Florida, Week 4

Hi everyone,

There are only two weeks left and then it's transfers again. We have a lot of missionaries coming in so the odds of me training are really high, because there aren't enough sisters to go around and the general trend is that every sister trains after their first transfer. That's pretty scary since I'm still not done with my training and I have no clue what I'm doing, but we have 36 new missionaries coming in this transfer and someone has to do it, I guess.

This week we decided to have more of an emphasis on contacting people in the street, because we need to have more people to teach. We actually managed to find someone to teach as well! His name is Josh and in the words of the elders, he's solid. He's 24 and a chem student at St. John's. We've taught him the Restoration and part of the Plan of Salvation and he really seems to be seeking for truth, which is just fantastic. He came to church yesterday for the Primary program, which is the best day ever to come, and he agreed last night to be baptized on the 13th! It's pretty great.

Yesterday, we just ran all over the place. Besides having an investigator at church and all, we went to the Jehovah's Witness church at12:30 with the elders, which was a neat experience, and made it back in time for the ward's linger-longer, where we ate all their food, and then visited a member in the hospital before our lesson with Josh. Brother Stephens is hilarious and should be out soon, but in the meantime someone has to stay with his wife Dotty, so we did that for a few hours this morning. Also, we had the RS broadcast on Saturday, which I didn't know missionaries could go to! I've been reading old conference editions of the Ensign for studies all week, so I'm really excited to see it all next Saturday and Sunday.

I promise I haven't lost ALL my Portuguese; we have a Temple Square missionary from Brazil here and I was able to have a decent conversation with her. Sister Zanella is from a town just a couple hours south of Curitiba, so her accent is pretty much what I'll be learning and her temple is the Curitiba one. She's made me a lot less worried about having to relearn it all, for sure.

This is us at a restaurant

Here's a mission word for you that I've never heard: trunky. I dunno if it's just a Jacksonville thing or a missionary thing or both, but it means homesickness, except not for people who just came out, but for people who are about to go home. So if you're going home in two weeks and all you can think about is home, that's trunky. Yeah, I dunno. Oh, funny story: we were talking to Sister Collins in the ward, who is pretty sick, and we were telling her that we would pray for her. Sister Shumway was wearing a necklace of huge jade beads and was fingering it as she said it and Sister Collins was kind of freaked out because it looked exactly like a rosary. S. Cline and S. Wallentine have a Buddha statue in their apartment, for some reason. It holds all their loose change. We're just all heretics!

I taught a lesson on obedience in Gospel Principles and got to read this great talk by Thomas S. Monson called Obedience Brings Blessings. He talks about how Jesus Christ was a perfect example of obedience, which I guess I'd never really thought about. I know He submitted his will to the Father, but I never thought that He'd really had to make a hard choice, since He already understood His role and purpose. But I guess the biggest way in which He was obedient wasn't by never doing wrong (though He never did), but by never being prideful of His calling or disloyal to his Father. So as a missionary, as a direct representative of Jesus Christ, I need to be obedient to my calling, not just by following all the rules but also by not being annoying and stuck up. There's a real Christlike aspect to obedience that I never considered, which is never deviating, even in your mind, from what you know is right.

Anyway, that's it! love ya! 

Anna

Florida, Week 3

Oi familia e amigos,

I promise I'm still alive and hanging in there. But these three weeks feel like three centuries (not in a bad way). There's no way that I've seen and done and learned this much so far. but I guess I have! I'm a little short on time (aren't I always) so let's see how much I can get in before Sister Shumway flips my chair or something.

We got in the minorest of minor car accidents last Monday. We got run off of a one-lane road by a large truck and ran over a stump, cracking some of the plastic pieces on the bottom of our Corolla on the right side. But it's all minor cosmetic work and won't be a big deal to fix and in the meantime our car still runs perfectly. Sister Shumway still feels really bad, though. But Melvin at the auto shop also told us that he's looking for a religious change in his life and that he loves to talk to us so I guess it was meant to happen. We'll probably go back this week both to turn in the car and to talk to him some more.

