Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Can you believe it will be 2015 this week?

This week was pretty packed full!
We started making new schedules for everyone on Friday and before that, we were making Tour Reports. At the end of each month, we make a report for all the tours to show the relations between people that become new investigators from scheduled/unscheduled tours, and some other fun information. Well, None of those reports had been done since September, so we had the fun task of doing October, November, and December all in 2 days haha. Thankfully we got them done and out of the way and were able to start on the schedules Friday. We will hopefully we done with them on Wednesday!

This morning we had a training form the Missionary Department about Meet the Mormons! It will be showing in the Legacy Theater starting on Friday. We Temple Square Sisters will get to open the movie for each showing! So we will be the ones introducing it to the audience and then greeting them afterward to see how they liked it. We're really excited because the movie is geared to non-members, so we are looking forward to using it as a great missionary tool. We will be able to show it in the Visitor's Centers too. A lot of people that come to the Legacy Theater will probably be members, but I think it is a great tool to help with Members' Missionary Work or even to strengthen their testimony.

We talked with Paul on Wednesday to wish him and his family a Merry Christmas. We were preparing to drop him later that week. He sent us a really nice text that said, "By the way I know it is Christmas Eve and you have much more to do that to converse with me, just hope and pray you are doing well! Merry Christmas and God bless you! One of my greatest blessings and joys this past year has been the conversations we have shared over the last couple months. I hope your testimony, and I know mine, has been strengthened and refined by the refiner's fire. It has also strengthened my personal courage. 1 Ne. 20:10 "For behold, I have refined thee, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." It was a really nice message. We wished him and his family a Merry Christmas then asked him what he thinks Heavenly Father expects him to do in regards to the church, after all he has learned and felt? He said he was going to pray and fast, and hold fast to that which is right and true, and that he will know it by the feeling he gets in his heart. So I guess for now we are not dropping him. He went to church on Sunday and loved it. He met the bishop too. Unfortunately he'll have to go to a different ward now because the wards in the building are switching times and he can't go to the earlier one. We have faith that he really will keep up with what he said. We want to invite him to be baptized this week, so he can have a goal. The analogy I like to use is to have them picture being stranded in the middle of the ocean. There are no landmarks anywhere around and they can't see anything but water and sky. Then we tell them that they're probably not going to swim very fast towards anything. But, if there was an island they could see a ways off, they'd probably swim pretty fast towards that island right? Then we like to explain how having a baptismal date is like that island. Not only does it give us something to work towards, but it gives Heavenly Father something to work with. We are hoping that Paul can be "the one" this transfer. I guess we will see!

I read a talk this week that was really profound. It's called His Grace is Sufficient and it's by Brad Wilcox. If you haven't already you should go read it! I love how he explains grace, and how he explains how the debt has already been paid in full by Jesus Christ, we are not paying our way, but we have access to His grace by exercising our faith. We as members of the church are not earning Heaven, but we are learning heaven, and Heaven won't be heaven for those that aren't heavenly. It is a great talk to share with those that are not members of our faith.

Well I hope you had a Merry Christmas and that 2015 starts off great! I'm excited to see what the new year brings. I guess I can say talk to you next year. Haha

Thanks for all the prayers!

Love,

Short

My email will be super short today, sorry about that...

But it's been a great week!

We had Zone Conference which was way good. We as a mission made a macro plan to measure our goals as a mission to continue our success. We has the highest amount of transfer baptisms last transfer in the history of the mission, and also the highest amount of monthly baptisms! President Poulsen is so good at helping us to be better.

We also got to be fed by a family for Christmas. It was really fun! I'll attach a picture. The mom is from Puerto Rico and they have a big fat bunny that we held. Haha

We saw Elder Cook on our way to Zone Conference! We were crossing the street and he was pulling out of his garage in his apt. complex so I was waving as we crossed to say thanks when I realized, that's Elder Cook! So we kept waving and he waved back and said, Hi Sisters!

Then the next night we were walking home and President Uchtdorf was on the Square enjoying the lights with his family! He had a huge hat on so you couldn't really tell, but security gave it away. It was way cool because no one recognized him so he got to enjoy it in peace!

We had some great lessons with a Japanese boy named Takeru. It's really nice when people are sincerely seeking!

We are probably going to drop Paul this week, he is not willing to listen to the spirit unfortunately. But we just know that Heavenly Father just has someone prepared for us.

Lauren is doing good but we didn't get to call her last week. We'll have to call her this week!

Well that's all we have time for but I'll tell you more when I call on Thursday! Talk to you soon! 

