This is the Lord's Work

Dear Family,

I have had to continually remind myself this week that this is the Lord's work. Sam left and so we can't see him anymore, Justin refuses to stay for all of church and keeps cancelling all our appointments, and an almost baptism now can't happen because the person that could have got baptized didn't come to church yesterday :( But I know that this is the Lord's work and that he will provide a way for all of his children. As long as I am doing my best and working my the spirit, then it is up to the Lord and up to the people to choose for themselves. I know that it was Satan's plan to deprive us of our agency and I am trying to put off the desire of wanting to take away people's agency. haha.  But really, if they could just trust that the things we ask them to do will benefit them so much!!! Oh well; Agency is a crucial part of the plan and I know that people can choose for themselves. I can only help them so far, but they have to want it for themselves. Sister Greenfield and I think that with all our investigators starting to drop off it's the Lord's way of allowing us to work more with the members. With have both felt that we needed to work more with them, but we always had so many lessons that there wasn't tons of time to visit members, but I guess the Lord is providing a way. And really, I could not be more grateful for the members we have in this ward. You don't need to be worried because they take care of us very well. Our relief society president is the greatest! We are having an Open House this weekend with the other ward in our chapel. Pray that it will be a success! Hopefully it will be! Return missionaries, what are some things that you saw on your mission that were successful with working with members? And to anyone and everyone, what ways do you feel missionaries could better help you in your missionary work? What do you wish they would teach or do for you to help you do missionary work?

We had interviews and zone meeting with President Jordan this week. SO GOOD! He talked about the atonement. I'll try and do a hand written letter about it, because I think I'll be able to explain and visualize some things better that way. On a side note, President Jordan's voice sometimes reminds me of the man who reads the Peacegiver. :) 

We did not get to see the broadcast because of the time difference (it was broadcast 11pm our time). But President and Sister Jordan watched it and they conferenced called the entire mission this morning to tell us about it and said that they will arrange for all of us to view it. It is crazy that internet will be more involved. But when President Jordan was telling us of the new changes announced, the spirit confirmed that it is inspired of the Lord and the way the work needs to move forward. I loved something Sister Jordan said as well. She said the Lord knew that we would all be on our missions at the time, and therefore he knew that he could trust us to not abuse this priviledge. It is so comforting to know how much the Lord trusts me and the other missionaries and I am so grateful to be a part of the work in this great time when the work is being hastened. IT truly is amazing! Thank you mom for sharing all those thoughts. I look forward to getting to see the broadcast myself.

Jessie did tell me her call is coming this week! Crazy! I can't wait to hear where she is going! How many missionaries will that make from our ward? 5?! That's awesome!

Also, way to offer atleast 3 desserts to the missionaries. I'm sure they loved it! Some of the many desserts we had at the Hawkins were Bannoffee pie (SO GOOD!!!!), brownies, cookies, caramel bars, homemade eclairs, lemon cheesecake bars, ice cream, etc. 

 Well, we are off to Canterbury today! Hopefully that will be fun!

I'll leave you with a verse that I read in my personal study this morning. I've been studying the allegory of the olive trees in Jacob 5. This morning I read verse 75 and I really liked it. As we  are diligent in serving in the Lord's kingdom and strive to follow him, we can have joy with Him.

And a thought from Sacrament Meeting yesterday: "Satan is real, but God's power will always be greater" How comforting to know whose side we are on  :)

I love you all!!

Love,

Sister Davis

I'm Grateful for my Fathers

Dear Family,

Happy Father's Day, Dad! I had a card ready for you last week, but with Elder Ballard coming, I didn't get a chance to post it, so sorry that it will be late. I hope you had a fabulous day and know how much you are appreciated! In the ward yesterday, all the Primary children got up and sang, but they also each went up and said why they love their dads. It was a nice moment to reflect on the wonderful Father I have been blessed with and how grateful I am for you. Thank you! And it made me really appreciate the knowledge I have of my Heavenly Father and my relationship with Him. I am so glad that I can share that knowledge with others and help them to develop that personal relationship. It makes such a difference.

Robert, We haven't been given specific guidelines on who we can and can't talk to. Since our area covers several towns(I think that's what you would call them): Rochester, Strood, Chatham, and Gillingham. We live in Gillingham and the Elders live in Chatham so we mostly just stay in our areas. And since we just got Elders here this transfer, we just carried on teaching those we were already teaching, but passed them a few in Chatham. Interestingly enough, most of our investigators are male, but we have good members that are usually really good to come teaching with us.

