Being a Missionary is So Glamorous!

This week has been such a party! I love working with Sister Allen and Sister Clark. And I love working in two areas. This'll probably be my favorite time during my mission.

It's absolutely crazy. For example, yesterday we had ward council at 7:30, church at 9, my companions left after sacrament meeting to go to their coordination meeting and branch council, so I went on a member exchange to attend the rest of Clear Creek meetings. (People kept asking me where my companion was) Then I got taken over to the other chapel where the IU branch meets. I joined  my companions for a lesson right before church. And then we enjoyed three more hours of church meetings. We left right after that for the other coordination meeting, and then straight from there to another lesson. And then straight to a fireside where recent converts share their conversion stories. When that was over I finally had a chance to go to the bathroom, which I hadn't had time to do since before we'd left the apartment in the morning. By then it was 8:30pm. What a great day!

Part of what made the day so great was J. We'd met with him the day before. The M's, the wonderful couple that came with us, joined us for a lesson. They challenged him to read the Book of Mormon by Christmas, which is just 10 pages a day (that's also what Brother M is doing.) He readily accepted. He loves our theology, and said he believes everything, but is stuck on Joseph Smith. Was he really a prophet? We offered him a baptismal date in mid-January to prepare for. He declined, but said he would get baptized if he got an answer to his prayers.

Yesterday, he said the spirit woke him up at 3am and prompted him to pray. He started on his reading for the day, but couldn't stop because it put him in the middle of Lehi's dream. He prayed to get an answer about Joseph Smith. The primary program was yesterday. One girl presented Amos 3:7. And Jonathan put his head in his hands. The M's reported that when they were driving him home he'd asked what would happen if he were ready for baptism before mid-January.

So that's purdy excited for him. He's been super sensitive to the spirit his entire life, and wonders why he seems to feel the spirit so much more distinctly than most people. He knows he's been called to preach. Random people have told him throughout his life that he would one day preach to thousands. He worries that that won't be fulfilled through the Mormon faith. I don't know what Heavenly Father's plan for him is, but I do know that he's got something tremendous planned for Jonathan if he continues to follow the spirit. I think he's got something tremendous planned for all of us, conditioned upon our willingness to follow him (keep the commandments, and follow the promptings of the spirit.) Heavenly Father's purdy cool like that.

In other news, the IU paper will soon feature (it might even be today's issue??) a story about Sister Clark. The wonderful gal who wrote it, C, is now taking the lessons, and is doing very well. We might also get to talk more with the awesome girl who took pictures for it. That was an interesting experience--getting our pictures taken while teaching and personal contacting. Being a missionary is so glamorous ;)  (article)

On another note, I love being able to teach people who are returning to activity in the church. They begin to gain such a great understanding of the Atonement through really using it! And they begin, often for the first time, to really feel the love that God has for them, and the love their Savior has for them. They knew about it before, but they didn't know it for themselves. Their passion for the gospel is so exciting. One thing typical Mormons are so good at doing is making miracles seem so mundane. Church meetings are so fantastic if we are looking for hope or for answers.

That's all I've got for today. Live long and prosper. And someday I might get better at taking pictures to send.

Thanks for all the prayers :)

Love,

Sister Bowen

Talk About Busy!

Time is short today, 'cause we gots to take Sister Goldrup to the airport. I will be moving in with the Sister Trainer Leaders (Sister Allen and Sister Clark) and we will be covering my area (Clear Creek) and theirs (IU Campus), which'll be a party 'cause we both have a lot of people to teach, and they go on exchanges all the time...so sometimes we'll probably be teaching like 3 lessons at the same time O_o 

My mailing address will be the same 'cause their apartment is in the same complex as ours, so we'll just check both mail boxes...and I'll probably be moving back into the other apartment in 4 weeks or so...

So, we're not sure exactly what covering two areas will look like...potentially 30+ lessons a week. Potentially 6 hours of church on Sundays, plus ward council, branch council, and 2 coordination meetings.

Yesterday we were invited to PEC for the first time (where, in this case, the ward discussed welfare matters.) I'm not quite sure why were invited, but it was very...educational. 

We discussed mostly one individual, but an individual whose situation is not unique. This person lives in a house that won't be suitable for winter, calls on the church regularly to help pay for gas, works a job, but not enough to cancel her disability income, and has a couple pets that she's not willing to let go of. Aaand they are living out a 1/2 dozen miles away from town where they need to go very regularly. 