Love

Happy 28th Anniversary to my parents!

Well week 1 was a success!

We gave a bunch of trainings and had to do a ton of little things like fixing bugs in schedules, and lots of other things but we have seen a lot of miracles. Sister Ichikawa is an awesome missionary. She is an excellent teacher and is focused on her purpose. Because of that, our goals for the transfer is the same. We want to teach as much as possible, so we have had more time to teach in the past week than we did last transfer. I think it's because we have set it as a priority. We've been able to set goals and make plans together. We have been making time for things, and choosing to delegate other things. I'm not sure if you've heard of the Urgent and Important chart, but if you picture a quad chart kind of like a geno map chart (I don't remember what you call it) from biology where if you stick the A characteristic and B characteristic you get AB, etc. I don't know if this makes sense haha. But if you picture it with Urgent on the top left, Not urgent on the top right, Important on the bottom left, not important on the bottom right, you can kind of map decisions. We can prioritize things according to their urgency and importance. So I think that's what we've been trying to do, focus on the things that urgent and important, get them done, and then go teach as much as possible. Hopefully that made sense!

We had an awesome experience on Friday. I was on a short exchange with Sister Penalba (Panama) because our companions had come back from outbound and had a meeting. It was like 4:30 and Sister Penalba hadn't eaten lunch yet, so we were gonna run down and eat for a couple minutes.We were walking past the Tabernacle where the Standby line for the Christmas Concert had already started to form, when a Senior missionary stopped us and said that there were some nonmembers in line and they had some questions, so he wanted us to go over and answer their questions. We went over and started talking to them. Their names were Jim and Kathy from North Dakota. They are Catholic. They said that we might have wrong expectations, because they were just curious about some points of the church. Well we got to talking and they liked how we don't make people give up what they believe but we invite them to come and get more good things. They asked, "where can we purchase more material we can read about your church?" So we said, we will go get something that will help. We brought them copies of the Book of Mormon and taught them all about it. They were amazed! And the spirit was so strong. They said what can we give you for these? And we of course said nothing. Well, Kathy had been trying to get tickets to the Christmas Concert for 5 years but no luck, so they were the 6th people in line. We told them they had pretty good chances of getting in. We shared with them about us as missionaries, and how we can help them learn more for themselves to know if this could be true and if there is more about Christ they could learn. They were interested and gave their contact information. Well later after we exchanged back, we were walking down to go have dinner and we walked past the Tabernacle. We went over to say hi so I could introduce Sister Ichikawa and a different Senior missionary stopped us and said that he had leanred we had talked with them and that they were interested in the Gospel so he was wondering if he could find 2 tickets to the Conference Center if we would walk them over. We were shocked! The CC was getting full, so they weren't going to let anyone from the standby line in probably, but he went through the trouble of finding two tickets and we waled them over. Kathy had tears in her eyes and they were so thankful. We texted them the next day so they could have our phone number and they said they loved the concert. Then the next day, they texted us and apologized and said that they have serious commitments that are going to make them decline our offer of teaching them more. We are so heart broken! The conversation with them was SO special and the spirit taught all of us. We are hoping we can save it some way. We will keep you updated! They are so prepared for the Gospel, and the Temple!

Paul has been a little tricky this week....We will have to work with him a little bit more to help him progress. Right now he feels like the church is really good but not for him. We hope that the spirit will teach him and he will focus on what Heavenly Father is trying to tell him.

Lauren is doing really good! I always like talking with her. She is really open, even though she has had a really hard past. She has been praying!! She said that she hasn't felt anything, but that she isn't giving up and that she will keep trying. We had a great talk with her about being willing to act on our faith, and give Heavenly Father som3thing he can work with to answer our prayers. We talked about listening and what answers she can expect, and I think it really helped her. The spirit was really strong, and she learned new things she had never learned before. i shared a story about losing keys and praying to find them, and after she said that she was brought up being taught never to pray for little things like that because God doesn't have time for those kind of things. It was so sad! But we were able to teach her that the things that are important to us are important to Him, and He always has time for us, He wants to hear from us and is willing to help with anything. She has committed to reading the Book of Mormon and praying each day so we are excited to follow up on that.

Sister Ichikawa contacted this Japanese guy in the North Visitor's center the other day. He is now a new investigator and hopefully will start to progress! It's cool how things like that just fall into our hands. We were just there for our assignment and a member friend brought him up to her and they just started talking and then he was really interested in the church.

