Kenny's First Flight

Hello everyone! 

How has everyone's first week of summer been?!?! We've had a very interesting week, but I think every week of missionary work is interesting haha. I had multiple awkward moments this week that made Sister Robertson and I laugh for hours for example I got peed on by a dog this week, mistook a 30-year-old for an 18-year-old (at least it wasn't the other way around), and had a staring contest with this lady in her car as we stood in her driveway. ahhhh I love missionary work.

  

So this week was full of finding activities aka tracting, tracting, and more tracting. It's a very long and tiring and frustrating process but we think the Lord will soon bless us for our efforts. So during this hard week, we would take 15-minute happy breaks so we could keep our sanity.

This is where the title comes in. So a little fun fact when missionaries leave areas (especially when they are going home) they leave a ton of crap for other missionaries to deal with. When Sister Black left 2 months ago, I found my new best friend Kenny the Kite. Kenny is a rainbow-colored, twenty-foot-long, magical, taped together kite... and boy-oh-boy does he make me happy. I've brought this kite with me to every single p-day for the last 2 months and it has never made it above 3 feet and most missionaries at this point would have lost all faith in him... until this week! 

Kenny had his first real flight this week and it seriously made me so happy! But with all the silliness of kite flying, it actually made me think of a lesson that could be applied to all of this; In order to succeed, we have to align our will with God's will. These past's months as we have been flying this kite it was so odd because the wind was there (God's will) and we wanted our kite to fly (our will) but we were fighting against the wind this whole time. We tried to direct where the kite would go instead of letting the wind take it where it needed to go. I think a lot of times in our lives (maybe more subconsciously than not) we think we know best, and when we are prompted to do something or go somewhere different we panic and pull back saying that it doesn't make any sense. We must understand and remember we are living on the ground, so to speak, while God is up above and can see everything. He knows where we need to go. He knows what we need to do. He knows what he wants us to be. We know nothing. I have learned that poignantly this week. Let him guide you. Let him direct you. Let him shape you. I promise that as you do this your life will be easier and happier.

I know that God knows each of us and I know that he loves us more then we can imagine.

Hope you all have a great week,

Sister Aase 

Trial Experiences

Hello! 

I first would love to say a big Happy Father’s Day to all the great dads out there. I hope you all had great days and had a lot of people tell you how important you are. You truly make a difference in the life of all your kids and grand-kids and people all around you. 

So this week we had a Zone Conference. Zone Conferences always bring feelings of inadequacy, but also feelings of hope and of the Spirit and that's what I personally like to focus on. This Zone Conference, in particular, was super cool. We learned all about how to gain more member trust. The coolest part was this little ten-minute visit role-play activity that we did. Sister Robertson and I got to meet the Adams family (*snap snap) and they are the coolest people. (Totally real people by the way). Their daughter (who wasn't able to come to the activity) has a desire to go on a mission but she is hesitant because of her anxiety and depression. Sister Robertson and I were then both able to tell our stories to Sister Adams and she said that we were an answer to her prayers. She is setting up a time with us sometime this week where they will take us out to lunch and we can meet her daughter in person and talk to her. It's pretty cool. 

The cool thing about this too is that this type of stuff happens all the time here. We are constantly getting to use our own what I like to call "trial experiences" to relate to others. It just makes me so grateful for all the hard times I have been through and reminds me that God truly lets us go through those experience for a reason. They are hard but they are for our growth AND so we can help others.

Be grateful for your trial experiences. Let others help you with your trials. Give help to others. I promise as you do these things life becomes a lot more enjoyable and bearable. 

Love, 

Sister Aase 

Welcome to the Jungle

Hello! 

So today I was told by my dear friends Elder Bruce and Elder Bensing that my emails are not funny enough *insert face palm. So today I bring to you a joke provided by your very own Elder Bensing.  "Why can't the T-Rex play the trumpet?".... "Because he's dead!!!!!" ....... ha....ha...ha. Maybe Elder Bruce will come up with a better one but until then let me tell you about my week. 

So today marks my 8-month mark of being a missionary. That's so crazy to me. I seriously still tell people that I just came out. Sister Robertson says I can't say that anymore. It kinda breaks my heart haha. Being a missionary is the best though and there is nowhere I would rather be. 

Let's get to this title shall we haha. So this week we got a call from a less active member who has a son that we have been trying to work with. She has really bad arthritis and so she asked if we could come over and help her with her "garden". We happily said we could come over and we scheduled 2 full hours to help her out.... 2 hours was not enough. The garden we found out had not been worked on all year and last year they had these tomato plants but they never picked them so all these tomatoes just fell to the ground and created more tomato plants. The little garden that she had contained weeds that went up to our chest and no barren soil at all. Everything was either a weed or a plant and it was our job to find out which was which. Yikes, it was hard work. We ended up going the next day as well with our favorite Elders in the district and finishing it, but man alive it was tough. 

The very next day I went on exchanges with Sister Wilcox. The very first house we went to this lady with beaming eyes said "Would you like to see my garden?". My initial thought was to run because after those two days I never wanted to see another garden in my life but alas we went... and I was blown away. She had row upon row of plants that were neatly organized and tucked into place. She had the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen. She had a watering system that just floored me and my faith in gardens was restored.

I asked her "how long does a garden like this take you to maintain? It seems like you would have to spend hours a day!" She responded that she spends 15 minutes daily and never misses a day. She said that she loved her garden and would never want anything to happen to it. 

Thinking about these two gardens this week, my mind was filled with all the ways it can relate to us and our testimonies. A lot of us have a desire to have a testimony, but just like a garden, a testimony takes work. We cannot forget about our testimonies for a year and expect them to be okay. We must work on them daily. The appreciation for our testimonies will grow as we work on them. Instead of it being something that we feel like we have an obligation to take care of, it will soon become something we want to take care of. Something that we want to show to people. Something that gives people hope in building up their own testimony. Something that is beautiful. Testimonies take work but the result is always amazing. 

I love you all and hope you have great weeks ahead. And as I promised here is a great meme given to you by Elder Bruce.