General Conference

April 8, 2013

Dear Family,

Wasn't General Conference wonderful! I watched three of the sessions at the church to keep a woman in our ward company and because our investigator who just got baptized came to one of the sessions. Sister Pearce and another family invited us to watch conference with them at their house. I really wanted to. Especially since I don't feel like we get to spend a lot of time with Sister Pearce. Only in the morning before she goes to work, and at night before we go to bed. But we had been invited to come to lunch between sessions by a neighborhood of families in our ward. (There are four of them in one neighborhood! ...that probably sounds funny since our whole neighborhood is in our ward. ha ha But it isn't like that out here. :) And we offered to watch the last session with a less active woman in our ward who has health problems. We tried calling her on Saturday, and decided to just stop by before the session on Sunday. She told us that she wasn't having a good day and wasn't feeling well, but when we reminded her of General Conference she invited us right in. She is so sweet! I just love her! She told us that we aren't allowed to leave without telling her where we are going. :) She is usually super talkative. But her attention was completely fixed on the screen as we listened to each of the speakers.

It was neat to hear as President Monson talked about all the missionaries. We are a part of that 65,000 and Spencer is part of the 20,000! Oh boy! It's so exciting!

Will you tell Grandma Great that I love her all the way from Jacksonville, Florida?! :)
p.s. A girl in our ward said, Why did the chicken cross the road? ...to get to the Missionaries on the other side. :)

I think the highlight of my week this week was when we were out SMACTing. (I never ever ever thought I would ever say that in my whole entire mission... or life.) We received a couple media referrals a few months ago. We have tried contacting them, but haven't had much success. Okay... one of them was an older couple and they were fantastic! They seemed super interested and we thought for sure they were going to be baptized. But for some reason they haven't been returning our calls or answering the door. We are encouraged to tract (or in nicer terms SMACT) around the house of media referrals. We were sent there for a reason. Even if it might not be them. Sp we knocked on all of the doors in this circle. We were getting to the last few houses and none of them had been interested. I felt like maybe this was God's punishment since I hadn't talked to someone earlier that day. So maybe he had taken away the Spirit and my ability to connect with people. I thought maybe we should come back another time when God trusted me more. Instead we decided to endure to the end and finish the circle. The next house we went to was a nice family that we ended up talking to for half an hour. We hope to visit them again in the near future. It was just a tender mercy that we found someone who was nice and willing to talk to us. God loves us even when we make mistakes. :)

The other one we tried multiple times and ended up leaving a note on their door and said to give us a call. The mom called and told us that her 10 year old son accidentally requested us on mormon.org. (I would still like to know how he got there.) She asked us not to come by. To make a long story short...er, when we reported that we had contacted this family to the referral center it didn't register. So we got many notices from our mission leaders that we hadn't contacted them. We decided that this must mean that we needed to go back. Maybe their hearts had changed. We went to their house a couple nights ago. As we started walking to their driveway, the thought came to my head that maybe we were sent here for someone else. Then I thought, No. We already knocked on all of these doors. Then a house caught my eye, and the thought came again. I had an inner battle for a few minutes. I'm sure Sister Chappell was thinking that I was going crazy. We decided to knock on the door of that house. No one came to the door. Slightly confused and discouraged we started walking away. And a car pulled up. A man came got out of the car with a little girl. He was on the phone, but asked what he could help us with. We told him that we had a message for families and asked if there was a better time that we could come back. He said, "Come back tomorrow around the same time. I was a door to door salesman for 4 years. I'll listen to whatever you have to say." :) :) :) Oh me of little faith. And yet God still blesses me and allows me to see his tender mercies. We went back the next day. We didn't have much time to talk to him, but he said that someone from our church had talked to him about families before and family was really important to him. He already had two copies of the Book of Mormon! We plan on going back again this week! :) This family is going to be eternal! That is my goal! :)

I love you, eternal family! Thank you so much for your love and support! I hope you have a fantastic week!

I love you!!

Love,
Sister Scott

Faith as a Mustard Seed

April 1, 2013

Dear Family,

Tell Easter B... no, no, no... E. Bunny thank you for the package! I have been trying to exercise my patience, and I waited until Easter to open it. So I'm glad that you didn't send it any earlier. ;) I loved all of the pictures and the sticky notes! Thank you so much! You sure do know how to make a missionary feel loved!

