going to tell his boss that not only does he need some time off to go to church, but that he needs the whole day off so he can have time to study and stuff too. And that if it won't work, he knows he can get another job. Man. So we will see what happens, the plan is for him to come to church next week but it might not be until the next. But I think it will happen soon! Something I have noticed on my mission is that satan works really hard on that one. Once people actually start coming to church, they just take off. They start understanding more and just progress a lot better. So that is one of the hardest things to do- get people to come to church! But it is going to happen.

Oh, one more thing that happened this week and then I will be done. I can't believe I forgot about it. I mentioned the new Preach My Gospel curriculum last week I think. It is really cool because we will be doing it in the next like 8 district meetings. But it isn't some crazy new idea for missionary work. It is just actually applying the inspired program we already have- basically teaching from PMG and then practicing. Practicing is the big thing. This week at district meeting was really cool. We talked about how we need to not just blurt out answers and be robot missionaries, but actually stop, listen, and let the spirit tell us what to ask/say/teach etc. Sometimes this is hard to do because we think we have all the answers. I was practicing with an elder in my district and we had one of our Zone leaders as kind of an observer. I was pretending to be one of our investigators, and he was trying to teach me about God's love and invite me to be baptized. We talked for a little, then a big concern came out (with me acting as the investigator). Our zone leader stopped and said, "ok, this is where the question is going to be." Then was the interesting part. The elder teaching me asked a question, but then our zone leader stopped him and told him to wait and just listen for the

spirit to tell him what question he needed to ask. This happened 3 times, and each time they asked me if it was the right question. It got closer every time, but it wasn't the right one. I could really feel that it wasn't the right question. Finally he waited for a minute then asked a question, and it was the right question. Immediately I was brought to tears, and it really felt as though the question went right to my heart. The funny thing was that the question wasn't even directly related to what we had been talking about. It taught me that even though we as missionaries and sometimes even the investigators themselves don't know what will help them, the Lord does. And through the spirit, we can truly help these people. It sounds kind of crazy, but it is just something you have to experience I think. We are trying to really apply it in our missionary work- it takes a lot of practice to be that in tune to the spirit! But it is so worth it. A teaching experience like that is so worth it.

Anyway, I will close! Thanks for all you do. I love you all!!!!!

-Sister Hafen