They talked about how they've been trying to help this person for years. And how the purpose of church welfare is to help people be able to help themselves. But you can't seem to fix the way people think. So how long do you help people for? And part of it is just simple logic. And part of it is faith and logic--tithing, for example. If you pay tithing, you will be taken care of. I like how 3 Nephi 13 addresses that. Consider the fowls of the air--the Lord takes care of these, and doesn't he love us more?

Heavenly Father gives us blessings when we keep his commandments. If we want blessings, we just need to keep the commandments that pertain to the blessings we wish to receive. If we wish to be financially stable, we pay our tithing. If we want to receive guidance, we go to church and study the scriptures. If we wish to be as happy as possible, we do everything Heavenly Father asks us to. Faith and logic. Experiment.

That's all for today.

Much love,

Sister Bowen

Miracles, Challenges and Blessings!

Sister Goldrup got her visa!! So she will be leaving to Australia next Monday...which is a week and a half into the transfer...and I have no idea what they'll do with me for the next 4 1/2 weeks....President Cleveland called to tell us about her visa on Tuesday. In the call he asked, "Do you have any people you're teaching? Any progressing investigators?" I almost asked him, "What do you think we do all day?!" But I didn't. We do have a lot of investigators. Our new district leader Elder Zeyer asked us how we had so many. "Uhh...we give people commitments to keep...and the keep them..." So, it might have a negative impact on their salvation if they have to take a 4 week hiatus. But Heavenly Father knows what's best, and President Cleveland knows how to seek His inspiration. So good things are to come, either way.

In other transfer news, Elder Lawrence got transferred, and in his place is Elder Rasmussen (one of the 7 missionaries in Indiana from my MTC zone.) So now the combined field experience of all 4 missionaries in the ward totals slightly more than a year. Thank goodness our ward is patient with us.

In other news, we were able to have a good conversation with J. Every time we'd gone over since he'd dropped us, his cousin had been there. J is always glad to see us, and likes having churchy discussions (which is good...'cause that's all we talk about), but we can't talk about how he really feels about the Book of Mormon and whatnot 'cause his cousin is one of the reasons he dropped us in the first place. We were finally able to ask him what had changed--why he was so close to baptism and then stepped back. His answer was one word: fear.

He talked about how he really really loves Jesus. And we know he does. I don't remember how much I said about him earlier, but once he discovered who Jesus was, he prayed for 6 hours everyday. He read the Bible in a month. He feels the spirit and know what it entails--which is something most people don't understand unless we can tell them--and even then it doesn't always sink in. We shared Hebrews 10:35. Then his drunk neighbor, P, made us brauts (that were really good.) And then we shared 1 John 4:18. I love that verse, and hope he lets it change his life.

I don't remember if I talked about this miracle either--we are teaching this Micronesian family the mother of which has cancer. Her husband told us last time that he killed a man--and that's why he keeps his hair long--or something like that...he's kinda hard to understand, but that's neither here, nor there. Anyway, their daughter asked us to pray for her mom. She's got this tumor on her neck, that I guess hurts a lot. So before we left, we said a prayer. The next time we called them, M (the mom), said that her pain was gone! We may not be able to communicate with them super well in English (or in Mandarin), but the language/healing of the spirit transcends language barriers. M came to church too. She said she likes to feel the spirit, even if she can't understand much of what's said.

And thus we see that there were more miracles wrought, other challenges endured, more blessings received, much of which cannot be written for the sake of time and energy. And thus commenced the 20th week of the ministry of Sister Bowen.

Sacrifice Does Indeed Bring Forth The Blessings of Heaven

IT'S TRANSFER WEEK! And Sister Goldrup and I are both staying in Bloomington. But we are trading apartments with the Elders, so we gots a new address.

We're grateful to stay. We've gotten permission (and encouragement) from President Cleveland to spend some time on campus to use Sister Goldrup's sweet Mandarin skills, so we've found some new, young, Asian people to teach. We're excited to see where that goes.

It was kinda funny yesterday. We had an appointment with a guy named Z. We were doing it at the church building right before conference started. Right before the we were scheduled to meet, he called us because he couldn't find us. He was at a different church building right before ours. He handed the phone to the pastor who gave us directions on how to find him. So here we go into the Evangelical church with lots of loud music. We head in to find our friends, and then let them know they were in the wrong place. We felt weird taking people out of one church and into another, especially while they were toting around their new member gift bags. Too funny.

On another note, conference was fantastic. There's nothing better than listening to those who receive direction from God for the world. There were quite a few talks I REALLY liked, but my favorite was probably Elder Bednar's: often times our trials and challenges are not removed from us, even if we are praying for it and keeping our covenants. But better, our capacity to handle these things is increased.

Heavenly Father really does love us, doesn't he? He loves being merciful, but he sacrifices His own desires that we might be able to grow, learn, and become more like him.

