Our Purpose. Our Purpose is to...

(Sent July 7 | Photos on Facebook)

Every morning for companionship study, we recite some missionary quotes. The very first one we recite is "Our Purpose" (found in chapter 1 in Preach My Gospel).

Our purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.

Sometimes I wonder why on Earth I was sent to Parker, CO at this particular time out of all the other areas in the Denver North Mission. They always tell us to leave an area better than we found it. Buuuut we haven't found too many solid investigators in the area, and there aren't too many less active members that are willing to visit with us. So, since being here almost 3 months now, I thought about it. I thought about my purpose here in this ward. Maybe my purpose here isn't necessarily to build up the teaching pool. Maybe it's to strengthen the teaching pool that is already here. Either way, I'm inviting someone to come unto Christ.

One of the investigators here, named J, has been investigating the church since January. It's been 6 months and he still does not feel ready for baptism.

But, oh, he is getting closer and closer every week.

New Found Profession: Miracle Banking

(Sent June 23)

So last week, I talked about how Sister Billings and I changed our attitude and miracles began, right?

Well, lemme provide some examples from just this past week.

Last Monday, we had an appointment with D, who invited us back the Saturday previous. Turns out he's good friends with his neighbors who are members of the church so we invited them to join us. Apparently, he's been invited to take the missionary discussions since 2012, but never accepted...until now.

He told us that he's finally meeting with the missionaries because he wants to be more happy, more positive about life. I told him that he came to the right people! We taught him about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and by the end, he was very curious as to what the Book of Mormon is all about!

+1 heavenly addition to the Parker miracle bank.

Then, Tuesday morning, one of the Assistants to the Presidents (APs) called us. We thought that he was either bringing bad news to us or very bad news. He told us that some elders in some area other than Parker crashed their car and they needed a car. And they thought that they should take the car from the smallest area in the mission, namely, Newlin Meadows. They were going to take our car away.

Let's just say I was #speechless.

Sister Billings and I were beginning to think of how we were to rearrange our schedules to include walking from place to place. In the dead of heat. In Colorado, where civilization can't get any closer to the sun.

"Some people think I don't know a butt-load of crap about the gospel, but I dooooo"

(Sent May 26 | Photos on Facebook)

So that quote from the prominent film of "Nacho Libre" is essentially the story of my life right now. Let me tell you why:

There are three particular individuals that Sister Billings and I ran into last week. Each of them are different scenarios of simply being a missionary.

Situation 1: G is a Catholic who doesn't agree with everything in the Catholic Church but still asserts that he is Catholic. We had an appointment set up and we brought a member with us to teach him. He ended up directing the entire conversation with a lot of what's called "anti-Mormon" material that he read off the Interwebz. He kept talking and professing about what he thinks we believe, most of which were untrue. We were glad that we brought a member with us who's had the same exact questions G has now before she joined the Church. Every doctrine we taught G, he would shut down. Even about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being the one true church on Earth.

There's a talk, by the way, called "17 Points of the True Church" where a group of friends with diverse religious backgrounds - from Christianity to atheism to Islam - gathered together to read the Bible and come up with different key doctrines that Christ taught when He established His church here on Earth. Therefore, the one true church here on Earth must contain all of these 17 points that made up Christ's church. Do they happen to be in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? IDK. They just might. Find out at lds.org and mormon.org!

Situation 2: J was moving some things from his garage when we went up to talk to him. We offered to say a prayer with him, but he turned down the offer and, instead, began telling us what we believe. He kept talking and professing about what he thinks we believe, most of which were untrue. I still didn't quite understand what he was trying to say, though, because we agreed with a few of the doctrine he was talking about. I compared his lecture to an essay without a thesis, because I had no idea where he was going with his argument.

Let Them Eat Pi

Email home #8, sent 3/17/14

I'm here for another transfer! Last Saturday was my first ever "Transfer Doctrine" where the zone gathers round and listens to who's getting transferred. The entire week, Sister Hoynacki and I were thinking that neither of us would be transferred because we both just got here! That was up until we got there and an elder said that a lot of the new missionaries are getting a different follow-up trainer and I started freaking out! I didn't want either me or Sister H to be transferred! So when the zone leaders read out the list of people, my stomach knotted! I was so nervous! But the only sister that ended up transferring out of the zone is actually going to be with my MTC companion, Sister Mills! Crazy! 

