Monday, January 26, 2015

Sister Leifson and Sister Nelson in North Carolina


I love North Carolina

Hello everyone! This week has been so great! So last week i told you about our investigator George who is preparing for baptism. He came to church last sunday and we set up appts to see him every night of the week :) He is done with all the lessons and is doing great! He just finished 4th nephi in the Book of Mormon!! and he started reading in the Doctrine and Covenants! When we were meeting with him we were talking about baptism and he told us that he has attended tons of different churches but he never agreed with any of them enough to get baptized. Thats very unusual for people in the south... they usually all get baptized when they are babies. He is so excited to be baptized into a religion that he completely agrees with what is taught! on thursday he took us out to eat and he brought us each a present. They were hand made scarves that he had his neighbor make for us :) it was so nice!! He came to church yesterday and they announced his baptism for saturday at 10am :) he is so excited! and so are we! So the family that has been fellowshipping him is Brother and sister Lusk. They dont have any kids yet and they are in their late 20's. Brother Lusk served a mission but this past year was less active. He was loosing his testimony because he stopped doing the little things like church, scripture study and prayer. Well when we asked to have the lessons at their house we knew they would be willing but what we didnt know was how big of an impact it would have on brother Lusk. This past 2 months he has been coming to church and trying to be better. A few days ago his wife came to us crying and thanked us for picking them to fellowship george. after having the lessons in their home it really brought the spirit and helped brother Lusk realize what he had been missing our on for the past few months. Last Sunday he went and got his temple recommend renewed that he had let expire for the past year. Last night George asked Brother Lusk to baptize him and he was so grateful that he was worthy to perform that ordinance. So many blessings come from missionary work!! It is so neat to see how the lord works and how his hand is in this work. We had no idea why we picked the Lusks to fellowship them because they have nothing in common, but heavenly father knew what Brother Lusk needed. Such a miracle :) This past tuesday i did my first training at zone meeting and it went really well! Tomorrow i will be going on my first exchange with the sisters in Franklin. Im really excited :) We got a text yesterday that said on Feb 17 we will be having D. Todd Christofferson come to our mission for a mission conference :) im so excited for that!! I am loving North Carolina and the people here! i will most likely be here for my last 2 transfers! i am so grateful to be here and to be doing the lords work, I have learned so much that i would have never been able to learn anywhere else. Thanks for all your love and support! Love Sister Leifson :)

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Tennessee before i leave

Im In North Carolina

This week has been so much fun! So i am settled into my new area and guess where it is... North Carolina!! haha im not even in Tennessee anymore! My area is Waynesville North Carolina. I am a little over 2 hours away from knoxville! I love it here so much! i am in the mountains which is really different from knoxville. The ward i am serving in is a little tiny ward that has about 60 people there each week. The people here are so sweet and they love the missionaries!! My new companion is Sister Nelson. She is from Ogden :) i knew her before and we have served around each other so i was so happy to be with her!! we have like the same personality so that will be really good! She goes home in february so i will only be with her for 6 weeks :( I have learned so much from her already! Tomorrow i will be giving my first training as a Sister Training Leader... it will be 45 minutes and there will be about 30 missionaries there! im really nervous for that, but im sure it will be fine! This area has alot going on right now. A few weeks ago sister nelson and her companion tracted into a guy named George he is about 45. he was leaving his house and he said that his wife was in the hospital and that he needed to go see her but told them to come back on thursday. When they went back he wasnt home and they kind of forgot about him. Well a few weeks later they remembered him and wanted to go try again. When they got there he said that his wife had passed away and the reason he wasnt there that thursday was because he was at her funeral... He told them that he really needed god and that he wanted them to teach him and his 15 year old son. They taught him the first 2 lessons and invited him to be baptized on Jan 31. I got here and we taught him lesson 3 and he told us that he has been praying about his baptism and he got him answer that he should be baptized on the 31st! he came to church yesterday and loved it! He introduced himself in priesthood and said hi im george and im getting baptized on the 31st :) he is so awesome!! we are teaching him every night this week and he is taking us out to dinner. The lord definitely prepared him to meet the missionaries that day! He is really interested in the work for the dead, because he knows that this is true and he wants to be baptized for his wife when that time comes. Pray for him!!! Well thats about all for this week. I love my new area and i love my new companion. I am so grateful for this time to be a missionary! im sad its going by so fast. thanks for everything! Love Sister Leifson :)

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Im getting Transferred :):)

