A Better Week

Thanks to all you blog readers for your prayers in Melissa's behalf.  It sounds like she's doing better.  Here's what she had to say today:

Hello all!

This week was pretty routine. We did give our training in Zone Conference and that went well. We spent all day Monday and Tuesday preparing for it, so it was nice to have it pay off. What we mostly wanted to talk about was the improvements we've made to the member missionary lessons we've been teaching people, and that's what we wanted to spend the most time on. Then about halfway through the presentation we found out that about 1/3 of the missionaries there had never even heard of these member lessons, so that kind of threw us off. haha. Even President Evans stood up and was surprised because teaching these member lessons was supposed to be a mission-wide practice! So we had to back it up and change the focus a bit, but I still feel good about how it went. We made little hand outs that said, on the front, "Don't just work hard, work SMART" and of course had a pack of smarties taped to them. Then the back said, "Members already know the "what" and the "why," teach them the "HOW"!" So that was obviously adorable and appreciated. :)

We tried to cram in a lot of lessons for the end of the week since the first three days were totally devoted to this training and then the conference itself. We had some good meetings with members, and even have two new ward missionaries who just got called so that's a blessing! I feel really close to these Relief Society sisters that I get to work with. So many of them are so nice and feel like real friends. I hope I get to stay in these LP wards for a long time. I love getting texts at the end of the night from members wanting to share with us how THEY spread the gospel that day - that is really rewarding. I also love talking to the RMs about how much they loved their missions. It's cool to be able to remind them of the joy that comes from missionary work, and making them feel more like doing more missionary work in their post mission lives. 

We had a miracle occur yesterday. Do you want to hear about it? Of course you do.

As we sat in the chapel right before LP1's Sacrament Meeting began, a member, Stephanie, turned around and introduced us to the woman sitting next to her (whom she had just met--although we didn't know that at the time). Her name is L* and we started talking to her and found out that this is her first time here at the Longfellow Park Chapel, and her second time at an LDS service at all. Want to know how she became interested in the church? She is a self-titled "theater nerd" and so after she saw the Book of Mormon Musical on Broadway, she thought, "Hmmm.. this isn't as weird of a religion as I thought it would be. In fact, this is actually something I want to learn more about!" So she got on mormon.org and started IMing with some digital missionaries, then became really good friends with them. They sent her a copy of the Book of Mormon with their testimonies written inside and she's been reading and loving it. I went with her to the next two meetings as well and she had a lot of questions but was super cool and open. Gospel Principles class went well and she took a lot of notes. She loved the idea of eternal marriage and wrote in her notebook, "When you get married in the temple, it's not just 'Til death do us part'!" 

The members clicked with her really well, and she made a lot of comments to us about how she feels really welcome here, and feels like this could really be the church for her. She already doesn't drink alcohol or coffee for personal reasons, and just wants to learn and come closer to God. Sister Meier and I were stunned - it's funny because we do so much work every day, trying to increase our teaching pool. Not ONE person whom I've contacted on the bus or the street has returned any of our calls or set up an appointment with us, but then things like THIS happen and we realize that we just do what we need to do and we'll be blessed. The only problem is that after all this excitement, we found out she is only 20 years old. BUMMER. We can only teach 25-30 single females. Bugger. We'll have to let the other sisters in University Ward teach her.  But it was a cool experience nonetheless.

Another cute little miracle that happened this week is that one morning we were running for the bus (it wasn't the actual bus we needed to take us into Harvard, just a bus that would take us up the long, dreary hill) and the driver saw us running, slowed down, honked at us, and told us to just hop on there! We didn't even have to run to the bus stop! That was a very charitable man, I tell you. It made my whole day! I felt a little guilty just getting off like two stops later (once we got to the top of the hill) but we made sure to thank him for his kindness.

We have some fun plans for this Pday afternoon - we're going shopping! The Elders really want us to come with them to buy suits - they want our input. Apparently some big suit store is going out of business and is on a closeout sale - $500 to $600 suits for less than $100. They are thrilled, and it's going to be a hilarious experience. We're also going to Target which will be good because I need to get some leggings. I have no nylons or leggings and as such my legs are usually freezing. haha. So it will be nice to get those and check out some long socks and just get geared up for winter. I dressed up in red and khaki today so I'm hoping to get some pictures in front of Target. Represent!

Well, I love you! I hope you're doing well. I would love to get some letters. That means you, friends!  [Emphasis added by the editor!]  :-)

 -Sister Broekhuijsen

P.S. I got a letter from Seth this week - apparently they got a new cat recently - he taped some of her hair to the letter for proof! Absolutely hilarious. :)