This week has been a little up and down. Sam is still doing great! Meeting with him always just brightens my day because I can literally see the gospel lighting up his life. He will have a long way to go to baptism, especially with giving up smoking, but he is working towards it and as long as he keeps doing the simple things (CPR- church, pray, read; and meeting with us) he will get there. We also are teaching this Nigerian (there are TONS of Nigerians here), Justin. He had a baptismal date for the 22nd but we are going to have to push it back. He is getting there though. We met with him Saturday and the members we took with us were AMAZING!! And he says he believes it's true!!!! HE just is hesitant because he doesn't want to leave his church he's at now and all his friends. He's getting closer though. Please pray for him. He really is amazing. He takes notes during church and always comes looking so 'smart' (British lingo for nice/handsome/dressed up). He is great! Then yesterday every single appointment we had fell through. It ended up ok because all the members that were suppose to be coming with us ended up not being able to come anyway. Luckily we were still able to meet with a couple investigators and a recent convert. It turned out pretty good and I guess there was other things the Lord needed us to do. It was just strange for everything to fall through. Luckily it is the Lord's work and we don't need to worry about the why of things as long as we are following the spirit.

We had a dinner appointment this week that made me miss you all so much. They have like 9 kids and they just know how to have a fun time and there was lots of laughs. Thank you for all the fun memories around the dinner table! The best part was Sister Hawkins had made 7 desserts!!! 7 desserts! Luckily, Sister Greenfield had prepped me for this dinner appointment so I knew not to eat too much earlier in the day and to go easy with the main course. I tried all but 2. They were amazing! And of course there was plenty of ice cream to go around (no 3 gallon tubs though). So yummy! And we've been running hard every morning to still work it off. haha.

Do you think you can send me the talk Elder Ballard gave at the CES fireside about faith and knowing the Lord's will? Hopefully you know what I'm talking about.

And Linda, you mentioned in one of your past letters about sending visuals. If you can send those you showed me before I left that would be great. I thought I had put them in with my stuff but I obviously didn't. And any others that you think might be useful. Thanks :)

This work is great and is truly the Lord's work. IT is a work of miracles!

 I love you all so much and am so grateful for your love and support. Thank you!

Love,

Sister Davis

 

Whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same

Dearest family,

I am sorry that I am writing a day late. Mom, I hope you weren't too worried. But it was all for a good cause because ELDER M. RUSSELL BALLARD came and spoke to us!!!!! He was in Sweden and was suppose to be going to Russia, but his visa didn't go through and his back-up plan was our mission! We spent all day yesterday in London. And I got a front row seat. We didn't get to shake his hand though :( but a front row seat is still pretty amazing. It was awesome to have all the missionaries in our mission together. There are so many of us. And London South Mission came for part of it too. It was amazing!! It was really uplifting and encouraging. I'm ready to work harder and be better and I know that as I do that I will see the fruits of my efforts. So amazing to be in the presence of an apostle!!

Well since we didn't have time to do everything for P-Day that we needed to (although it was so worth it) we have to try and fit everything in today with what little time we have so sorry for a short letter this week.

We have had so many wonderful experiences this week. I'll just share one that is probably my favorite. Since we are teaching so much, we don't have too much time to find, but on the way to one of our appointments we decided to stop a couple people. One was this young man, Sam,  who was smoking. At first he wasn't very interested in talking, but we were able to set up an appt for later that day. He didn't have a phone and honestly, I wasn't being very hopeful that he would show up... but he did! And he said that when he ran into us he had been really depressed and having a hard time and after we taught him lesson 1 he said he couldn't stop smiling. He came to church on Sunday and to FHE at a members house last night and he is coming to addiction recovery at the church tonight because he says he really wants to quit smoking. Hopefully it'll go well. It definitely testified to me that the Lord knows how much time we have to find and will put exactly those we need to talk to in our path. This work is so great; it changes lives; and miracles happen! I love you all!! Good luck with everything!

Love, Sister Davis

Gillingham with Sister Greenfield so GOOD

Dear Family,

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA DAVIS!! I love you!!