Well its transfer week and I have some exciting news.... im getting transferred! and im going to be in a leadership position :) I am going to be a Sister Training Leader :) that means I will work with all the sisters in my zone and I get to go on 24 hour exchanges with them every 6 weeks! They only have one set in each of the 5 zones and my zone already has STLs so I will be going to the Asheville Zone, the Chattanooga zone the Kingsport zone or the Cumberland zone! im really excited to see another part of the mission besides Knoxville! I have been in the same zone and surrounding area since I got here in April! so all I know is Knoxville haha but I am sad to leave... I like Knoxville! I would love to come back and live here! So some other news for the week... Our car got wrecked into! so we were going to visit this part member family that we had never met before and they had a really steep driveway and I didn't really want to park up there, but Tennessee doesn't have sidewalks or like space on the road to park so I didn't really have a choice. So we got there and there were 2 other vehicles parked so I just parked on this spot of gravel like 50 ft away from the other cars... well the husband who is the non member wasn't too interested in us being there so as we were standing out on the porch, he got into his truck to leave and wasn't watching and just ran right into the back/ driver side of our car! Oh man... he was SO MAD!!! he was swearing and yelling and freaking out! so now the back of our car is all smashed in. Well the next day we needed to get in the trunk to get our BOM's and pamphlets and stuff so we opened the trunk, and didn't realize that it wasn't closed tight so we got onto this busy road and my trunk flew open and we had to pull off the road and I called the elders and they told me I needed to tie it closed it with like a shoelace or something... well we didn't have any shoelaces in our car so I found a Wal-mart bag and the elders told me over the phone how to tie a square knot and it stayed the whole way home :) I was so proud of myself! haha the vehicle coordinator was proud of me too! Remember I told you that 2 weeks ago we got a flat tire... well we got another one on Saturday.... The elders had to come fix it for us again! I think by now I would know how to change my own flat tire :) Im learning a lot of valuable things on my mission! A week ago we were tracting and we met this lady named Misty and she said we could come back so we did and she is totally golden! she hasn't been going to any church and she said that she has been praying for God to show her the truth, We taught the restoration and she was very open minded. We told her about how church would be and she loved the idea of not having one preacher and that they wouldn't ask her for money. Her husband is a firefighter and she has 3 daughters, twins that are 13 and one that is 12. They weren't able to make it to church yesterday but she is really wanting to come and try it. She committed to be baptized :) im sad I wont get to see them get baptized! We had our investigator Adam at church yesterday :) Also there was a young newly married couple that just showed up! They said that they have always wanted to go to a Mormon church so they came! They live in our area so we are going to go teach them this week! I love being a missionary!! its so amazing to see the Lords work move forward! I hope you all have a great week! Love Sister Leifson :)

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Happy New Year :)

Can you believe its 2015?!? I received some cool news this week... So when I was in pellissippi we started teaching a girl named Amber. She is in her late 20's and she was living with one our inactive members. Well we were the first ones to start teaching her and she was really interested, but she was living with a man and they didn't have plans to get married anytime soon. We kept teaching her and then I left. This next sisters taught her for a couple months and then she decided to move out so she could get baptized. Well she moved to Maryville in Dec and the elders there baptized her on December 20th :) In my mission if you taught someone or you were the first missionaries to teach someone you get a letter from the mission president informing you of their baptism. So this week I got the letter for Amber and I was so happy to hear that she was baptized!! :) So last week I told you about Jamaree... We had a really awesome lesson with him. He felt open to ask questions and he is really searching for truth. We invited him to be baptized and he said yes and we gave him a baptism date of January 24. Well we set up an apt to teach him 2 days later and he called us a few hours before and told us that he just didn't think it was right and that he was experiencing a lot of opposition from the adversary. We were so sad when he told us that! he said we could still come back and teach but he is just not sure if it is the right decision for him. Since it was fast Sunday our district all fasted for him that we would be able to still help him progress in the gospel. Please pray for him! We had a cool experience with a member in our ward. Her name is Sister Mullins and she was recently diagnosed with cancer. She hasn't been able to attend church because she is so sick. Well we started visiting her and she mentioned that she is the only one in her family that is a member. Her and her husband were divorced and they have 4 kids that are between 27 and 18. As we were talking with her she expressed her desire for them to join the church, but she also shared that their father is very anti Mormon and he told them he would disown them if they ever joined the church. when her 18 yr old son was 14 and he was one day away from being baptized and the dad wouldn't let it happen. She knows they would join if it wasn't for their dad. Well as we were there she had the idea to send in a referral so that the missionaries would go visit her ex husband.. before we left she mentioned that every Wednesday she has all of her kids over for dinner and she invited us to come over and meet them! we are so excited! We have been praying so hard that her ex husbands heart will be softened so that we can teach her kids! Pray for her as well she is such an amazing lady! The bad news of the week is that this is my 3rd cold just this transfer! I never got sick before and I even got a flu shot which I think made me more sick... I am just barley getting over it now... not fun... Well I hope you all have a good week! Love Sister Leifson :)