Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Annie has been out 9 months!! Halfway!

Hello everyone!
This week was absolutely amazing! We had so many good things happen!
first of all Urša wasn't able to come to Družinski Večer this week...sounds like a bad thing right? Well guess what she did? She had a 2 hour family home evening at home with her mom and sister! Her mom was asking her about God...I can't remember exactly what...but she pulled out Alma 30:44! (I'll let you look it up and be amazed:))! She is such a great missionary!
Also this week I feel like I have gotten more bold and more confident in sharing the gospel. We went contacting one morning and it just felt good! I was able to say things that I would never have dreamed of saying a couple weeks before. I am understanding more and more each day and have found that, although my slovene is ages away from being perfect(or even good;)) I can communicate with people the same way I do in English...maybe just not as smoothly. We also committed a few of our English class students to baptism, with no yeses, but we combined it with a lesson on how we find truth and we really got them to open up and really think about the source of all truth and how we can tap into it. It was really neat for me and I have realized that it is time for me to "Get Out of the Boat" and exercise more faith As pres. Rowe has been emphasizing! Two cheers for an amazing inspired mission president!
We had a first english lesson with one woman who is amazing! We talked basically the whole time about life and which led wonderfully into gospel topics. We ended talking about families and gave her a Family Proclamation to the world. Guess what? She agreed with every word of it!!! In Slovenia? NO WAY!!!!!! I have so much hope for her excepting the gospel and am sooo excited to teach her more. When she read the part about eternal families and that we can live together forever she said Really? now that I didn't know! ...this week we will teach the plan of salvation:)
Also another little miracle of the week. We have a less active member who has recently been coming back to church. She didn't come last week and we found we didn't have her correct number... so we decided to go visit her. We knew which blok she lived in but not the floor and the entry door and all of the hallway doors are locked so...we didn't know what we were going to do once we got there...but we figured we would give it a try. We got there and rang her doorbell (there is a panel of all of the doorbells on the outside of the main door.) and there was no answer. We had something that we wanted to leave her so we still wanted to get in. Luckily some people unlocked the door for us....then we had the hall doors to take into account and which side of the hall did she live on? We went up to her floor and the one door was magically unlocked! We found her door and were about to knock when we heard the keys turning and she came out. perfect timing. We had an amazing lesson about the atonement and got her new number! Yeah all the doors and locks probably don't make much sense...but to put it simply the Lord intervened and we experienced a little miracle!
We also had a branch picnic this week and Magdalena came. We also made contact with a couple of members friends who are now potentials! We are excited about that.
Ok I have a couple of other little things I wanted to share but I have already written too much! Once again this week has been great and the Lord is blessing this mission! I am so grateful for this gospel and for the opportunity I have to share it!
I love you all!
Love,
Sestra Powell

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

letter 9/18/11

Pozdravljeni dragi brati in sestre!
haha that is how everyone here opens their talks on Sundays so I thought I'd start my letter like that:) So. This week was a lot faster than last week! I can hardly believe its Monday again already! We had a lot of really good things happen. Emy our little friend from the Philippines is quite the missionary! On Sunday she brought one of her Slovene friends to church and set up a lesson with us! She called during the week and said Katja couldn't come but she would bring one of her friends Margie who is also from the Philippines! The lesson was pretty ok. We spoke in English...and It was really hard!! I never thought I would say that but it was true! I kept on throwing in Slovene words. Kind of a bitter sweet experience because that means I'm learning Slovene but we were also trying to teach the gospel and it was a little rough. The Spirit was there though so that is all that matters:)
Our investigator Helena read from the Book of Mormon every day this week!! We are so excited she seems to be doing well...now we just have to get her to stop going to mass and come to church! (she has paid for a bunch of masses to be held in her mothers honor and won't miss them...every sunday...*sigh*).
And 2 huge pieces of news!!!
KSENIJA WAS BAPTISED!!! I was sooooooo happy. The Elders have been teaching her and from what we heard and what I have seen she has made leaps and bounds from where she was before. She was so happy and I am so glad that she continued to learn. We were going to have a musical number at the baptism...but Pres. Majc thought it would be better for the members to do it... we agreed, although it would have been fun:) The baptism was really neat and I felt the Spirit so strongly. I felt the Lord's love for her and his joy that she was making this big step in her life. It was a neat experience for me.
Second piece of news,
Tadeja is back from Switzerland!! She has been gone all summer and just got back. She came to church and we are going to have a lesson with her on Wednesday. I am so excited for her because now that she is back I'm sure her baptism won't be far away. Good stuff!

