Dear Family,

I am so happy to hear the Vera Family is staying with you. They are so neat. Thank you for opening our home to them. When I was in Kearney their home was my home, so it warms my heart to know you are returning the favor!

This week was a great week. There are always ups and downs, but the blessing always win out :) We had the opportunity to go on two exchanges this week. I got to go with Sister Call again. It was so much fun. I am so grateful Heavenly Father gives me the opportunity to be an instrument in His hands. Often times it is very humbling.... which is a good thing.

Last night we got to teach Amy, Marian's daughter. It was a very powerful lesson. She is in a really hard stage of her life. She is in her early 40s, divorced and just moved back home. She is really searching for her purpose in life. We started by reading part of the Book of Mormon with her, then some of her questions lead right into what we wanted to talk about. I love when that happens! The whole lesson was completely lead by the spirit. I know it is because she is prepared. We have been studying in PMG chatpter 4 about recognizing the spirit. It is so neat when you have experiences where you can apply what you are learning. We then showed her a Mormon message about our divine potential. She loved it had many question. We were able to teach her the Plan of Salvation and invite her to church. I know This Gospel is true because the spirit testified to here of these incredible restored truths!

Another HUGE highlight of our week was we got to teach Edd like four times. He quite smoking!!!! :) I honestly am in shock, still. He has been smoking for 50 years and he was able to give it up for the gospel. He wants it so bad it is so neat. He had his interview yesterday. Our district leader who interviewed him said the spirit was really strong. I honestly have never seen anyone change so much. The Atonement is real. His wife, Nancy, is so happy. She has wanted this for so many years. Sister Fuller and I can totally see them as temple workers in a few years haha :) So, Edd's baptism is this Saturday. It is so neat to watch him chose to do what God would have him to because he is starting to understand it is what's best for him. It reminds me of Mosiah 2:34. We need to "render to Him all that you have and are." because we are truly "indebted to our Heavenly Father" Please pray for Edd to have the spiritual, physical and emotional strength to be baptized this week. Satan is working really hard on him, but we all know with the Lord anything is possible. I know that because of Edd :)

We are also pretty excited because we have the opportunity to teach these two families. We have been working really hard to earn their trust and with Heavenly Fathers help and the help of members we have appointments set up to meet with them :) I know how important members are in this work. Ed would not have progressed this far if it weren't for his member friends.

I love being a missionary. Thank you family for all your prayers and support. I love you all so much. Take care of the Vera family. Give them all hugs for me :) Also, The Stephens from Papillion are coming through and are going to drop off some stuff. Expect a call from them.

Have a wonderful week and always remember what is most important!

Love, Sister Page

Dearest Family,

It sounds like you are all doing well and that makes me happy. This week was a wonderful week. Last Monday we had a zone activity at the park and we play volleyball and kickball. It was so fun I really miss playing sports. It was a good day. That wasn't even the best part of the day though. We went to the store to buy groceries and we say Amy (Marians daughter... Marian is a recent convert) and she was having a hard day. We know her well enough to talk to her but she has always been uninterested in learning more. At the store she expressed to us how hard the day was. We told her we would come visit her that night. When we got there that night she was just headed out to walk her dogs. We walked with her and talked about how the gospel has helped her mom have the strength to overcome cancer. We bore our testimonies about Heavenly Fathers love for her and asked if we could come teach her... she accepted. So last night we went over and taught her the restoration and honestly it was the best restoration lesson I have ever had. She is going to pray about being baptized!

Things are taking off it is so exciting. The Lord is truly hastening His work. I had interviews with President Weston on Tuesday. We talked about how this is His work and how He does the hastening not us. I am so grateful I get to be apart of it. I pray that all of us, not just missionaries, may play apart in it. How wonderful it is to be an instrument in the Lord's hands (Mosiah 27:36-37)! President also talked about how the adversary is working even harder on missionaries because the work is hastening. I would definitely agree. I have never felt to adversary work so hard as he is now. We got to see it first hand on Wednesday. We ended up going on an emergency exchange with some sisters. It is interesting how the adversary is getting smarter. If you have noticed he isn't attacking the church and the members from the outside anymore, he is attacking from within the church and the people personally. Good thing righteousness will ALWAYS be more powerful than wickedness.

Thursday we went on another exchange and I ended up being in the other area. Those sisters didn't have a car that day so we walked all day... haha it was rough. I have such a hard life haha just kidding I actually really enjoyed it. I am so out of shape.

Friday was Sister Fullers birthday. We were so tired from the two exchanges previous but we did see an amazing miracle! the member we had dinner with is so awesome. She said we are the first missionaries she has wanted to introduce to her friend. WE got to meet her and she said she is coming to church this Sunday and that we can teach her!!! We were so excited :) Ya'll probably don't realize how huge that is. It was such a miracle!

Saturday we taught Ed. He first brought up a question about Either 12:22... it was really neat because we got to teach him about how that scripture was about him!!!! He was pretty excited :) then we taught the Word of Wisdom. He has been smoking since for over 50 years. It was an amazing lesson. We felt inspired to first talk about obedience and then teach him the commandment. Since he was in the army he expressed how he understand obedience. It was really neat. We took his cigarettes and coffee with us when we left!  He came to all three hours of church on Sunday and he has smoked since then :)

I am so grateful to be here in Papillion. Before I came here Brother Vera gave me a blessing and in it, it talked about how their were people in Papillion that I need to teach. I truly felt that for the first time this week.

I love being a missionary. Hurrah for Israel!