The rain here can be absolutely crazy. It's happened twice that we're driving down the road on a totally dry day and see a cloud of mist 50 yards ahead. You barely have time to think "Huh, that's odd" before suddenly it's raining so hard that you can't see out your windshield with the wipers on high going 25 mph. My companion is unperturbed but I'm gonna have to learn to drive in this eventually and that scares me. It's great! Still haven't seen a gator, though. It gets dark around 8, which is a bit of a problem because people get annoyed when we knock "in the middle of the night", even though the sun has hardly gone down. We try to prevent this by scheduling appointments as late in the evening as possible, so we can use between 5 and 8 for actual street proselyting, but the end of DST soon will make our case a little more difficult. Oh well, hopefully people think we're less threatening as two women walking in the dark rather than two men. It's funny; we live in an apartment complex with a lot of young college students, so they occasionally try to invite us to parties. But we can't actually proselyte there, sadly, since it's outside our area and we'd have to refer them to Sister Cline and Sister Wallentine. 

We had tradeoffs this week, so I went with Sister Whiting to Mandarin, a town on the St. John's River (the hugest river ever; it's more like an inland bay). It was really neat to see someone else's style of teaching and especially of contacting and door approaches, but I have SO MUCH to learn. Seriously, sometimes I get really scared by how much I don't know how to do. You would think by now I've gotten the hang of it but no such luck! Thankfully Sister Shumway prevents me from messing up too badly. We're an awful lot alike, we've discovered, so companionship inventory is usually just us saying how much we love the other, because neither of us has a single issue. It's just fantastic. And we like the same sorts of books, so we're each compiling booklists for the other to read once we get home.

We work a lot more closely with the rest of our district than I would have anticipated; perhaps it's just because there are so many missionaries in this mission and my district all live so close and all have cars, but we do a lot of projects (such as service or proselyting ideas that we come up with) together, as well as scheduled meetings. I guess I always thought missionary work was two or four people in an apartment, alone in a city, seeing other missionaries mybe once a month. But not here! It's great. We blitzed (all descended on one area) St. George Street in Old St. Augustine on Saturday in hopes that we could get people to come to a church tour on Sunday. Sadly, no luck, but we were on tradeoffs and Sister Cline spoke in ASL to a bunch of deaf teens for 20 minutes while I stood there stupidly. Sister Cline is also really pretty, so we got hit on by a few drunks and she had zero patience for anyone who was so plastered, not that she showed it. But the way she extricated us from those situations was hilarious. Funny story: we were walking along a highway last week and we saw a guy on the other side. S. Shumway shouted over and started talking to him and I was mentally like "Silly companion, you just don't talk to people across the highway". But he jaywalked four lanes to talk to us and was so aggressive to us at first (he was Baptist) that I was about to write him off completely as not a good contact. But Sister Shumway bore her testimony so powerfully that he asked more and more questions and we were able to give him the whole first lesson of the Restoration there on the street. He asked us for a copy of the Book of Mormon before we offered because he wanted to know for himself if it was true. He also said he would be in touch because he would have a lot of questions. He turned out to be an amazing guy with and amazing life story would loved talking to us and I almost missed him several times. That must be why we have companions with us because maybe they are listening to the Spirit more at that moment than you are. 

