Sister Neel 8/18/21

 

HEY YA'LL!!

My p day got moved to today because we had a MISSION TOUR with general authority ELDER BOWEN Sunday-Tuesday and it was SO SO cool!!!! I'll explain more about it later :))  To say the least, we've had quite an interesting week. Sister Stoddard didn't feel good Tuesday morning so I had to take her into Urgent Care for a covid test which thankfully came back negative. We couldn't leave quarantine until she was better and she ended up being sick the entire week...and it was bad. We had to cancel all of our lessons and just hang low while she rested. During that time she flooded our washing machine and dishwasher which was quite the fun experience...come Sunday I was so ready for a new week XD. 

We did however have some unique finding opportunities where we would call formers in area book and it happened to be at a time where they needed it most! One guy, Q, was struggling to find out for himself how God answers prayers and the scripture I shared was everything he needed to hear! Same with Glen. He is going through some really tough family situations and was losing hope in God until we called out of the blue and shared a message dealing with God being our loving Heavenly Father. Ever since then he's had us call every night to have mini lessons! Super cool! We called a 14 year old boy who was flirting hard core with sister Stoddard and asked her if she wanted to Road trip with him to Utah so they could visit puppy barn and learn some lessons on the way. He told her age was just a number...ahh SO WEIRD XD. I couldn't hold in my laughter the entire call XD I was dead!

Ok now to the good stuff. THE MISSION TOUR WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!!! For those of you that don't know what it is, a general authority of our church is assigned to visit our mission and give trainings, have interviews, participate in our activities and just see how things are going. On Tuesday we had a zone conference and combined with 5 other zones where we received a 6 hour training from President and Sister Maurer, the AP's and Elder and Sister Bowen. Talk about insane personal revelation!!! So many answers to my prayers occured in this meeting but I'll highlight specifically what Elder Bowen talked about. He gave us 6 tips that would better help strengthen us as missionaries and perform the work of the Lord at levels we never thought possible. 

1. Arise at 6:30 am. There's a difference between waking up and arising

2. Daily planning is sacred time. It's a spiritual creation where we take time to figure out where God needs us that day. We are given 13 steps in preach my gospel to follow which gives the Holy Ghost 13 opportunities to guide the work

3. Become natural finders and count your contacts as 'testifying contacts.' Our goal is to bring up the Restoration as quickly as possible since it is the most unique and profound message. He invited us to open our mouths and never hold back. If we were waiting for that perfect moment it would never happen. Everyone we saw was someone put in our path by God and when we let them go, it was a lack of faith and offense to Him

4. He challenged us to have 30 contacts a day and 30 lessons a week. If we weren't eyeball to eyeball with someone we were failing as missionaries. He talked about how vehicles are one of the biggest curses to a mission. We needed to park our car and be seen walking to places rather than trapped in our car

5. He encouraged us to be more urgent. The Lord has prepared people waiting for us and we are on the clock to find them. He encouraged us each individually as missionaries to have a personal baptismal goal and make a contract with the Lord that it would happen

6. Lastly he told us to have quiet dignity. He told us that who and what we represent is greater than us but we needed to let the rough edges of ourselves be smoothed out as we represent Christ. He highlighted that we needed to find the soul searching questions of the people we teach so that we might better know how to help them. We have the answers but we need to study the questions of their soul before we can offer them

He also asked us to study the Abrahamic Covenant, House of Israel, Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood and Baptismal Covenants before we came. He highlighted how we are among the great and noble people of God, saved for this time because our spirits were needed to accomplish the work God has lined out for us. Because of Abraham's seed (which is us) we now get to participate in the fullness of the gospel. We were foreordained for this calling and when set a part as missionaries; if we don't have priesthood authority then there is no authority or power. He invited us to have people see Jesus Christ in our eyes and promised that as we had perfect obedience, all the Lord's blessings and miracles would be ours. He talked about SO much more, I could write a book about it! Ah but my spirit was fed and I walked away from that meeting so incredibly humbled and devoted to be better. Elder Bowen was extremely bold but testified with the spirit. Such a unique conference! 

Lastly...I GOT TO HAVE AN INTERVIEW WITH ELDER BOWEN!!!!!! President Maurer and Elder Bowen prayerfully selected 8 missionaries from our entire mission to get an interview and I was so excited to receive this unique opportunity! I felt so unqualified and questioned why me out of the hundreds of other missionaries but I soon found out why and let me just say...it was life changing. After 6 months of waiting to receive answers to my prayers, Elder Bowen said EVERYTHING I needed and KNEW that this is what I had been prayerfully yearning for. It was as if he saw into my soul and answered the deepest yearnings of my heart. He told me God had a unique work for me to do and the next 11 months were going to be revelatory. He said I have one of the strongest spirits he's ever seen and there was a light of joy and happiness about me that was contagious. He kept saying how blessed he was to meet with me and how much he loved me. That time with him was sacred and I feel so humbled to have been able to receive counsel and direction from a mouthpiece of God. The rest of my mission has been enlightened and I'm forever grateful for Heavenly Father sending His angels at the exact time we need them. We are so blessed and I KNOW we are being looked after. On this side of the veil and beyond.

I love you all!! 

♡♡♡

Sister Neel