Well that's all that we have time for! We love being companions and we love being able to be here as missionaries. We are so lucky!

Happy Anniversary to my parents on Thursday!

love you!

Love 

p.s. we got to go to the Christmas Concert!

(No Title)

Ah week 1, a new transfer already. My new companion is Sister Ichikawa, she is from Japan! She is serving outbound in Las Vegas right now, but she'll be back on Transfer day which is Wednesday. Ironically I was chosen to pick her up from the airport so that will be fun! I don't really know her, but she is super sweet!!

We have had such a crazy week trying to prepare for transfers. We got the pyramid (transfer information) last week and had to start making schedules all over again. The plus side is now that we've made schedules a million times, we are really fast at it. So we are almost done and it is only Monday!

Well one of the highlights of our week was before we got the transfer information, we took a tour. It was two guys from El Salvador. Gabriel and Umberto. One of them goes to the U, so he has heard a lot about the church. They had lots of questions. We ended up spending 2 hours with them! We taught them a lot. We shared about the Restoration, the Plan of Salvation, the Word of Wisdom, and the Temple. It was really cool. They both referred and we're going to keep teaching them! Well, actually I think Sister Asay and her next companion will but we are happy we got to show them around.

Paul is looking up! Yess we are so happy. He has been keeping an open mind and heart and I guess you could say he has seen the light haha. He wants to get baptized and shares about the Book of Mormon with everyone. It's really cool to see how God communicates with His children.

The First Presidency Devotional was SO good. Sister Asay and I got to watch the rebroadcast because we went to it last Christmas. I loved the talks. They were so good. I especially loved how President Eyring pointed out the Spirit and made us all accountable to it.The stories told by Sister Oscarson and Elder Christofferson were so good. I think what I liked most about it is that it can be shown and applies to everyone. It helps us remember how Christmas started, and how we can become more like the Savior. I loved how President Eyring said that the Christmas lights in the Conference Center symbolize our joy, and that the Savior came in to the world with light and lights were sent to represent Him. Jesus Christ really is the light and life of the world!

We got to talk with Lauren a little bit this week, she has been trying to pray!!!! Breakthrough! haha She's super busy with work but she is doing really good.

The Christus assignment is my favorite thing about Christmas. We get to testify to literally hundreds of people in an hour that Jesus Christ lives and that we know it. It is the coolest thing and probably my favorite thing about the mission. I don't care that most of them are already members because no one is ever done with coming closer to Jesus Christ. There's no cap, no point where we can say, I don't think I can get any closer to Jesus Christ. So we hope that our small testimonies and testaments of Christ are manifested by the Holy Ghost as we speak, and that the people who come up to see a statue and get a picture will leave with more than they intended. It's neat to see when you can tell that that has happened, and that people are changed because of the spirit they have felt, and the spirit that has whispered to them.

As I see Sisters going home this week, I can't help but feel grateful that it's not me, but sad because it will be me soon. I know I say it a lot but i am just so grateful for the chance I have to be a missionary here in this mission. I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity that has changed me forever. I really think that if I would not have chosen to come on a mission, it would have taken me 10 years or more to make the progress in these 18 months. It's so cool to me that Heavenly Father lets us come on missions and teach people His perfect Gospel when we are so young. It really is the best thing for us, and helps mold us into His instruments, His people that He needs us to be. I think missions prepare us for just about anything so I am grateful once again to be a missionary. And just because we are not full-time set apart missionaries doesn't mean that we aren't expected to be missionaries, we are! We can bring others to the gospel each day :)

One of my favorite parts of the Christus narration is when He says "Learn of me." He doesn't say learn about me but learn of me. I think we can best do that by trying to become like Him. We become like Him as we follow His teachings and reach beyond ourselves and in turn, acquire His attributes that are what we ultimately need in order to reach our exaltation. As we do this, and act with real intent on His teachings, He has promised us that not only will we become converted to the Gospel but we will bring other souls to Him. Others will notice and will follow, and we will all experience the great joy that's promised in DC 18: "15 And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father! And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!" And after all, God's whole plan and purpose is that we have eternal joy. It is the Plan of Happiness, not the Plan of misery or frustration or defeat but our Heavenly Father just wants us to be happy.

As we all make that our purpose this week, I know that we will feel ourselves becoming more like the Savior.

I love you!

Love



P.s. The picture is from Staff Meeting yesterday!

Elder Perry's so spry!

Hey!

I hope everyone had great Thanksgivings! We sure did. It was perfect. We love the Duke family! We wish we could come back for Christmas.