Anyway, let me continue onto the best story of the mission, thus far: Monday night, we had 3 appointments set and all 3 of them cancelled that morning. It was crazy how they all cancelled all at once....So Sister H and I were stuck with no appointments for the evening, which is the worst thing in suburbia because no one wants you at their door at 8 o'clock at night...

So Sister H and I decided to visit a member of the ward who is less active. We knock on the door and the sister opens the door, walks out, and closes the door behind her. I say, "Hi! How are you?" and while expecting a simple "good" or "okay," we got, "I'm doing HORRIBLE." Whoa. "So many things have happened in the last few years and-- well, come inside and I'll update you on the past few years." So we got in! Then she said, "I'm truly sorry. This house is a disaster!"

She recounts to us all the things that's happened to her since 2010 including breast cancer, whooping cough, shingles, passing away of her mother, AND one of her daughters even barely survived the Aurora movie theater shooting in 2012. It was crazy. (Side fact: that movie theater is apparently totally deserted now....)

THEN, she says, "OH! And I lost my daughter's pet hedgehog!" Uhm, come again? Okaaay. And let me remind you, this house really was a disaster. She said, "Ever seen that Hoarding show?" when referring to the cleanliness of her house....So when we'd spent a good hour and half (yes, an hour and a half) trying to find this spiky ball of a rodent, Sister H and I tried to think like the hedgehog. We came to the conclusion that he must want to crawl into a dark area, cuddled up somewhere. So I go into one of the bedrooms, close the door, and turn off the light. And I say a prayer. I was desperate. It was getting late and we definitely weren't going to leave without finding this hedgehog. I ask Heavenly Father to please PLEASE show me a sign that this hedgehog is alive...or dead for that matter! And I stand and listen. And I hear rustling sounds. I walk over to it and see an old stereo perched slanted on who knows what. I tell Sister H to come in and listen. She hears nothing and basically thinks I'm crazy. So we lift up the stereo and, yes, there he was. Tuck the hedgehog.

And we were invited to come back two days later. Moral of the story: #prayerworks

Dang, typing all of that out brought back the stress. Oof. But, we also attended a wedding. A 17-year old girl who we met our first week here had twin boys about 7 months ago. And she and her boyfriend decided to get married before he enter the army next Monday. They wanted something really simple like go in, marry, get out. No decorations or anything. But our Relief Society Presidency really wanted to make it special so they completely transformed the RS room into a wedding ceremony! Check it out!

[View pics on Facebook]

But the wedding was just so beautiful! It took the RS presidency a lot of last-minute planning and setting-up but they totally pulled it off and it was just beautiful! Bishop gave great counsel to both the bride and groom AND didn't mess up their names! He's known for messing up people's names REALLY bad. For instance, he called Sister Hoynacki (really pronounced hoy-naw-ski) Sister Hoy-Nazi. Yeah.

We had dinner with the M family whose boys had punny pi shirts on and it triggered in my mind that I almost missed Pi day! I would've been devastated if I didn't acknowledge Pi day ON Pi day. Phew, I was so close! But when I told them I'd memorized 55 digits of pi, one of the boys was pretty much speechless/in awe of my amazingness (I'm pretty sure that was it). They ended up talking about pi and math and school a lot that night and Sister M said they usually never talk about that stuff. I just think they wanted to impress me and my highly intellectual mind.

That night we had home-made grilled pizza (pies) and peach and apple pies. They apologized that the pies were store-bought. Brother M is known for his home-baked pies but he didn't have time to make one. When he took a bite of the pie, he slammed the fork down and said, "THIS IS HORRIBLE!" And it was just regular pie....He refused to eat it. But, understandable, understandable. 

So this past week was crazy but we've had the highest number of lessons this past week of all the weeks we've been here! It just goes to show that attitude is everything! Keepin' it classy.

Love you!
Sister Wen

A-wo-wa!

Email home #6, sent March 3 / new photos in Facebook photo album

The email title is "Aurora" in baby talk. I might name my child Aurora just so I can say that all the time.
So none of the investigators came to church yesterday. The family from India that committed to coming but their daughters got sick like last Thursday/Friday. We were bummed but we're still praying that they'll get well soon.

