natalie ann: week 45: I'm staying in the mountains of Eagar to dwell

Monday, September 5th, 2016

IM STAYING IN EAGAR! hallelujah. Cause I love it here and I'm so in my element. The mountains are just the best. Anything to get out of that valley heat. I don't know how I got so lucky to not have a valley summer. #blessed. But anyways I am still with my baby Sister Chausow! And we are white washing another ward, Amity Ward. Well most likely. We might get Springerville. Long story but basically Amity is far away and we then would have three buildings so President is getting back to us. I'm happy with whatever! I'm excited to get another ward though! Definitely going to be more work but change is good.

Monday was one of my favorite pdays of all time. I'm sure you saw the fishing pictures. I caught my first fish! And I killed it with a rock and gutted it/ cleaned it out. And no I'm not going to eat it cause that's just gross. Then we watched Prince of Egypt on the big screen! And then guess who surprised me?! Sister Fairholm and Sister Smith!!! Best 30 mins of my life! They came from the valley to a doctors appointment, love them so much it hurts. We then had a lesson with Tyric. I love him and his family so much, they are the cutest and such good recent converts. We then went to Bishop Gleaves and talked with him. Him and his wife are the best.

Tuesday was okay. It seemed like no one was home or answering their doors. But that's just missionary life. We did some service here and there. We had a lesson with Sarah Meacham and her family which was good cause her husband who isn't a member was there! And we had been trying to see them forever! So miracle after a hard day!

Wednesday morning we saw Haylie. She is pretty much awesome. We then went to a couple seminary classes and did a little thing and handed out referral cards and we got so many back! And man their seminary class is SO nice. I'm a little jealous, cause early morning was rough. We then had a lesson with Gaylon. He is doing okay. We had a good lesson on the plan of salvation though and talked about family history work cause the family history consultants were there. It was really powerful cause his mother has passed away. We then had a lesson with Daryl. They are pretty much my family and I never want to leave them.

Thursday we had ZTM and is was way good! So all the trainings were from Elder Kevin W. Pearson who came to MLC last week, yeah I didn't get to go :( oh well. There is so much I could write about so I'll just share a bit about what we talked about. We talked a lot about faith and getting passed the frontier of faith by having obedience. When we are obedience then we will have assurance. We talked a lot about alignment and when we are aligned with God we get more light and truth. We talked about asking yourself each night "what percent of the day am I seeking the Spirit?" I really like that and everything we talked about made me want to work even harder. We talked about how everyone accepted Christ. There is not a single person on earth who didn't have the expectation go follow Jesus Christ and be baptized. Our eternal spirits know the truth. We all have mortal amnesia and are here to help people remember their divine nature. We have really high goals as a mission and we talked a lot how faith produces miracles. I know that God is a God of miracles. I know that we need the powers of heaven to do this work. We can't do it alone. Ah I could go on but I won't, it was just so good. We had lunch and Elder Johnson and I ate a chili. Regrets. I had ice cream and 3 otterpops afterwards cause my mouth was on

. We then saw the Tisdells and Colin hasn't been smoking for 9 days! I'm so proud of him! We then saw the Armijos and we talked about temples with them. It was really good. They said that they are going to the temple on Saturday so idk if they went or not.

Friday we saw Chelsea. She is doing good, it was crazy over there as normal. Haha I love them. We then we're gonna try to see potentials, the Casillas, but they didn't answer. I love it when people tell you to come at a time and they don't answer

we then helped Sister Markley put sealant on her counter tops. And then we helped the Henries bag chilies so she can freeze them, so many chilis. My hands were burning for a good two hours after that. It was so fun though. I love the Henries. Paula is literally my mom. And her son is a missionary in Seattle so who knows maybe he will go to Sammamish! We then went to see Sally. She is still having a hard time understanding tithing. She didn't get it why we have to pay our tithing to go inside the temple. She was like let's have a meeting with God and change this, haha I'm like that's not how it works. We then saw Dollie. She is doing well. She is just so funny. We then saw the Eagars. I love them! They know the church is true and what they are supposed to be doing but don't do it. Dah we are working on them. Their baby got blessed on Sunday! So that was super awesome.

Saturday was good. Sister Chausow didn't feel very good so we didn't see a lot of people. We saw Jerry and his daughter is here now! She just got out of rehab. We are excited to start teaching her. She is a member and has been through the temple and everything. We then helped Cody Garcia make peach jam! That was way fun. We tried to see lots of people and we did contact a few. We then saw Erin Cordova. I love her. She is having a hard time cause of her divorce. It's so hard when you see people you love not happy. It's like come to church!

Sunday was good. Fast Sundays are kinda killer on the mission though. Let's see we saw Dave and Haylie. They are doing good. We ate dinner at the Henries. I love them a lot. We met a girl named Jessica. A member told us to go visit her. She is super cool. Really Christian and into her church but she said we can come over on Thursday! Pray it goes well! We have been fasting every Sunday this month to find more people to teach and baptize! We then saw Teri & Kenny. We had a whole lesson on the 15 step program. Kenny is gonna start it and Teri just won't commit. She says she will pray about it though. Ugh I hate addictions!

I'm in Alma right now in the Book of Mormon & it's all so good but in chapter 13:33 says "And this is the manner after which they were ordained--being called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works; in the first place being left to choose good or evil; therefore they having chosen good, and exercising exceedingly great faith, are called with a holy calling, yea, with that holy calling which was prepared with, and according to, a preparatory redemption for such." So this is talking about the priesthood but since I'm a missionary I thought about it about being foreordained as a missionary. I think that is so cool. And they talked about this scripture at ZTM. We were faithful and righteous in the pre-earth life to be missionaries here. I'm so grateful God called me to be His servant. And then I finished doctrine & covenants! Ah it's so good! I love it cause a lot of it is about missionary work. In d&c 138:56 it's says, "Even before they were born, they, with many others, received their first lessons in the world of spirits and were prepared to come forth in the due time of the Lord to labor in his vineyard for the salvation of the souls of men." God trusts us to do His work. We were called at this time to bring others unto Him. It's the greatest work on earth!

Also in d&c 138: 25-26 it says, "25 I marveled, for I understood that the Savior spent about three years in his ministry among the Jews and those of the house of Israel, endeavoring to teach them the everlasting gospel and call them unto repentance; 26 And yet, notwithstanding his mighty works, and miracles, and proclamation of the truth, in great power and authority, there were but few who hearkened to his voice, and rejoiced in his presence, and received salvation at his hands." This amazes me. Jesus was the perfect missionary & still few listened & followed him. We as missionaries only suffer a little little bit compared to Christ.

I read the talk "None Were with Him" by Elder Holland and he says, "Now I speak very carefully, even reverently, of what may have been the most difficult moment in all of this solitary journey to Atonement. I speak of those final moments for which Jesus must have been prepared intellectually and physically but which He may not have fully anticipated emotionally and spiritually--that concluding descent into the paralyzing despair of divine withdrawal when He cries in ultimate loneliness, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind--us, all of us--would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone. But Jesus held on. He pressed on." God did not want to leave Christ but He has to for the Atonement to be complete. He was alone. Christ knows what it feels like to be lonely, afraid, and rejected. But still he pressed on. Every day I need to be aligning myself with Christ who is aligned with the Father.

I know my Savior lives and loves each of us. I love this work & being a missionary! Have a great Labor Day!

--xo: sista fisha