I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about p day last week ... Since they cut down the time that missionaries spend at the MTC, we needed to get back in sync with them. So they made last transfer only 5 weeks. Since I am training Sister C, we will be together for at least two transfers. So we are still in Julington Creek with Sister Pearce. :) And I have a little girl in the ward praying for me that I will stay here forever, so we will see what happens. :) (note: not FOREVER. Just on my mission. -I knew what was going through your minds. :) I laughed when I read that you gave each other bunny ears, since you couldn't find the wire ones. ha ha It's good to hear that some things haven't changed. :)

So did everything go okay with all of Spencer's mission/visa paperwork?

Yesterday was so wonderful! We were able to see one of our investigators get baptized! It was a very powerful program. A man who was baptized a little over four years ago gave the talk on baptism and his wife, who knew our investigator from teaching school and was kind of a mentor to him, gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. And they brought in the Spirit so well. It makes me happy just thinking about yesterday!
It was such a miracle finding him. His parents are less active and they are super busy, and the only way we could ever meet with him was if his mom was there. The fact that we caught them during her little window of being home, was a miracle. Then finding out that he wasn't baptized and his parents having no animosity towards the church, therefore, allowing him to be baptized was a miracle. And now it is a miracle that they can be an eternal family! :) I can't wait to print off pictures for him to send to his grandma. He said that she was so happy when he called and told her that he was getting baptized. Who knows how long she has been waiting for this. :) I love MIRACLES!! I read in Mosiah 8 today, and in verse 18 it says, "Thus God has provided a means that man, through faith, might work mighty miracles; therefore he becometh a great benefit to his fellow beings." So through our faith, we can help other people and work mighty miracles. Faith as a mustard seed. Mine might not be that big yet...but I'm getting closer. :) I think I have talked about him a little bit. But we have been working with a part member family that is an older couple. We go and do service for them about every other week. The husband, who isn't a member, always makes a list of projects for us. 

When sisters were first put in this area, just before I got here, he was a little sad/worried, I guess, because he didn't think we were going to be able to help him. But we have proven to him that we can do anything the elders can do, if not more and better. ;) I told him that my dad was a woodworking teacher and that he would be so proud if he saw me working with some of these tools. So every time we go over there he says, "Are you ready to make your dad proud?" :) So I'm learning lots of good skills out here. And boys like girls with skills, right? ;)

Most of all I feel like I have really been learning to depend on and recognize the promptings of the Spirit. And I know that this is the most important tool that I will use in my entire life.

I love you all so much!! Thank you for your love and support! Have a wonderful week!

Love,

 Sister Scott

Sweet Sewing Skills

March 25, 2013

Dear Family,

How is life? We are doing pretty good here! We are having a baptism this week! Everything seems to be set! He has been coming to church, we have taught him just about everything, and he is reading the Book of Mormon and keeping all of his commitments! It is so great! I can hardly wait!

This week I got to put my sewing skills to use! Thank you Grandma Scott for teaching me how to fish instead of just doing it all for me. :) A couple days ago we got a call from some former investigators of the elders who served in this area. We gone over to see them a couple times, and they are really nice. They asked a friend of theirs for our number and called to ask us if either of us knew how to sew. I got out my little sewing kit and we drove over there. Their oldest daughter had a dance competition and needed shorts sewn to her costume in half an hour. By hand. Thankfully I had practiced that before my mission on the skirts grandma made. This definitely wasn't my finest work. But considering that I only had half an hour to do it, I think it turned out pretty good. I told them that we can arrange a time, when we have more time, for us to come over and I can do it better. Which is kind of like a return appointment. :)

I am excited because we will be studying about the Book of Mormon this week for the 12 week training program! If our investigators are reading the Book of Mormon and know that it is true, then they can become truly converted. And their foundation will be strong. For them to build their foundation upon friends, no matter how strong their friends might be, it would be like building your house on the sand. Unreliable. But as it says in Helaman 5:12, we must build our foundation upon Jesus Christ and we will be able to withstand the storms that the adversary throws at us. I love the Book of Mormon! Why can't everyone?

Sister C is doing really well. She is doing well with the 12 week training program and she is all up to date. She is opening her mouth more and more each week. I can't believe how fast time is flying!

Facebook seems to be going well. Something that was pretty neat that happened this week- I found a lady who was baptized in St. Mary's while I was there by the elders. We had become pretty close, but she moved to Virginia. I had found out that she might be struggling with the church, which made me so sad. I found her on facebook and we got to talk last week. She asked me questions about Patriarchal Blessings and told me a little bit about her ward. So it seems that she must be doing well! 

I hope you are all doing well! I love you so much!

Love,

 Sister Scott