Sister Bailey Anne Harrison: 2 exchanges in one week??? I GOT this ✔️

March 25, 2017

Hey fan club! This week is a weird week because I have the opportunity to email two times in one week, which seems weird but don't worry, its legal. We are going to the temple today so I hope that as I am typing that my words will be able to make a little bit of sense so I can tell you about the great week that we had here in Klamath Falls!

On Monday we were able to teach a lesson to a family in our ward here in Klamath. Their daughter is turning 8 this year and they want her to be able to receive the missionary discussions before she gets baptized so that she fully understands what it means to be baptized. I had never heard of that before but it has been really great to be able to teach them, it has helped Sister Roach and I practice our teaching skills with young children. Most of the time as a missionary we have been teaching adults, but I know that I need to be able to teach children, so it has been fun to be able to do that. The lesson went very well, we were able to talk about the Plan of Salvation. The kids really already know a lot obviously because they are members but there were still a couple of things that they were a little confused on so it was fun to try and teach them these things in a simple way that will help them understand what the Plan of Salvation means to them. Then we got to the kingdoms of glory and on my cut outs the celestial kingdom is obviously on a sun. So then they thought that we were all going to burn up on the sun... oops. So we then had to explain that we use the sun as a symbol showing that the celestial kingdom is better then the other kingdoms. So then it made me think about how many people I have taught think that we Mormons believe that we are going to live on the sun someday. Lol, you learn something new everyday, I will change the way that I teach that starting... now!

Then on Tuesday I was able to go on exchange with one of the Spanish sisters in our zone. Her name is Hermana Cortez and she is from El Salvador, she is the only member of the church in her family and she hadn't spoke any English until she came into the mission. Seriously crazy! She was able to talk to me about her conversion story and she talked about how her friends were members of the church and thats how she was interested in joining the church. Her parents have never been interested and actually are not supportive of her on a mission at this time. My heart ached for her as she told me her story. It made me really grateful for the family that I have and the support that everyone gives me. But even though she has all this going on her life, she is still out serving the Lord and she is doing the work that she should be doing. Anyway, the exchange was so good, she has been having a really hard time learning English, so I was able to pull out some Spanish to be able to communicate with her. We had a good time. Every time we went to walk up to a house she would ask if the people inside spoke Spanish and I would say, probably not. She told me that she just wanted to find a Spanish investigator and guess what, the first door we knocked on was a lady who spoke Spanish and guess what, she became a new investigator. What the what? MIRACLE! So we were able to then have a competition with each other to see who could find the most new investigators, well it ended up being 2 english and 1 Spanish! I won, no worries (:

We had an awesome lesson with this little boy this week. His mom is a less active and he has been coming to church every week. We have been trying to decide what we are going to do to help him progress, but anyway. We had a lesson about missionary work, and he was asking a bunch of questions on what we do as missionaries and what we do everyday. Anyway it was a great lesson and when we asked him if he wanted to serve a mission someday and he got up and started to do a happy dance! It was so so so cute! He talked about how his mom is going to let him get baptized when he turns 12, and he was just so excited! I hope that as we keep teaching him that we will be able to help him be baptized earlier then that, but we will see! Also we told us what his favorite song was, What does the Fox Say, and I got him to sing us a little bit, it was hilarious!

To end the week we were able to have a lesson with some of my favorite people ever. There is a couple that we have been teaching for a little bit but we haven't been able to get them to keep commitments lately. In district meeting this week we talked a lot about How to Begin Teaching and how we need to state our purpose when we begin to teach people. My purpose, "is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end." A lot of the times as we teach people if we don't state our purpose enough as missionaries, the people who we were once teaching are now just becoming our friends. And that is something that I was worried about these investigators. I was scared that they weren't going to be able to progress because they were keeping the commitments/invitations that we were leaving them. Well they invited us over for dinner the other night, and they are from Mexico so they make fabulous Mexican Food. We were able to have such a fabulous conversation with them that we were able to talk about what we as missionaries are doing to help the world that is continually making wrong choices. In the end they told us that they want us to continue to come to be able to help them to come closer to Christ! Thank goodness, I wasn't ready to drop them yet!

This year for the Easter Initiative the Church will be releasing a video entitled the Prince of Peace. During the week of Easter the church will be focusing on 8 principles of peace that we can use in our own lives that we can use in order to find the peace through the Savior that we desire. I have decided that leading up to Easter that I want to study each one of the principles that they are focusing on and be able to for myself find peace through these principles. This week I decided that I wanted to focus on gratitude. A couple of months into my mission I was facing some hard trials, I found myself needing some positive light and needing to focus especially on my Savior. I decided as I was writing down in my journal to write a list of the things that I was grateful for in this life. As I did that I was able to recognize many things that maybe I hadn't thought of before. And I truly felt the love that my Heavenly Father had for me in those moments. In April 2014 President Uchtdorf gave a talk entitled Gratitude in every circumstance, I invite you ALL to read it. He says, "True, it is important to frequently “count our blessings”--and anyone who has tried this knows there are many--but I don’t believe the Lord expects us to be less thankful in times of trial than in times of abundance and ease. In fact, most of the scriptural references do not speak of gratitude for things but rather suggest an overall spirit or attitude of gratitude." I know that as we have an overall attitude of gratitude that we will be able to completely have a sense of peace in our life that will bring us more happiness. I invite all of you this week to be able to show your attitude of gratitude to the people around you and I know that as you do that you will be able to have the peace that only Christ can give into your life.

So this week was a short one but, you know that it was a good one! I am so grateful that I was able to go to the temple today to be able to feel at home! The spirit is so strong at the temple and I know that was we continue to go there that we will be able to understand more who we are and why we are here. Our Heavenly Father loves us so much and just wants us to return to him, so go to the temple so you can know how!

I love you all, seriously, so much love! I hope that you have a fabulous week, and just remember I will not be writing an email on Monday, so sorry for the inconvenience. But if you email me on Monday, April 3rd, I will answer! And while your at it don't forget to watch conference this weekend, #soexcited!

Talk to you later!

---Remember who you are and who God expects you to become---

Love, Your Favorite Sister Missionary,

Sister Harrison