And I also really appreciate President Uchtdorf's simple statement, "Doubt your doubts before you doubt your fears." There were soo many great things said this weekend.

And here I will bear testimony that sacrifice does indeed bring forth the blessings of heaven. Yesterday, we had an invitation to eat between sessions of conference at a members house which we really like going to. However, we had a previous commitment/invitation to go to another members house as well (we also love going there too) We realized that we had the ability to go to both if we wanted to (which we did want do). But also realized that there were other things to do which better served our purpose. So we decided to visit the less active we'd planned to, to encourage him to watch the last session of general conference. But he wasn't home. Then we turned to our back-up plans, which were to check back with some potentials we'd met a few weeks before. We didn't think they were particularly promising, but we'd felt inspired to plan them in.

We knocked on S's door. She opened and invited us in. She's super friendly, asked us a lot about ourselves, and about mission stuff (which she had also done when we'd first met). She let us tell her about the Restoration, about the Book of Mormon, and about how our message blesses family. She was really interested in the Book of Mormon and the Restoration. She also cares a lot about her teen-age boys, and really hopes they'll make good choices in their lives. We set an appointment to come back. Which is significant, because she's super busy, and didn't want to the first time we'd met.

It's always a big deal when people who are well-off and have decent lives want to meet with missionaries. A lot of times they don't think that they need God, or that he doesn't have anything new to offer them. I'm glad that our sacrifice of a good time with people we love may have a life-changing effect for somebody else. (At least we hope it does) Decisions really do determine destiny...often times more than just our own.

And here's more pictures!

This was supposed to be our week without a car, but then Tuesday morning they brought us a brand new car. It's a Chevy Cruze that had only 148 miles on it. Kinda crazy that they'd trust me with a new car. But I guess He trusts me with saving souls. (but he trusts a lot of us with that.)

And our Micronesian friends gave us gigantic apples.

 

And this creature was a major distraction in our planning session.

And the missionaries of the Clear Creek ward: Elder Lawrence, Elder Brown, me, and Sister Goldrup

And my super awkard picture of our district: Sister Astle, Sister Fullmer, me, Sister Goldrup, Elder Esplin, Elder Fields, Elder Brown, and Elder Lawrence. Unfortunately, we are as awkward as we look. But we have a good time. Elders Lawrence and Fields are getting transferred, but the rest of us are stickin' around for 6 more weeks, or so. 

 

And the view from the Highland Sisters' apartment

Back to College!

Well team, it's been a good week. 

Yesterday we had adventures going to an AME Bethel church (African Methodist Episcopal) for one of our investigators. There were only like 6ish white people there. And we were two of them...plus a man who'd also come from our ward. There was a lot of energy and people were super friendly. Good feelings all around. We also did a mini-exchange with the IU Sisters so that Sister Goldrup could use her awesome Mandarin skills to teach one of their investigators. 

I also got to play a homeless man's guitar at a soup kitchen again. He came up and asked if I would play him a song. That's always a good experience. I haven't been able to play for about two months, and I've really been missing it. Heavenly Father does answer prayers. 

We've also been able to spend a couple days on campus. It's not in our area, but President Cleveland wants us to go 'cause 1. there're Asians for Sister Goldrup to talk to, 2. young people are so much more receptive than not-so-young people, 3. it's good training for us--much faster paced than non-campus areas. So that's been a great adventure for us.

In our letters home we are encouraged to share spiritual experiences. It's hard. There's so many that they almost become mundane. And usually take too much of a background to really explain. But one of my favorite consistent spiritual experiences in sharing Joseph Smith's first vision. The spirit is always there, and it's fantastic. I also love when people agree to get baptized. Or when you see direct and speedy answers to prayers. Or when somebody understands something gospel related that they hadn't before. Or when we just happen to be in the right place at the right time. There are just so many miracles.

Life is good. And I love being on a mission. On Wednesday I will have exactly 14 months...so I'd better make those good.

Love,

Sister Bowen

Field Trip!

Well, it was a different sort of week. On Thursday we vacationed to Kentucky with the Clevelands. Sorta. Sister Goldrup needed to go to some doctor approved by some Australian visa board, and the closest one is in Kentucky, so there we went. And it's not 'cause she's sick or anything, she just needed to get some extra stuff done 'cause she's spent so much time outta the U.S. (she's lived in London, South Africa, Beijing, and Jordan.) Wednesdayevening the assistants to the president picked us up and drove us to the mission home. There we had ice cream with President and Sister Cleveland and then stayed the night. We were going to leave at 9:30 the next morning, so President told us we could sleep in! But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I must be crazy. 