This week we got the Ensign and there's an article in there that everyone should read, because it's just so awesome. I felt like the magazine was levitating off the desk as I read it. It's called "His Grace Is Sufficient" and talks about the grace of God, which I guess is something I never really understood. Some people believe that the grace of God is all they need to be saved and that they have to do nothing, with isn't true. But it also isn't a booster rocket that kicks in once we have exhausted our own fuel supply. Jesus's atonement pays for our debt in full. It is finished. But we need the power of grace to transform ourselves so that we can feel comfortable returning and living with God. If there is no change in ourselves, we won't want to do it. Brother Wilcox compares this to a piano teacher, a child, and a mother. The mother pays the piano teacher and then encourages the child to practice. The child's practicing doesn't pay for the lessons or repay the mother, but it shows that the gift is appreciated. Sometimes the child complains about practicing or doesn't see why he has to (sorry, mom) but the mother sees how it transforms the child and his talents so he can live his life on a higher plane. And often when practicing, the child makes mistakes and hits wrong notes. But that NEVER means that the child is unworthy to keep practicing! We don't have just two options: perfection or failure! We just keep going and over time, we are transformed and changed by the process of grace and the pattern of repepntance in our lives. The grace of Christ is sufficient: sufficient to transform us and help us for as long as the process takes. I don't do the article justice, but I encourage you all to read it because it helped me so much. Anyway, I'm out of time but I love you all!

Sister Nielsen

Pics:

Sister Shumway randomly put on her running shoes one morning. When I asked why, she just stared blankly at her feet and said "It seemed right in my head!"

Me with my prideful owl

Sister Shumway during planning (ain't she cute?)

Week 2 in Florida

Hey everybody!

This week has been pretty long and crazy, but the upside of that is that I feel I've been here for months, rather than just two weeks. I feel like I can barely remember a time before I arrived here; I've learned so much since then. Probably two weeks from now, I will look back on this letter and laugh at my ignorance.

We've been able to do some teaching this week, despite having appointments fall through, which is fantastic because I need all the practice teaching in English I can get. Just last night we met a really awesome family who were simply full of questions about our church and I was able to teach the whole first lesson for the first time not in Portuguese, which was an adventure. But I think it went fairly well. We visited a recent convert, Kevin, and gave him a lesson in sign which I was sort of able to follow. He can speak fairly well and I could handle extremely basic conversation in ASL, so it was all right, though there were a few times where I had to nudge Sister Shumway and ask her to translate something Kevin had said for me. I'm still really rough on gospel vocab, but I was able to talk to him about his dogs and the triathlon he's training for at the moment. We were also able to meet with one of our current investigators, Amanda, and give her the third lesson while her son Mikey chewed on my nametag. It's the strangest thing: small children and animals are attracted to me like never before. Anyway, Amanda was entirely out of food and called us in desperation with the last few minutes on her phone. Luckily, there had been a zone meeting that morning and some elders dropped off cans and boxes of pasta they didn't want, so we just went to the church and grabbed some boxes of food for her. There's a great disparity between rich and poor here in Jacksonville: lots of gated communities and beachy resorts interspersed with really humble homes and some people in positions so dire it would make you cry. It makes you stop and think about what you have or want to have and if it really matters. 

We stopped by one of our recent converts, Derek, last Monday to see how he was doing. He's 9 and is this adorable little redhead who loves to run around and experiment with things to see if they work. He lives with his dad, Stephen, and a less active member who is their landlord, which is how the missionaries found Derek. Stephen didn't mind his son getting baptized, but at first when the missionaries began teaching, he wouldn't even talk to them. This time he stayed for the lesson and the prayer and then thanked me and and Sister Shumway in a really heartfelt way for the blessing we've been in his life and in the life of his son. First, it's astonishing when anyone considers your presence a blessing and second, it's amazing to see so much of a change in someone's heart. It's a real miracle.

We wanted to get more clothes last P-day so we (the four sisters) went thrift shopping at the local Goodwill and had a blast. I got a few more skirts that are really long (but not quite maxi; you can see my ankles so they're allowed!) I'm not used to really long skirts so I kind of feel like a nun but I really like them. (Actually, my companion keeps calling me a Jedi because I like to wrap myself up in a really long blanket and trail it around the house during studies and apparently I look like Darth Sidious?) Sister Cline and Sister Wallentine bought some really ridiculous suspenders for Elder Coleman and Elder Jenkins (our zone leaders who are also in our district) and forced them to wear them. We might go again today to search out more goofiness and get Sister Shumway some more clothes.

