So to start off a short funny story... Last Monday I bought these fake glasses so that I could look more intelligent of something anyway I was driving with them on and totally ran over this curb in a parking lot and the other Kearney missionaries were behind me and now I get made fun off cause my intelligent glasses didn't work... haha

Anyway I am staying in Kearney! wahoo. So is my comp. We are both pretty excited and we know we have a lot to do in the next transfer!

The other exciting news is we got a new ward mission leader. he is soooo awesome. He is going to make us work so hard. It is going to be great! Speaking of work this morning we went to his ranch and helped out for two hours. It was so fun and cold. the sun rises here are beautiful and it feels good to get out and do physical work.

Yesterday was the primary program and we had 171 people in sacrament meeting. Which is a 12 year record for the Kearney ward. How cool is that? A lot of people brought their friends to listen to their kids. Hopefully we will get some investigators out of it. that would be so great.

We got like 3 new investigators this last week. We taught this referral from a member the restoration and we are going back this week. I wish more members would get involved with missionary work because the most success comes from members. fo sho.

I gave a training in district meeting this last week. It went pretty well it was on how your obedience reflects your faith. "When obedience stops being an irritant and becomes our quest then God will enable us with power." -President Ezra Taft Benson. That goes to all members of the church because Loyalty is the crowning characteristic of Love. How loyal our we to our Heavenly Father? Anyway i was blessed to have the training go so well.

We had three investigators at church this week. We were pretty excited.

Sorry this letter was so short and all over the place. I am just too busy to write you hahahah I love Kelsey. What a great excuse :) just kidding next week will be longer and better I promise. Keep being amazing. I love you all.

Love, Sister Page

Well hello my dear loved once :) Where to begin.... haha

Monday evening we had family night with my favorite family in the ward. They are so wonderful and crazy. Their little boy looks like Colby when he was that age. It was a good evening and we are starting to focus on helping members help less actives. Our president promised us that every less active we reactivate that a baptism will come from it! :) That night we got a call from a member is the ward who has a ranch in the middle of a corn field haha go figure but anyways he hay got all wet and needed to air out before it started on fire. So Sister Youngberg and i went and moved hay for a couple of hours. It was so much fun. I am sure Grandpa Larry was real proud of me :) hee hee. It is so beautiful here though since we have zero mountains the sunset go on forever and are so pretty. It was a great night.

Tuesday we went on exchanges and we tracting a lot. This one lady really wanted to bible bash with me haha I don't know that bible that well but i do know enough to stand my ground. I just let her say what she had to say then i bore testimony. She said that we get to heaven only by faith nothing else and that our actions don't mean anything. I asked her if she repents and tries to follow the example of Jesus Christ and she said that we had to repent to get to heaven.... so i asked her isn't repentance an action and she said no.... i don't get it. I just makes me realize that this really is the Kingdom of God on earth and that the gospel is perfect. I mean it just makes sense.

Thursday we did a lot of service. We helped the less active in the ward put in a window. It reminded me of doing stuff like that with dad. I miss that. (Love you dad) anyway that evening we finally contacted this referral i was so pumped we have a lesson with her and her husband this Wednesday! wahoo ;)

Friday was when i got my a poem for my stalker... hahaha its funny but at the same time it really freaked me out! We had a wonderful lesson with our 87 year old investigator about temples and guess what.... SHE CAME TO CHURCH YESTERDAY!

Saturday we had a pretty cool experience! We were trying to contact potential investigators and i had this feeling to talk to this girl. she was special needs and someone was coming to pick her up for her new job. This lady pulls up and i wanted to talk to her so bad but they were in a hurry. That night we were going to visit this investigator on the other side of town and as we were driving we saw this man walking and i promised my Heavenly Father that i would do all i could to talk to everyone he puts in my path. So we pulled in front of him like 30 yards got out of the car and he was gone. It was the weirdest thing. So we knocked on the one house he possibly could be gone in and the lady who was driving the car this morning answered the door. We had a wonderful conversation with her. She has some interesting ideas about religion but i know heavenly Father lead us to her for a reason. Pretty amazing.

Sunday was wonderful we had two investigators at church! We were so blessed!

I have really been having a hard time understanding why if this is Gods Kingdom why so many people reject it. I read this talk by Elder Holland (leave it to Elder Holland to save the day right?) and he says "Anyone who does any kind of missionary work will have occasion to ask, Why is this so hard? Why doesn’t it go better? Why can’t our success be more rapid? Why aren’t there more people joining the Church? It is the truth. We believe in angels. We trust in miracles. Why don’t people just flock to the font? Why isn’t the only risk in missionary work that of pneumonia from being soaking wet all day and all night in the baptismal font?
You will have occasion to ask those questions. I have thought about this a great deal. I offer this as my personal feeling. I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionaries and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary.
Now, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about anything anywhere near what Christ experienced. That would be presumptuous and sacrilegious. But I believe that missionaries and investigators, to come to the truth, to come to salvation, to know something of this price that has been paid, will have to pay a token of that same price.
For that reason I don’t believe missionary work has ever been easy, nor that conversion is, nor that retention is, nor that continued faithfulness is. I believe it is supposed to require some effort, something from the depths of our soul."

Love you so much! Keep smiling and enjoying your wonderful life.