We also had a really good training meeting with Pres. Rowe this week. We talked alot about being agents...those who act not those who are acted upon. I took so much from it and Sister Staheli and I had a really good goal setting session afterwards. I have never been more excited about missionary work than when we got done with that companionship inventory and I hope that excitement continues to grow! Anyway it has been a good week and I am excited to see what the next weeks bring! sorry once again a scattered letter. I never feel like I can adequately describe all that is going on so it sounds insincere...it's not, I promiseOk well I'd better get going.
I love you all!
Love,
Sestra Powell

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Letter 9/12/11

Hello everyone!
So this week has been a little slow as far as numbers go...but there are so many good things going on at the same time! It is interesting to see the different ways you can view success as a missionary. We only had 2 member present lessons this week but one of them was the best thing that could have happened for our investigator helena. We invited Radmil ( one of our most incredible members here! He is one of the most receptive people to the spirit it is amazing! He's been a member for less than a year!) on the lesson and had a great lesson about what sister staheli calls the magic 4 Prayer, reading, coming to church, and obedience. Radmil was amazing and our investigator, Helena, committed to read the book of Mormon each day and she ended her prayer in the name of Jesus Christ for the very first time! It seems like something so simple but it gave us hope that through very small steps this sweet woman will eventually accept the gospel and be willing to sacrifice her traditional catholic background for the best!

Guess what?! We can start english class again! we have gone back and forth a couple of timesbetween not being able to and being able to.... but I'm really excited to start it up again:)
We also got the opportunity to go to the Kralj family's home... I think I may have written about it a little while ago. It was a lot of fun. They live in a little village about an hour outside of ljubljana and it is beautiful! We helped them pick plums to make marmalade they made us stuffed peppers and streudel....sp? for lunch. It was so good!

We also had a lesson with Marjetka the Vidras friend. We met her husband for the first time and it was pretty interesting. He is a really fun guy but a skeptic and states his opinion readily. Once again it struck me how much people rely on their own wisdom to explain things they don't understand. I have realized just how much we as a human race don't understand...and there is reason for it. That way we have to rely on faith and realize we don't know much and understand even less. We have to rely on the knowledge that God gives us through scriptures, prophets and personal revelation. I have realized that we can't reason away all of the different views people have about life...because some of them make sense. We have to rely on the witnesses we recieve from the spirit and go forward with faith knowing that God is in control. ... that doesn't sound as clear as it did in my head..joj. Anyway. it's been an overall pretty good week and today we're going to try to find the zoo! Živalski Vrt (animal garden baha!):)
I love you all and thank you for the love prayers and support!
Love,
Sestra Powell

Monday, September 5, 2011

9/5/11

Hello Family and Friends!

This week has been a little bit slow....probably because last week was so exciting in contrast anything would be a little slow:) I am really enjoying working with Sister Staheli! Her teaching style is similar to mine and so we have both found ourselves doing more talking on lessons than we are used to so we are both growing a lot! I personally think we are going to work really well together and am very excited to see what we can accomplish! She is a great missionary:) We did a lot of contacting and tracting the first couple of days this week with absolutely no success and tried tracking down some referals and less actives with even less succes...haha yeah it's possible. We had some good lessons with some members and with Zdenka and Helena! Sister Staheli has brought some great new perspectives and ideas for our investigators and I really hope we can get them progressing faster. We have also been helping a couple women clean their houses. I don't know if I told you about Duša...she is a woman we are helping to quit smoking and as part of that process she wanted to clean out her apartment...which was an excellent idea...but may take several years. She would qualify for clean sweep in an instant and unfortunately Sister Staheli and I can't spend more than a couple hours with her each week so...we'll let you know how that goes:)

One thing this week that has been really neat for me this week is revelation!! Pres. Rowe has really been emphasizing that we need to have more revelation in this work and as I have prayed for more and that I would understand that which was given to me I have been flooded with amazing insights for myself and for our investigators. I am so grateful to the Lord and the fact that he communicates with us. We tracted into a muslim man this week and he was trying to get us to read the Koran and said that when we had read it then he would talk to us. We talked to him for awhile and as I was thinking about it later and compared my experience with him to our investigators and all the people we talk to on the street. it struck me that so many people don't know these things for themselves. They believe it because that is what makes sense to them in their minds. They don't seek it out from God. They don't rely on revelation which is the rock of the gospel as Jesus says in the new testament. We can know the truth of all things by the Holy Ghost and too many people don't know that! Our prophet receives revelation from God and he is the only religous leader who can receive revelation for the world! That is incredible! I am so grateful we have God's word. I am grateful we can find out it's truth for ourselves and I can say that I have! I'm afraid that is kind of scattered...but take it for what it's worth:)

Thank you for all your prayers and support! I love you all!
Love,
Sestra Powell