Little-known fact: the Florida Jacksonville mission is one of the few missions that is an authorized Facebook mission! Right now, we're testing the pilot program before it gets sent out to all the missions and Sister Shumway just got called as a Facebook missionary! So she gets to spend an hour a day on the internet chatting with investigators and converts. Before you ask, odds are extremely slim that I will ever be recommended as a Facebook missionary, because they have no clue how long I'll be here and they won't want to go to the effort of training someone who could up and leave at any moment. I'm quite relieved by that, though it's cool to see this program in action. I'm just going to do language study when she's on the computer to use time more efficiently. 

There was a really big Mumford and Sons concert in St. Augustine last week and thousands descended on the downtown area, so we avoided it like the plague. We've still got to visit the ancient part of the city and the forts sometime and being a history geek, I'm really excited for that.

I keep running into this problem where people are really surprised to see me instead of Sister Lewis, Sister Shumway's former companion. We don't really look alike at all, but since I suppose I sort of look blond, people confuse us a lot. That's sort of my nickname at the moment, I guess, though some of the members call me "farm girl" because we helped the Collins family move the other day and apparently I can lift more furniture and boxes than they expected. Oh, and apparently (according to our district leader) I have issues with pride, because I refuse to let him and Elder Cancel carry things for me or lend us their car when ours was in the show. So my nickname and ASL name since is Sister Pride, but just to him. Mostly me and Sister Shumway roll our eyes and pray for charity.

So I've been reading in the epistles of Paul this last week and in his first epistle to the Corinthians, he encounters a problem where the saints in that city are dividing into churches based on who baptized them and saying that they're better because they're the people of Paul or Apollos or whoever else. Paul explains to them that a missionary is just a person and not necessarily a great, noble, or powerful person, because God works by using weak and simple things to spread his work. 1 Cor 1:26-27, he says that "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty". in the next chapter, verses 4 and 5, he says that "my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God". This sort of hit me like an anvil as I was just doing my morning reading, because as a missionary, I am becoming increasingly aware of my many, many weaknesses and flaws. My desire to change and improve is good, but I need to remember that this is the way that God works to bring about his purposes. That's actually the whole point of sending me as a missionary, because I'm certainly not perfect, so if people listen to our message, it's because of the Spirit, not because of anything I do. This is a pretty marvelous promise to have. Anyway, that's about it for this week!

Love you!

Anna

P.S. Mom, I did get the pictures and the Nosy Notes; thanks so much! I may lend them to Sister Wallentine if she wants them. Also, can you send me some of the family recipes that we use the most? Especially cookie ones? I'd love the one for Fresh Apple cookies but other than that, surprise me. Thanks!

PPS. Pictures are me beating Sister Pecchia's rugs, the most attractive picture I could find of both me and Sister Shumway, and us boxing the elders in at the church parking lot today. They always try to do this to us, so justice is served. I promise we're usually grownups

PPPS. One more thing, I totally forgot again!

Our mission has a blog, so you can stalk our pictures at http://floridajacksonvillemissionnews.blogspot.com/

And my address, if anyone wants it, is as follows:

420 Villa San Marco #201

St. Augustine, FL 32086

Love you all!

Field, Week 1

Hey everybody!

I don't have a lot of time at the moment but it's really nice to hear from you all!

I arrived in Florida with no problem, stayed in a member's house in Jacksonville the first night, and got my assignment and my companion the next day. I'm in a town on the coast called St. Augustine. Apparently it's one of the oldest towns in the US and was settled by the spanish way back when, but I need to find out more about it.

My trainer is Sister Shumway and she's the best. She's so patient with me and all the silly mistakes I make all the time and I love her to death. She's one of the more "senior" sisters here because she has a whole three months of experience. Turns out that most of the sisters here are fairly new so a three-monther is practically an expert. We had 15 sisters in the entire mission in January and now we have some astronomical number around 90 or so, even though part of our mission was split off into the Macon Georgia mission this summer. So I guess the work is going forward.