I don't even know where to begin. I am LOVING my new area and especially my new companion. We get along so perfectly! And I think that I was definitely a blessing from the Lord for her (not saying that in a conceided way), but she had a really difficult time with her last companion and was feeling really overwhelmed with all the burden she felt. We both have the same goals and are really pushing ourselves to work harder and improve. And it's amazing how well we teach together. I love teaching lessons and coming out knowing that we taught by the spirit. Sister Greenfield is amazing! She's from Yorkshire, bytheway. I'm learning so much from her. We pretty much are guaranteed that we will only be together this transfer because with so many missionaries coming in so many new sisters are training and follow-up training (like S. Greenfield with me). But we are definitely enjoying and making the most of the time we are serving together. We have fantastic investigators!! 10 progressing. Definitely different from my last area. And we got 4 new investigators this week and had 9 investigators at church. I feel like the Lord is blessing me for all the work I did in my last area without seeing many results. It is a lot to keep track of but we just got Elders in our area (one is a brand new missionary from Reno) and it will be nice to work with them as well and share teaching all these great people. Gillingham isn't as pretty all over as Northampton was, but a member took us to see this gorgeous veiw at Blue Bell Hill for dinner. It was amazing! And Pdays are going to be the best. Claire, I will definitely be going to see Cantebury Cathedral. Today we plan to go to Rochester to see the cathedral and castle there!! And Dover is in my zone area!! So we will definitely be going there too! The ward here is also amazing and so pumped to do missionary work. The bishops son got baptized a couple weeks ago and they invited over 100 nonmembers and 40 ended up coming! Amazing! It's amazing what a simple invitation can do. I want to challenge you as a family to prayerfully pick someone or a family (that would be even better) and extend an invitation. It could be as simple as inviting them to come over for FHE, to come to church, church activity, or to visit mormon.org. And I challenge you to do this before my next transfer. So you have 6 weeks. I can't wait to hear how it goes. I know as you prayerfully approach it that the Lord will prepare someone to accept. Keep me updated with how it goes.

It was funny too. In sacrament meeting a member of the bishopric got up and told the ward that they needed to be feeding us more; that we should be fed every single night. I'm not complaining, but I do imagine that it will make us fat. haha.

We have seen so many miracles in the work this week. My first full day here we went and visited a referral. She had already read all of first Nephi and we committed her to be baptised on 15 June. She asked if it could be sooner!! What?! golden. We don't think we'll be able to teach her everything sooner, but it's great that she's motivated and wants to be baptized. I had a strong feeling at the end of the lesson that she will face opposition as she gets closer to this decision and so I mentioned that to her. We've already seen some opposition because she was unable to come to church on Sunday :( The good thing is that she has already been twice, so that shouldn't hold her back from being able to be baptized on the 15th. She seems strong though and I know with the Lord's help we can get her there.

Funny story: the Elder's came with us to teach a new investigator Gbola (Muslim from Nigeria). It was Elder Bennett's (the one from Reno) first lesson. Gbola had two other friends show up and they were drinking and they basically argued with eachother. We tried really hard to teach them the restoration but we all could barely get in two words. Half way through the lesson, Elder Gonzalez (DL and from Spain) just started laughing and that just got me going. IT was hilarious. One of the friends asked me to say the closing prayer, but Gbola wouldn't have it. He said in his country woman do not pray; their office is in the kitchen. He also had S. Greenfield cut apples for everyone to eat. I could have been offended but it makes for a good story and exjerience and the whole situation was just commical. Another funny moment was yesterday when we went to a members home for dinner. We had been fasting all day and we were waiting for her husband to get home from church so we could each. She was sharing this really spiritual/emotional experience about one of her sons and my stomach would not stop growling... and it was so loud! S. Greenfield was trying so hard not to laugh and I just felt really bad. It was funny though.

I gained a strong testimony this week of spiritual preparation. As part of 12-wk we were learning about the power of prayer and were role-playing how we could get some investigators to pray. We role-played with this man, Nick. It was kind of difficult because I hadn't met him before, but I tried my best. They've been teaching him awhile and he never prays. We were determined to get him to pray and our prayers were answered. At first he refused, but slowly the spirit worked on him and he agreed to! It was amazing!! Too many good experiences to write about. There are so many wonderful prepared people hear in Gillingham. I'm so grateful I can help bring them to the wonderful knowledge of the gospel. This work is amazing and filled with too many miracles to count everyday! And I know the Lord is working miracles in your life as well. Look to find atleast one everyday and you will see how it changes your life to see God's hand working through you. This work is so amazing! I love being here and being a missionary. I know without a doubt that I am here at this time for a purpose and that this is where the Lord needs me to be. I know that this gospel is true and that this church is true and is led by Jesus Christ himself. As we live the gospel everyday, strive our very best to be our best, and apply the atonement for the areas where we lack, I know that there is so much peace and happiness to be found. I am grateful I can see that everyday. Not just in my own life, but in the lives of the people here. I was studying this morning Questions of the Soul about balancing family and career, but it can apply to anything in our life and to our priorities in general. I love 3 Nephi 13:33. As we put God first in our lives, he will bless us more than we can imagine. We won't need to worry about the little, insignificant matters, because he will bless us with EVERYTHING that we need. I also love the promise in Mosiah 2:40. And if you read Mosiah 2 with the thought of how we can find peace and joy, it's amazing how simple it really is and how much God is willing to give us. I love you all so very much!!! Have a fabulous week!

Love,

Sister Davis