On Thanksgiving, the Square was closed from 12-6 so Sister Duke came and picked us up at12:15 and brought us back at 6:30, so we had all day spent with their family! They have 4 sons, and about 15 grandkids. 3 of the sons and about 12 grandkids were there for Thanksgiving. They were all just so nice and way funny, we just felt like part of the family! Sister Duke took our pictures and printed them out so we could have gratitude pages to share with the rest of the family. We wrote what we are thankful for and shared it with everyone. We got to help her prepare dinner and talk with them about their family and their missionary work. They are going to leave on a mission in June. She had so much food prepared! There was everything you could imagine on the table. We got so much food and somehow managed to eat it all (missionaries can't leave anything on their plates!) Then when it was time for dessert, they piled up our dessert plates and I thought I was going to be sick. Really though, I was contemplating making myself throw up I was so full haha but I couldn't do it because it tasted so good! After dinner, they drove us back with a bag full of leftovers! We've been eating them all week. It was such a great Thanksgiving!

The Christmas season has officially started on Temple Square! it's been a little dysfunctional so far haha it seems like no one was ready for Christmas this year or something....The nativity didn't work the first night, and all the crowds were super upset. Then the AV people didn't put a microphone by the Christus so the sisters had to run and get one in the mission office. Plus they have choirs this year on risers with microphones singing in the lobby of the North Visitor's Center with chairs set up for an audience so that combined with the He is the Gift (i will share more later!) things going on, and the line for the Christus, lost kids, and people coming in and out, it is super hard for us to do missionary work, no one can even hear us when we speak. But, Heavenly Father always provides a way! We got to have a shift at the Christus on Saturday, and I really just love that! For that shift, Sister Asay and I were at the bottom with the rope, cutting off the groups as they went up to the Christus. It was way fun to talk with everyone. People would be super upset because they waiting in line and then they would get cut off right before they went up, but then we would just talk with them and get to know them and they'd be happy when it was their time to go up! After all, people are about to go see Jesus, how can they be upset? That's why I love Christmas so much. Even though it's been a little crazy trying to work everything out, it's' all good because it's the season of Jesus Christ. It really is the most wonderful time of the year, especially in the visitor's centers! But it's been super cool to see all the things that the church has done with He is the Gift.

A guy from the Missionary Department came and gave a training about how we can best use He is the Gift.He told us all about what the church is doing to get the word out about it and whoa, it's crazy! The church bought about 6 HUGE billboards in times square in NYC and others in LA. They also bought the front page of YouTube. They fixed up 2 walls in the North Visitor's Center with the He is the Gift red color and nativity scene on the wall and hung a TV to play the video all day. They replaced the New Testament Paintings in the NVC with still shots from the Bible Christmas videos. They also redid a section in the South Visitor's center in the same reddish orange color and picture with he is the gift. Then there's mormon.org and the Ensign for December. We have boxes and boxes of the pass-along cards and he taught us how we should share it with everyone. It's a pretty huge campaign! The coolest thing is that it was all designed by Elder Bednar and Elder Nelson. So inspired!

To be honest, I wasn't super impressed with the video but I liked it the more I watched it. It has a really great message, but I was comparing it to Because of Him, the one that came out in Easter, and I liked that one more. But I really love the message of He is the Gift, and I think it's great for member missionary work and self improvement. It is really cool to show to members and ask them what gift they are going to give to the Savior this year. There are so many reasons why this church is just so cool. Haha.