There are 2 other investigators we've been trying to visit for the past 3 weeks now. We ask them for their phone numbers but they won't give it to us...they say they'll just call us but, as usual, they never do. So Sister Hoynacki and I thought it'd be better to drop them and stop trying to visit them. So we gave them one last visit. We saw one in his garage fixing his bike and (wait for it) he actually invited us back to visit next week (what!). Yeah. I learned about perseverance. I also learned that I sometimes get too lazy to persevere.

There was a sister in our ward that we met the very first week we were here. She was offered an amazing job in Utah so she's moving down to Provo near BYU! Sister H and I helped her move and pack and clean and basically everything else. I told her and her husband that I'll find them at BYU after my mission. It's happening.

One of our ward missionaries gave us 4 referrals. We've contacted 3 of them and 2 of them invited us back! One of them is a nice Jewish woman whose brother joined the Church when he was 10 or 11. Her parents divorced when they were little so her brother went with her father who joined the church while she went with her mother. She remained Christian, like hard core Christian. She went to school and became a minister so she's very well-versed in the Bible. She ended up questioning a lot of Christian beliefs and now considers herself practicing Judaism.

She's so knowledgeable but she's just missing the entire core of Christianity! She has the intellectual and logical side down but she's missing the emotional and spiritual side of relying on the Atonement of Christ. Jesus Christ wasn't just a teacher or a prophet. He did so much more than that. He performed the greatest miracle of all: the Atonement!

Sick in Aurora

Email #4

Yes, finally an email from me! Last Monday, Sister Hoynacki and I couldn't email because our car had some weird problem where I'd buckle my seatbelt and the seatbelt indicator would still beep beep beep beep...it was very annoying but it took 4 hours to fix and basically cut into our email time. And, guess what? The seatbelt's STILL not fixed. Oh well. Now we try to sing songs to the beat of the seatbelt indicator. It's kinda sad.

The weather here for the past 2 weeks has been crazy! The first two days were about -15 degrees F but the next day was 50 degrees F. It's true what they say: if you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes! But then that backfires because if the weather's nice and you wait 10 minutes, then you're outta luck.

But there's so much that happened in these past two weeks! Sister H and I started with absolutely NO investigators. Because our ward boundaries are VERY small, the elders that were already in this ward had only 2 investigators. But at the end of 2 weeks, we officially have 6 investigators! From 0 to 6! The Lord really has guided us directly to them! It's amazing!

Oh, but this past week was pretty physically demanding on me because...yes, I got the flu:

Monday - my wisdom tooth swelled up during a lesson with a less active member. That was embarrassing. I was teaching with a lisp and a lopsided face. But (GROSSNESS ALERT), during the lesson, pus flowed out of it and the swelling immediately went down. Fortunately, there's a dentist in the ward that we had dinner with on Tuesday and he gave me a syringe to clear out the gunk.
Tuesday - woke up with a sore throat.
Wednesday - began coughing
Thursday - got a fever of 101.2 while I was at zone conference from 8AM to 4PM. And my body was all achy. Oof.
Friday - fever be gone! But I continued coughing with a horrible sore throat.
Saturday - woke up congested and weak all around. I ended up staying in all day until 4PM to rest up. I felt so bad for Sister H, though. She had to be inside with me the entire time!

Email home #3b: In Denver

(Continued from 3a: On the way to Denver)

Denver all started with finding our new car (red Subaru #OHYEAH), slipping on ice and scraping my knee (#livingontheedge), getting lost on our drive to the completely opposite end of the mission, and also realizing that Sister Hoynacki and I are actually new sister missionaries in the ward we were placed in. This means...both of us don't know our new area or ward very well.

So, our area book is completely empty and the elders in our ward already only have 2 investigators. We split up the area so that we actually ended up with NO investigators at all....We have a lot of work to do.

And it's already been hard work. Getting the 8.5 hours of sleep last night helped but I'm still very much in a daze from lack of sleep. I feel like I'm not 100% myself because I'm so tired, which might be a good thing, but still. Sleep is my biggest temptation right now.

On the other hand, the members' house we're staying at is very nice and they themselves are very hospitable. They generously fed us dinner last night but I basically said nothing because I was just SO TIRED. I couldn't keep my eyes open at all. Not even when the elders came over to explain the ward a bit. Sometimes I even pretended to be looking down at the papers they gave us just so I could get a little shut-eye. They probably noticed anyway, though....

The members' basement was renovated just for missionaries. They'd apparently been waiting for new missionaries for 5 months now! The basement has a nice little bedroom with a large closet and even a dresser. The bathroom is also really nice and so is the living room area where there's a table for us to study on.