Florida is gorgeous this time of year. Everyone complains of the heat and humidity but I don't think it's too bad, although it is a little more humid than Virginia. Everything is green and swampy and Spanish moss covers all the trees and the wildlife is something to behold, though I have yet to see an armadillo that's actually alive. The mosquitos can get pretty bad though, so we have to watch out for those. Also the spiders. I've seen some really neat ones almost the size of my hand. My apartment is really nice and it's a great place to live, but we do have a bit of a cockroach problem, so Sister Shumway and I have a daily competition to see who can kill more. I think she's winning for today.We also have crazy storms sometimes and I saw my first lightning show the other night. I don't think I've ever seen lighting that close or in that much quantity. Everyone here is so used to them that it doesn't bother them too much, though I was glued to the car window.

Speaking of cars, we are a driving mission, at least in part. I think there are some missionaries who are only on bikes, but all the sisters get cars for some reason. We get out and walk quite a bit though. Curitiba will be a walking mission, so I guess I get to try both worlds and see which is better. I prefer walking, because it's easier to encounter people who are willing to talk.

Mom and Dad, not only is Tayler Wallentine (my cousin's daughter) in my mission; she's also in my district. So we see her and her companion a lot to carpool and we spend P-day together. I think that's really cool that I can get to know family a lot better, even on my mission.

Turns out that St. Augustine is the deaf capital of Florida, because the Florida School for the Blind and Deaf is located here. So there are a lot of deaf people in our ward and all the missionaries are learning ASL. Sister Shumway took it for years and is really good, so she's teaching me. At this point, I can follow and participate in simple conversation and sometimes when I'm practicing Portuguese, I sign at the same time so that she can understand me. There isn't really an application for Portuguese here but I can sort of talk with the members who speak Spanish, though I understand them better than they understand me. I think that's partly my lack of skill and partly because it's harder for someone who speaks Spanish to understand Portuguese than vice versa. I don't know why that is but several people have told me that.

We have several different approaches here in the field and one that I really like is iNetting, or inspired networking. We pick an area and plan several active, recent converts, less active, or investigators to visit. Is they're not home, we try to talk to their neighbors. I think it works a little better than tracting in totally blank (well, empty of members) areas, though we certainly do that too. This helps us save miles and also contact the referalls that people give us.

I'm still not anywhere close to figuring out the things that I'm supposed to do and a lot of the time I just feel like things are flying over my head. But I can only hope that I'm picking up on a few things that I'll need to know, because it's entirely possibly that after this transfer, I'll be training a new sister myself, so I need to make the most of my first six weeks.

I'll try to give a spiritual thought: we had stake conference this Sunday and the speaker was Erich W. Kopischke, who is a member of the Seventy, I believe. He quoted James E. Faust at the last General Conference he ever spoke at, where he said "I hope I can endure to the end". Of course, this is President Faust and you would think that his life had been full and meaningful. Surely he had already endured to the end! That's what I would think. His point, though, is that you can't ever stop improving, at any stage. So many missionaries are so focused on getting those they teach to be baptised, but that's hardly the end. I'll try to paraphrase 2 Nephi 31 where Nephi lays out the doctrine of Christ and then says "did you think that this was all you had to do? After you have gotten into this strait and narrow path, is your work done? No, you've only come this far by faith in Jesus Christ and you can only move forward in faith, enduring to the end". Baptism isn't the end of everything; we can never be done with following God. A lot of people find that hard about this church, but way of Christ is never easy. It's a real call for self-reflection, to asking yourself if you are doing the right thing simply because you are used to it or if you are truly converted to the Lord. I wish I could write more, but I don't have my notes and I'm out of time. Anyway, I love you all and good luck!

Sister Nielsen

Anna's district in the CTM