Love, Sister Page

P.S. it has been really windy here but no worries i tots have a walk in closet to sleep in  when i get scared hahaha holla

 

P.P.S also this week is transfers. I have no idea what is going to happen so please pray fro me. I will know Tuesday morning. Also Tuesday morning I am giving a training in district meeting. so it will be a exciting day haha

I hope that my wonderful family had a great week :) conference was wonderful and if you didn't watch all sessions... repent and go watch them. haha but seriously. I truly believe that every problem in the world can be solved through the words of our leaders this last weekend. It was so different to be listening as a missionary. It was wonderful to hear all the thoughts and prayers from our leaders for me as a missionary. It was also different because I wasn't listening just for me. I was listening for all my investigators and people i am working with. It was a little upsetting considering we invited so many people and one less active showed up to the church ten minutes after the last session ended :( and one of our investigators came and i guess the door he tried was locked. He was probably lying but still. lame. Anyway it was a wonderful conference and it answered all my question plus some that i didn't know i had :)

We were super busy this week. We had exchanges in Hastings on Tuesday. It was just one of those days where the Lord really tries your faith. We spent all day trying the visit people and we knocked on so many doors and nothing. Then like six hours later we found this sweet mom and gave her a book of Mormon. I was so grateful. I know i need to be more patient it is just hard when the mission has certain goals you are suppose to obtain.

We also went to Omaha this week. Drove through some crazy Tornadoes haha we never know the weather so we always run into storms. No worries though my President basically said you are a missionary you will be fine and we were :) the leadership council in Omaha was so awesome. I am so blessed to have the opportunity to attend those. I had to give a training to all the zone leaders haha such a disaster.

We are working with this girl who is 20 and has two kids. We got to visit her this week and i really think she is starting the feel the spirit and recognize it. It is so wonderful to see that in people. We just need people to start being her friend.

I am sort of getting discouraged because we are never in our own area and the work here is lacking. We have a couple investigators but they just aren't progressing. It is sad. I am really excited about the talks on member missionary work though. We are planning a ward party for members to bring their non member friends to. We are going to start teaching each family and get them excited about the work. I think this is really how the Lord wants his work to progress at this time. I have realized no matter how hard i work it wont matter if it is not the Lords way :)

Anyway sorry this letter was so short. I love you all so much and I miss you. Please keep reading over conference. We are so blessed to hear from our wonderful leaders. Have a great week. You are always in my prayers.

Love, Sister Page

Well it is good to hear from my family! I love your emails and letters! I hope Deema had a wonderful birthday!

We had two different exchanges this week. Tuesday we went to North Platte. I don't know if you heard about all the flooding from the Platte river but yeah it was pretty crazy. They have sand bags all over town. The Platte river is huge. I really wanted to go out and do service but it all happened like the week before so most everything was cleaned up. Anyway we had a good day of exchanges. I ended up going and visiting this Indian lady with one of the sisters. She was crazy and she started talking about some pretty sketchy stuff so i just told her to not mess with that stuff and i bore my testimony on the Book of Mormon and we got out of there. The rest of the day went better no worries :)

Wednesday we had a good district meeting. That day we visited with a family who is starting to come back to church. We taught them a little about the Atonement. It was a wonderful lesson!

Thursday we went on exchanges with the other sisters here in Kearney! They are over the YSA branch. They white washed the area so they have nothing to work with. We tracted all day. I will be honest I loved getting out and walking. It was so much fun! Not many people were receptive but we gave out a lot of Book of Mormons. Since I don't tract very often i learned a lot. that night we had a lesson with this recent convert in the YSA branch. he is 20 and just decided to go on a mission. I shared with him a little about my decision to serve and how it wasn't necessarily easy but so worth it. His family are like anti-LDS so it will be a lot harder for him but he was just eating up everything we were talking about. He recently went to the temple and is just on fire. It is so fun to see. I hope the people i bring into the church will become as converted as he is! It gave me hope so much hope!

Friday was like our first day in our area hahaha it is so hard. I feel like we are never getting anything done in our own area. ANYWAY we had a lesson with Alex's mom! We invited her to be baptized and she committed to working towards a date! wahoo! She has major word of wisdom problems but i have faith she can do it. She says she is still looking for her answer though and i have faith they will be answered this weekend at conference! What better way to gain a testimony of the prophet then to listen to him speak. I am so excited. I know this conference will be a huge blessing for a lot of people we have been working with! You know how everyone says General Conference is like Christmas for missionaries well yeah it pretty much is. I am so pumped haha it is different though because this time I am not just receiving revelation and guidance for myself but i am also thinking about my investigators and other members we are working with. Its great.

So Saturday was like the longest day of my life. We woke up at four in the morning. Our bishop is a professor at UNK so he got us to help with this run for the cure 5k. It was super fun. I wanted to run in it so bad but they wouldn't let me. It was good to get out and work though plus a lot of people noticed all the LDS missionaries so hopefully it will help get our name out there. It was freezing though Kearney is getting cold. I am such a baby.

Sunday we had a meeting with bishop and they Elders. I am starting to get really discouraged with our members. No one will help. See we can find and teach but our investigators don't have fellow shippers and they won't stay active if/when they are baptized. It is sorta frustrating. So we are planning an activity where the members are suppose to bring their friends. I never realized how huge of an impact members make on the work. We are just fasting and praying trying to understand how to help our ward be member missionaries. My mission president said that even if you don't baptize in Kearney as long as you teach members to be missionaries the work will progress more. So that is sorta what we are focused on right now.

I have faith this week will be successful :)

"Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." We all need to share they light which we have been blessed with.

I love you all. Have a wonderful week.

Love, Sister page