Well Paul turned a little sour this week :( He texted us on Tuesday, sharing some things he learned on anti-websites and said that he understood why we told him to stay on lds websites because they made him sad. But he didn't stop. He kept going on anti websites and began to text us what he was "learning." He said some pretty bad things about the church and things that we won't go into detail about. But we sent him a really long text reminding him of what he had felt earlier in the week, how the Holy Ghost had testified to him of truth and how he had felt that light of knowledge and truth from God. We told him how God has been speaking to him through the Holy Ghost and how his life has changed since he started learning more from us and through the Book of Mormon. We reminded him that God really loves and knows him, and wouldn't give him that confirmation through the Holy Ghost just to rip it apart days later through new information that brought darkness and confusion into his life. God doesn't work like that. He wants us to be happy but He also wants us to trust him. We told him to pray and ask God for truth and to help him find the light. He didn't really respond but on Sunday he texted us and said that he went to Sacrament meeting with a question in his heart, and it was answered. He really liked the meeting because they talked about serving others, and his question was answered through a scripture I guess, and he was told that he needs to trust God, not man. Which is what he was doing. So he is looking up! I want to share with him sometime today or tomorrow something I've learned. Technology and the internet can crash, books can burn, people can die, but confirmations and feelings from the Holy Ghost are infinite and eternal. He's existed from the beginning of time and will exist for eternity. A true testimony from the Holy Ghost never fails. Sometimes, because we are imperfect beings, we can forget that confirmation, and that's okay. Heavenly Father understands. All He asks is that we ask for that confirmation again, and He is more than willing to give it to us! Just like is says in 3rd Nephi 27: "And verily I say unto you, whatsoever things ye shall ask the Father in my name shall be given unto you.Therefore, ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for he that asketh, receiveth; and unto him that knocketh, it shall be opened." As we put our lives in harmony with the truth, the Lord increases our light and understanding. It's like a math equation haha but Heavenly Father really loves us. He will always answer our prayers through the Holy Ghost. Just like it says in D&C: "Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?" Those moments that we get to feel the Holy Ghost are so sacred and we should do all we can to not only act with real intent, but live in a way that we can gain more light and knowledge through the Holy Ghost. That's why this church is so awesome, because it's the only one where we can be baptized by water, AND fire through the Gift of the Holy Ghost!

I got to see Chenwei! I will attach pictures. He is doing so good. He came for Thanksgiving because he got time off of school, and because he is from China, he doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving and so coming to Salt Lake was a perfect vacation for him. He really enjoyed it and it was so good to see him!

A couple days ago when we were opening the square (we open all the buildings), we saw this guy with his huge dog walking on Temple Square. I stopped to tell him he can't have his dog there, but that he could go on the other side, and we all got to talking. His name is Ethan and he was here for a book tour, he write books about something to do with the number 4. Eventually it turned into a Gospel conversation and we were able to give him a Book of Mormon which he was way excited to read. We're gonna teach him more about it and why it is so important.

Later that day, we were stationed on a desk, and this Philipino family walked by. I started talking with them and turns out the dad met with missionaries in the 1980's and read the Book of Mormon but never got baptized. We talked about the Book of Mormon and the LDS church and beliefs, and I guess I was a little too bold for him because he became totally uninterested in the conversation and began to roll his eyes. But his wife became very interested in the conversation. She really wanted to know how she could go to the temple so her family could be together forever. She ended up taking a Book of Mormon back home to San Francisco and she wants us to call her to teach her more! Hopefully her husband;s heart will be softened so they can all learn together! It has been my dream to find a family to teach since the beginning of the mission; I have been thinking about it a lot recently, so it was so cool to have this opportunity!

Oh man I have to tell you about our last Preparation day...it was so crazy. We were dealing with a ton of things all day, phone calls back and forth, trying to arrange things, all while trying to email. Then we went to get some lunch, and I realized I left my missionary debit card in my coat back home. So Sister Asay paid for mine and I decided I would get the groceries after we stopped to pick up my card. Well we got it and I got back in the car and had it in my mouth while I was driving. I realized how gross that is because there must be so many germs on a debit card so I put it in the console in between the seats. I got out of the car when we got to Walmart and then remembered I needed my card so I went to grab it, and after looking for a little while realilzed it fell underneath the little drawer of the console, and fell back way underneath like where the AC is. We realized it was impossible to reach after trying for almost an hour. By this time, our time with the car was up so we only had time to go in and get the bare necessities with other funds. It was such a stressful day we were so bummed! I realized I'd probably have to get another card which would take weeks. Well, the next day, Elder Moore (he and his wife are the mission secretaries) came and helped us. He unscrewed some things, stuck his head in some crevices and used some weird tool and got it out of the abyss! Hallelujah haha we were so happy. Then that day just went super awesome and we had s many miracles. Long story short, sometimes we have to pass through storms to get to the rainbow!

Well I just can't believe this is the last week of the Transfer. It really is just going by so fast.

Today we had to wash the car so we were coming out of the COB garage and while we were stopped at the light, we looked over and Elder Perry was waiting to cross the street in front of us! So we rolled down our windows and said Hi Elder Perry! And as he crossed the street, he waved and said, wow a car full of ya, huh? Well, don't drive too fast! Haha and gave one of his big cheesy smiles. He is so cute!! Crossing the street all spry at 90 years old. Haha.

Okay now that I have written the biggest email ever, it's time to go. Sister Asay and I are going to get cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory for our last week together!

Thanks for all the support and prayers sent my way, I hope you have a great week!

Love,