Email home #2

(Sent February 1)

From one of the Sisters

Herro famiry!

I'm finally towards the end of my MTC training! I leave Monday morning at 3:30AM. Ugh. But, it's awesome. I've met almost all the sisters going to Denver (North) with us so it's going to be a missionary party on the plane! hehehe

K, hmm, what to write about. There's seriously so much that goes on in one week I can't remember it all!

We began teaching our TRC investigator (basically an someone who's hired to act as an investigator; sometimes they're real investigators, though; either way, we have to treat them like an actual investigator)! Sister Mills and I began with the Plan of Salvation because our investigator wanted to know the answers to the basic questions of "what is the purpose of life" or "why are we here" or "where on Earth did we come from" (except not really on Earth...see what I did there?). But whenever I teach the Plan of Salvation / the Plan of Happiness I always remember how I've lived such a privileged life because I've grown up with the gospel in my life. I already know the answers to those questions that seem to be the biggest, most profound questions of life simply because I was blessed with the word of God early in my life!

Here's out my first Sunday at the MTC/ on the mission went:
1. Last week, our entire branch (of less than 20 elders and sisters combined) were all asked to prepare a 5-minute talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost. I prepared a couple of bullet points. I had a weird feeling that I would need to be prepared.

Email home #1

(Sent January 25th. P-days at the MTC are Saturdays.)

This is me. Sister Wen. I got both of your Dear Elder letters. They were great, but could've been better. But I didn't get them until after I put my own letter into the mailbox....So, they might be overlapping. But, yes, first things first. MY LIFE IN THE MTC.

Today's my fourth day here so I honestly don't remember much from the first day, which is why I've pulled out my handy-dandy journal! So after you guys dropped me off at the MTC with tears in my eyes and whatnot, my host, Sister Manley (going to Russia) led me to my room and to get supplies. Everything happened SO fast. She brought me here and there and I had a bunch of things in my arms. It was cray. Then, right after, I was dropped off at my classroom where I met my companion, Sister Mills.

Sister Mills is Black and Mexican, but I like to call her Blaxican. She's from LA and she's pretty cool but still isn't used to cold weather hahah. But we're basically the same person, she and I. She's just so funny!

The first night at the MTC we began actual training! We all sat in small rooms with missionaries and collectively taught real investigators! It's interesting though b/c they're actual investigators but they're hired to work at the MTC as an investigator...it's fun stuff. It was really cool, though, because we heard the stories of each investigator as to why they were suddenly looking to come unto Christ. One is a Southern woman who wondered why her childhood was so hard. She didn't know why God let her father domestically abuse her and her family. We all tried to explain to her that we go through trials to make us stronger. Trials may scar, but they shall give us experience. And if we keep an eternal perspective, we will realize that each trial will be for but a small moment.

Farewell!

This is the farewell talk I gave in my church service last Sunday, January 12. It's not word for word what I said, but I tried to write down the gist of what I did say.

This talk is based on the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants, section 4, verse 6: "Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence" (D&C 4:6).

Good afternoon, brothers and sisters! Thanks to the missionaries for that musical number! But if I'm gonna have to sing like that on my mission I better brush up on my singing....
         
And thanks to Brother Payne for that insightful talk, though I realize now that I shouldn’t have asked him to speak before me because of how insightful he is. All my insights are probably going to sound even more unintelligent.
         
Anyway, this is it! I am the last talk of the day meaning this is supposedly the talk you have all been waiting for. And, as my father said, I will be serving in the Colorado Denver North mission and I enter the Provo Missionary Training Center on January 22.
         
So, I want to talk a little bit about why I am serving a mission. It all began on a chilly, October morning. I was at college so I turned on General Conference on my computer next to me.

President Thomas S. Monson, our current living prophet of God

       
President Monson made an announcement concerning the lowering of the age requirement for boys to serve missions and I was like, whoa, can he do that? Then I figured, yes he can, because he is a prophet of God and all. Then he started talking about sister missionaries. Then, of course, right then, my Internet stopped working and I freaked out. Maybe he was going to lower the age for women? My heart was racing. I clicked refresh and I was freaking out! By the time the video reloaded, he had already made the announcement so I had to rewind a whole 10 seconds back just to hear the part I missed. It was a real first world problem.