August 29, 2011
Hello!!
Happy Monday!! I hope you are all doing well with the new school year!! Thanks for your letters and emails! I really appreciate hearing from all my amazing family and friends! Just so ya know, throughout my entire mission you will be sending my letters to the mission home address that I have given you. So no need to worry if I'm every transferred because that address will be the same the whole time!
So in my last email I totally forgot to mention how gorgeous Omaha, NE is! I know most people probably imagine that it is all cows and corn fields with a nasty yellow color plastering the state... but the area I'm in is so nice! There is a TON of greenery with big, green trees everywhere! It's fun to see so much grass wherever you go! There are also a lot of hills! In the western part of Nebraska is where you find the flat lands with cows and all that fun stuff. We may get to go visit over there in a few weeks for a zone conference! :) The weather is also amazing! Not much humidity and not even that hot!
Ok question for all of you...
So I have new scriptures (the ones Dad bought me) and I was wondering if any of you have any good and organized way of marking them. Like different topics are a certain color or anything like that. Hit me up with your ideas! They are so new I'm almost afraid to mark them at all. haha!
The missionary work is going great out here! There is a huge push for Momon.org out here and there will be a ton of advertisements starting in a few weeks. There will be billboards signs, internet ads, radio and TV commercials, and the works! We are so excited for this! I hear they will be starting this is Phoenix soon too! Our mission president said we need to talk to at least 30 members from our ward a week about mormon.org and what they can do to prepare for this. Overall they want the members to be prepared for their friends to ask questions about the church.
The 3 main things they suggest are to:
1. Connect the name "Mormons" with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
2. Tell them about how Jesus Christ is the center of our religion.
3. Invite them to do something... go to the site and look at the videos, go to church with you, or whatever you want!
If you don't have a profile you should go and make one and then share it with your friends. A pretty effective way of doing this is posting it on your facebook wall! :)
Along with meeting with different families from the ward we visit with our different investigators and less active members of the ward. Everyone is really nice to us even if they aren't interested or don't have the desire to come to church. We are able to have great conversations with people about how their belief in Jesus Christ has brought them strength in their lives. There are a lot of Catholic and Lutheran people here in Omaha. The area we are assigned to is said to be the nicest in mission. There are some way nice houses and areas. We also have old parts where the area is a little more ghetto but really it's not that bad. I've also heard that the more ghetto areas are easier to tract in. On Saturday we had a "car fast day" where we don't drive the car at all. This means we have to get picked up by someone in the ward to drive us 30 min into our area and then drops us off. I feel like a pain when we have to do this but they are all happy to serve! For Saturday we had our day pretty well mapped out with the people we would visit and then we made a point to talk to everyone along the way! So far this isn't my most favorite thing to do because people act really weird and awkward around missionaries. I felt like before the mission I could carry on a somewhat normal conversation with most people and then stick a missionary tag on me and I'm struggling because of the response you get from people. When you start talking to random people that just pulled up on their driveway they just look at you like, "why are you talking to me and what do you want?" So it's fun to try and get past that and talk to them and then bring up our purpose as missionaries or something like that. The strategy is different with each person but it's definitely not easy! On Saturday we ran into a guy, probably around 22, and he was sporting an ASU t-shirt and cap! I thought that was so cool so that's how that conversation started out. He's never been to ASU but he's a big fan! We were able to share a little bit about what we believe and he wanted to set an appointment for later this week to hear about the church! Yay! Although trackting can be hard it's well worth it when you meet people like this kid who are excited to hear about the religion and truly are interested. There were a few people like that from Saturday's experience.
Alright so my typical missionary day:
-Wake up around 6:15
-Work out from 6:30-7:00am
Normally for our workout we go running around the neighborhood with some other Sisters. We also have the option of doing work out videos at the trail center! We did that this morning for the 1st time and it was so fun!! There were 4 of us doing Turbo Jam in the theater downstairs. What a fun way to wake up in the morning!
-7:00-8:00-- shower, get dressed and ready for the day.
-8:00-9:00-- personal study
-9:00-10:00-- companion study
- Then we head out to our area and go to our appointments for the rest of the day!
- We normally have dinner at a member's house at 5:30 and are there for an hour and then are back to work!
- Continue with our appointments and visiting people then we drive home and are back by 9:00. we plan for the rest of the day. Then I write in my journal and get ready for bed.
-Lights out at 10:30!
That's overall the main layout but there's a lot more we do.
The trail center is a lot of fun! I'm getting better at giving tours although we weren't scheduled much this week.
Well I have to go now! Thanks for the letters and emails!
Have a wonderful day!! I hope you all got the pictures and letters I sent home. Lex said she didn't get some of my letters so hopefully other people are getting theres. Last week we only had 1 hour to write but hopefully i can write more today!
Love you all!!
- Sister Jones
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