After Sister Goldrup's appointment, we went to lunch with the Clevelands and the Porters (who are the mission president and wife for the Cincinnati mission--they and the Clevelands got to be good friends in the training center.) Aaand then we drove back. Good times.

But, not everybody gets to leave mission boundaries, eh?

It's kinda funny. We go visit J still. He is progressing more than some of our "progressing investigators." He's still reading the Book of Mormon, and even asks us for assignments. Then we come back and talk about it. And he knows it's true, but he's in denial. But we understand that it will be difficult to change, especially after preaching something different for so long. But it's good. And we can be patient. Even though we want blessings for people NOW. Sometimes they don't want them 'til later. And that's okay.

And L's still being awesome. He still is working with wood, cord, and sharp things whenever we come over. He's still reading and asking good questions. That's a cool thing isn't? We think people are doing well when people have questions, but they're often apologetic about it. Joseph Smith wouldn't have gotten so many revelations if he hadn't asked so many questions. We like questions. My favorite is when people feel bad about asking questions because they're afraid it might weaken our faith. No joke--I like it so much, because they are just so sincere in wanting to protect us and like that we're are engaged in a good cause, even if they don't think it's quite right.

But here's my main thought for the day: Share the gospel with your friends. It might make you nervous to share, but you will never regret inviting them to learn more. And it really is as simple as an invitation.

But really, thinking about all the converts I know, or have heard of, they have only stayed active if they have family, or good friends in the church. Missionaries are sooo tired of baptizing people that stop coming to church within the year. It's ridiculous to expect missionaries to go find people to teach who will remain active without the ward's help. We find whoever will listen, be open, and keep the commitments we extend to teach. That doesn't mean that they will connect with anybody at church. But they need that connection to stay strong.

So. What's the solution? Members inviting their friends to learn! The time for the hastening of the work is here. For what?! The second coming! And that hastening won't come from thousands of extra missionaries trying to find random people interested. But it will come from members "girding up their loins" and taking courage to simply invite their friends to learn more, to give the thousands of missionaries something productive to do. 1 John 4:18

And pictures! Because I've been called to repentance...

  My shoe tan-line! It gets better everyday.

 Me and Sister Goldrup, the day we became new best friends. She's cute, isn't she? And my smile's uber awkward. Sorry.

Aaand me and Sister Allen. We went on exchanges. I'm purdy sure we had a class together at BYU. And she was in the same ward as Danielle and Ashley two years ago. She's awesome. 

Life's a Marathon or Something Like That

Well team, it's that time of week again. 

This week was much more positive than last. We had stake conference yesterday, which was awesome. President Simmons, the stake president, talked about the hastening of the work..."hastening for what?" Oh you know, the second coming! He talked about how doing the Lord's work (missionary work) is how we'll have oil in our lamps at the coming of the bridegroom.

That got me thinkin' about consecration. It's easy to feel like your consecrating everything to the Lord when your a missionary. I'm giving all my time (besides what I need for myself to live/function/not be gross). I gave up all the possessions I care about to focus out here. I gave up most of what I tend to like to think about (don't worry, it's nothing sketchy) for the sake of those we're teaching and serving among. But then I thought about one of my most treasured possessions. My comfort zones. I gave up a good chunk of that just coming out here and doing fairly standard missionary work--talking to strangers, making phone calls, wearing skirts in public places, etc.--but there's still so much I cling to. If I sacrificed my comfort zone completely, I'd be a much better missionary.

If everybody sacrificed their comfort zones (for the sake of following the guidance of the spirit) they'd be much better people. You're never going to reach your toes if you are satisfied touching your knees. We run into a lot of people who say their very comfortable with their religion. Nobody should be comfortable with their religion if it's really inspiring them to be better. I am extremely confident in the complete truth, power, and authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints--but if I'm living the way Heavenly Father would have me live, I would rarely be comfortable in it. It's like training for a marathon by never running more than a mile because it doesn't feel good to run more.

Why should we be satisfied with a 5k, when Heavenly Father is encouraging us to run a marathon?...but that's probably a terrible metaphor, 'cause I really hate running and would never want to run a marathon...but I do like receiving blessings, and I do love Heavenly Father, and I do love His children, and so I do hope that my training for my metaphoric marathon pays off, and that I can run a little more every time. And breath a little harder, ache a little longer, and sweat a little more than I would otherwise. Because it will be worth it. It's not so much what we do in this life, but what we become. And our attitudes in doing will greatly effect our becoming.

And that's all I've got for today, but thank you muchly for the support and prayers. 'Cause they're needed.

Love,

Sister Bowen