Love, Sister Page

Dearest Family,

So, you all know I am not serving a two year mission... I was joking. Seriously though I wish. That would be amazing. Elders are so lucky. I have interviews with President tomorrow though and I am going to tell him the story and tell him my family thinks I am staying 2 years so they are getting foreign exchange students.. maybe he will change his mind. Foreign exchange students... haha good one family. It did make me feel good that you were all so sad.. you still love me :) haha

This week Sister Fuller and I saw so many miracles. The work here is really taking off and I honestly never want to leave. We had four investigators at church yesterday. I have been praying a lot asking Heavenly Father to use my talents to help build His kingdom. There are all these sisters who can sing really well or play an instrument and it has really brought people to the truth. As I have been praying about it, I had the idea to start playing soccer once a week with members and their non member friends. This last week one of our investigators brought her nonmember friends. We found out they are in a part member family and we have been trying to get into their house for months. After we played their dad, who is the only member in the family, text us and said, "my daughters really liked you two. You can come over Tuesday night." We were so excited. Heavenly Father really does answer prayers. he cares about our righteous desires. I was listening to Elder Hollands talk about lessons learned in liberty jail. He talked a lot about hoe God cares about our righteous desires he also said..

"Whenever these moments of our extremity come, we must not succumb to the fear that God has abandoned us or that He does not hear our prayers. He does hear us. He does see us. He does‍ love us. When we are in dire circumstances and want to cry, “Where art Thou?” it is imperative that we remember He is right there with us—where He has always been! We must continue to believe, continue to have faith, continue to pray and plead with heaven, even if we feel for a time our prayers are not heard and that God has somehow gone away. He is‍ there. Our prayers are‍ heard. And when we weep He and the angels of heaven weep with us."

I really needed to hear this. Sometimes I feel as though I am bipolar or something because one minute I will be so happy and full of the spirit because we saw an amazing miracle and then the next I will be sad because someone rejected the blessings of the gospel. I have come to the conclusion it is just missionary work.. but still. Sometimes it is emotionally exhausting.  

Some other neat things happened this week. We had an amazing lesson with Edd and Nancy this week. Sister Fuller and I decided to Sing some hymns to them during the lesson. Edd has been really struggling to have the courage to pray. We had a lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ then we sang "come follow me" right after I asked him to say the prayer and he did! It was a beautiful prayer. Later this week He hurt his knee really bad. We asked him if he wanted a blessing. Normally he doesn't like to ask for help or seem weak or unknowledgeable, but he said to us that he is willing to learn about the priesthood and get a blessing. The gospel is truly changing him it is so neat.  

We got to train in two zone trainings this week. The zone leaders had us train on one of the commitments they were extending haha long story short the whole zone didn't like the commitment and sorta attacked us during the trainig. Heavenly Father blessed us to know what to say.. but seriously haha so dumb.

Lets see what else.... it was just an awesome, crazy week. I wish I could tell you more but I am out of time. I love you family. Have a wonderful week. Thank you for your prayers. Be good.

With love, Sister Page

Dear Family,

Happy half way mark for me! So they decided that sisters can stay 2 years now if they decide to. How awesome is that? Yeah, I am pretty excited about it.

This week was a great week. It is getting very very hot here. Yesterday it was over a 100 plus extremely humid. I don't even bother doing my hair anymore.. oh who am I kidding I don't do my make up or anything else either. There is just no point.

Monoday night we had dinner and fhe with some investigators. They are very catholic haha and they told us that like six times but they are very interested in family history. So we were able to help them out with that and share a little about why we do family history and the importance of temple work. They totally felt the spirit.

Tuesday we had a lesson with our investigator named Rebecca. We can't figure out where she is at. I am having a really hard time connecting with her. She seems to want to know the truth though so we are going to keep teaching her. Please prayer for Rebecca. Her family needs the gospel.

Sister Fuller and I have been praying very hard to set someone for baptism. We had three lessons this week with Ed and Nancy. Nancy is a less active who is coming back to church and Ed it her husband. He is Native American and VERY stubborn. haha its hilarious actually. He is a direct descendant of Big Elk. Big Elk is the Indian Chief who made the treaty with Brigham Young to let the Mormons stay at Winter quarters. Edd has been working on genealogy and submitting his ancestors to get their temple work done. That is actually how we started teaching him. For the past like 3 months we have been helping him do his genealogy. I have a huge testimony of service now. Service softens peoples hearts and so does their ancestors. It is so neat. Anyway we had an awesome lesson with Ed and Nancy and we set Ed for baptism. He is set for August 2. Nancy was so happy. Ed has a lot to overcome but I know he can through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is my favorite thing to watch the Atonement change people. They invited us over for dinner the next day. When we got their Sister Fuller asked if he had read the chapter we had left him. He had already read it three times. They also came to church this week. We definitely didn't deserve those miracles, but Sister Fuller and i feel very humbled to receive them.

I also had the opportunity to go to leadership council on the fourth of July. It was so fun. All this sister in my MTC district are sister training leaders except for two of them and they went home early. Sad, but way fun to see all of them. I love going to those meetings because i always leave feeling a little rebuked but very motivated hahaha

Sister Fuller and i felt we should receive a blessing this week. We really felt like we should ask this guy in our ward so we did. It was such an neat experience. I left with a whole new outlook on mine and others divine potential. Neal A Maxwell once said, "What we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity.. Only by educating and training our desires can they become our allies instead of our enemies!" I know we all have the divine potential to become like our Heavenly Father but this life is about training and educating our desires. One way is to know who you really are because it makes decisions easier. I am so grateful for the gospel. I know the Priesthood authority is real. The gospel has been restored. I love you all! Be good! See you in a year! :)

With love, Sister Page