Sister Bailey Anne Harrison: Twas the week of Halloween 🎃 👻

11/6/2017

Hola mi familia! It has been such a good week here on the Coast of Oregon. We have been super busy! Which is amazing, so I am not even going to complain about it. But the work is rapidly progressing and we saw so many miracles this week!

The winter I think has finally begun here for Oregon. It is now starting to rain more and more and it is getting really cold! I feel like we skipped a whole season though because there are not a lot of color changing leaves here, it is all just green. But I mean I guess that means less raking right? But it is now time to bundle up, sweater weather is now in full effect.

Last Monday evening was super busy. Sister Orr and I had a dinner, then 3 lessons back to back. It was quite literally insane. But so amazing at the same time. When we got to our final appointment we were meeting with a recent convert and we were teaching Enduring to the End. And as we were talking, it was more of a discussion rather then a lesson, we all came to the point that we realized all people Endure to the End differently. It is just another reminder that we are all Gods Children. That he has a personal Plan of Salvation for each and every one of us. And that means that all of us are going to endure differently. It was a pretty cool insight that we all gained.

For Halloween this week we had a meeting all day up in Eugene. It was a leadership meeting and it was all dedicated to our mission becoming a Facebook Mission. I never thought that on my mission I would ever use social media like the way that the church has recently announced. Heavenly Father is truly hastening his work here upon this Earth and he is making it possible for us as missionaries to be able to utilize more tools to contact more and more people. Most of you probably noticed that I posted on my home Facebook this week. That is probably the craziest thing I have done in awhile, but I want you all to know that if you are struggling in anyway or if you know of someone who might be interested in gospel messages to please send me a message! I am grateful for the trust that Heavenly Father has placed in our hands as his missionaries. I know that there is opposition in all things and that these tools could be used for bad, but I also know if we use them for the way that God intended that we will be blessed and that we will reap the blessings! They announced a lot of cool things at this meeting, we are able to chat, make phone calls and even video conference calls on Facebook. But the thing that I am really excited about is that they are allowing missionaries who have gone home to skype into lessons with their investigators that they worked with while they were on their missions. SO COOL. Anyway lots of changes happening and I am really excited about it!

For the night of Halloween we had 2 sisters over and we had a little bit of a sleep over because we were going to go on exchanges with them the next day. And it was a lot of fun and we were able to make sugar cookies and just talk. So good. Then the next day I was able to go on exchanges with Sister Wilson. She is a sister that I came out with and she was the last sister that I came out with that I hadn’t served with before. And I love her a lot. We were able to go tracting together and we talked about a lot of the things that we have been able to learn on our missions. Right now she is training a new missionary and she is loving it, they have 6 people on date for baptism in their area, so they are busy ALL of the time. So she loved the opportunity to just go and find new people to teach. It was funny, we went to go to the church to meet the sisters for dinner and we had been walking and got pretty far away from our car, and we were already 45 minutes late to meet the sisters. But we were passing by this man and we just said hello to him and asked him how his day was going, he said it was okay... then walked a couple more steps and then said, actually it is pretty crappy. We ended up talking to him and he had a lot going on in his life. We shared with him that we have a purpose in this life and that our purpose is not to be stressed and sad. God doesn’t want that. He got a little emotional and agreed and we scheduled a time to go back next week! That moment was a big testimony to me that we truly need to talk to EVERYONE.

Okay so at one point this week we were dropped by one of our really amazing investigators who had a lot of potential. I think he will accept the gospel one day, but right now just isn’t his time. But literally within like 2 minutes of texting him back, we got a text from a less active who just moved in! Her husband isn’t a member and last week they attended church in the Coos Bay ward and they want to start meeting with the missionaries! Apparently the Coos Bay sisters gave them the Elders phone number and our number and they contacted us right when we needed them! God is so good. Well we met with them on Saturday, they were at church on Sunday and we have a lesson with them tonight! They are SUCH a cool family. Obviously there are things that they are going to need to change, but don’t we all have things we need to change? The coolest thing about it all is that the husband is actually the one that suggested that they go to church, and said our church!!! I am so excited to meet with them. You will probably here a lot of miracles come from Chris and Kayla very soon! Also, during church we were in Sunday School and I looked over at a member couple in our ward and then looked over at Christ and Kayla and I just had the thought that they needed to fellowship them. When I asked if Brother Shaw could take Chris to Elders Quorum he jumped at the idea and then Sister Shaw took Chris’ spot with out us even saying anything. I love members so much! And Chris while being introduced in Elder Quorum, they said that he was a visitor and he said “no I’m not visiting, I am here to stay” SO COOL!

We did A LOT of finding this week, we found 8 new investigators!!! We are going to be pretty busy this next week!

I was also able to go on another exchange with a different sister this week, Sister Terry. She is awesome! We did a lot of tracting and did a lot of talking. I love being able to go out with the sisters because I feel like I learn so much from them! We met a lot of cool people and we were able to find 3 new investigators. One of the lady’s that we met was from Hawaii, the same island that Sister Orr is from so I was freaking out because she wasn’t with me haha. But we started talking to her and she told us that she was Christian and we told her that we were too! She was a little surprised and we began to talk about our different beliefs and we talked about how each of us have been able to grow our faith in Christ. I testified that the way I have been able to grow my faith in Christ is through the Book of Mormon. I read Moroni 10:3-5 and we both testified that we knew it was true. Then we gave her a Restoration pamphlet and she looked at it and asked if we believed that our Church had a perfect organization, we asked her where she got that idea from, because we were curious. And she said that it says the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to restore means to bring back, so doesn’t that mean that it is Christ church on the earth again? WOW. That has never happened to me before. Haha, unfortunately she was going out of town and did not know when she was going to be back so we couldn’t schedule a return appointment so we added each other on Facebook. And guess what, SHE IS STILL ASKING QUESTIONS. Facebook is so inspired. To end our exchange that day we went and helped a less active move. Well the less actives roommates dad was there, and he looked at us and we looked at him and instantly we all recognized each other. He was the man that we found out in the boonies just a few weeks before and then when we came back his wife asked us to leave. Maybe now that we are meeting with the Less Active and the Roommate we will be able to meet with the Dad as well, haha such a small world!

Along with all the new changes on Facebook, we also got a new chapter for Preach My Gospel to help with our planning efforts for investigators. It is basically changing the mind set of having a plan for every minute of everyday, to a view of planning for our investigators and I love it. In Jacob 1:5 & 7 we read:

5 For because of faith and great anxiety, it truly had been made manifest unto us concerning our people, what things should happen unto them.

7 Wherefore we labored diligently among our people, that we might persuade them to come unto Christ, and partake of the goodness of God, that they might enter into his rest, lest by any means he should swear in his wrath they should not enter in, as in the provocation in the days of temptation while the children of Israel were in the wilderness.

I love that it talks about as we serve and set goals according to our faith, concern, carefulness and diligence that we will be able to be more successful in the things that we do. I know this can go into out daily lives as well. As we set goals and make plans for the things we want to achieve in the future and if we put God at the center of those plans I know that we will be able to accomplish many things in the future!

Thank you for all of your love and support Fan Club! I love you all so much and I hope that you have a great week!!! LOVE YOU!

—Remember who you are and who God EXPECTS you to become—

Love, Your Favorite Sister Missionary,

Sister Harrison

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