Choose the hard right not the easy wrong

 My beloved Family, I write unto you again that ye may know that I am yet alive; but I write somewhat of that which is grievous. And I began to be old, and saw that I must soon go down to the grave; wherefore I said unto my companion: Let me email my family, that I may share my love for them before I go down to my grave. For behold, my parents, my brothers and my sister, I cannot go down to my grave save I should leave a blessing upon you; for behold, I know that if ye are brought up in the way ye should go ye will not depart from it. But Behold, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written, that the grace of God the Father, and also the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of them, may be and abide in you forever. For the Lord God hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; and inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence. And now I, Sister Fisher , bid farewell unto the St. Louisites, yea, and also unto my fellow missionaries whom I love, until we shall meet before the judgment-seat of Christ. And only a few have I written, because of my weakness in writing. 

And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the land of endless P-Days. Until my family and I shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing gate of the Calgary Airport. And I make an end of my writing upon this email, which writing has been small; and to the reader I bid farewell, hoping that much of my family may read my words. Brothers and Sisters, adieu.

Haha Well enough of that. 

 MTC District

 (Departing Missionaries, And Missionaries at their 6, 12 or 18 month mark) 

 Chillin at Forrest Park Sister Hudson (Texas), Sister Lott (Idaho), Sister Turpin and me! 

 Frozen Custard at Ted Drewes. Only in St.Louis

 ​Me and Sister Turpin with St. Louis

 Me at the Arch!

I hope you enjoyed all the pictures. we had a fun week.Monday we spent some time in St.Louis at the Gateway arch and getting frozen custard at Ted Drewes. Frozen custard is kinda a big thing here. We also found some new investigators this week! We met this one guy named Nathan. He has been recovering from being a heroin addicted and this one time he overdosed and had a near death experience. He was sharing with us that he definitely believes in the after life and it kinda scared him so he changed his life. Kinda like Alma the Younger. He was able to read that story in the Book of Mormon and relate to it a lot. It was cool. We talked a lot about the Plan of Salvation with him and he believed all of it. We were just able to put his beliefs into words for him :) He is a really cool guy.

I loooved this week it has just been very spiritual. On wednesday we were able to go to the temple! Our mission president challenges the return missionaries to visit the temple when they go home and take a selfie with it and send it back to them so we will have to plan a trip for when I come home! And then Conference!!! I loved president Monsons talk. It was short but I feel like it was just perfect for me. Since I have to make a lot of choices soon. Also the people I watched conference with are from Alberta Canada and they have Leavitts and Quentin's in their family and I told them that I had some Quentin's in my family and so we brought out the pedigree charts and yup we are related through James Quentin on Grandma's side. Pretty cool!

I am SO excited to see you guys on monday! I have absolutely loved my mission but I am ready to come home and see all of you and give you big hugs! And it will be another good week of hard missionary work! 

I LOVE YOU! CHOOSE THE HARD RIGHT NOT THE EASY WRONG! #HALLELUJAH

Missions are awesome.

Love Britt

Happy Easter

Hola Familia!

We have had a rockin #Hallelujah week! The Lord is blessing us and we are still going strong! 

To start off the week... Me and Sister Turpin got matching dresses! Comp unity! Super comfy, super cute. that is how I like it!

Then we had EXCHANGE MIRACLES this week! #Hallelujah!! 

On Tuesday Sister Oldroyd came with me in O'Fallon. We had a long busy day with appointments. We are teaching a 10 year old girl named Piper! Her grandparents baptized a little over a year ago and I love them! She came to church yesterday in bunny ears So we had a great lesson with them! But we also were out and about Tuesday evening And we didn't really have time to go see anyone. We were at an apartment complex so we decided that we would knock on a few doors for the last few minutes of the night. The first door we knocked on was Kim. She was in her pjs and looked a little confused as to why we were at her door but we told  her who we were and that we shared messages of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His gospel. She was like, "Oh okay... do you want to step in for a minute?" Yussss

So we were talking to her for a bit and she grew up baptist but she has been looking for a church where she can feel comfortable and accepted because she has a little chihuahua service dog. She has epilepsy so the dog can sense when she is about to have a seizure. The dog's name is Caesar! haha But anyways when we were talking to her and she really believes in personal revelation and she said that she had been touched by the spirit and she straight up told me that she felt the spirit when I was talking.... That is cool. We asked her if she was going anywhere for Easter Sunday and invited her to come to church. She came!! I hope she liked it. We had a pretty good Easter program and she stayed for the second hour but didn't stay for relief society. 

While Sister Turpin stayed in O'Fallon they were able to pick up a really cute girl we have been trying to see for a while and her mom was finally home!! Sister Turpin said that they were super cute and really interested and so I will see them this week 

And then on Friday we met this family of girls that we have been trying to pick up for a while. we have only met the daughters but the mom was finally home when we stopped by and she told us, "Sorry girls don't mean to be rude but our beliefs are just too different. We believe Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior." And I was like, "Awesome! So do we!" and she was like, "Really? okay you can come in. But if you do say something that is not right I won't be afraid to say something." Haha We talked about why we celebrate Easter and that Jesus Christ is resurrected and stuff and it was a nice conversation. It is kinda cool how similar our beliefs are with a lot of religions. They are Baptist. We wanted to share with them the #Hallelujah video but they didn't have internet... so wish we had ipads. But we are going back to see them again! We left the mom the restoration pamphlet and she was glued to that pamphlet when we left. She really liked it. That is why I love this Hallelujah video so much because any christian can feel the spirit and agree with the message! It is a message for the whole world! peace and love.

Saturday we met a less active family that I have never met before and watched the Hallelujah video with them and invited them to church and they came!! They were super nice! Just a super busy schedule. 

And so much other good sprinkled through out the week. Like getting that Easter package! thank you thank you! Also I bought a suitcase last pday. I think I collected a few things through out the mish. It was only like 30 bucks so hopefully you are not mad at me.

Hmmm I wonder what ward Brother Peterson went to. You will have to let me know because maybe I went there on exchanges! 

The youth here spoiled it for me and told me that superman dies. I thought that was ridiculous but I don't know. that is what they were saying. I will have to see when I get home!

Also know one knows what perogies are down here. they don't got them so I will have to eat some of that when I get home.

It always makes me so excited when I hear about your missionary work Dad! It is always kinda weird to hear people I actually know potentially learning more about the gospel. Keep up the good work! #Hallelujah!! 

I wonder how many times I have said Hallelujah in this email. I say Hallelujah like ten times a day now... anyways

Love you all! And no it hasn't hit me yet that I am going home... in 2 weeks.... I am way too busy to think about home too much. Reading everyone's emails today was kinda weird though because too many people are mentioning it!!

I will talk to you all next week! 

Lots of Love!

Sister Fisher

 #Hallelujah!! 

Me and Sister Kikkert (Salt Lake City)

​Sister Day (Utah), Sister Oldroyd (Utah), me and Sister Turpin! Matchy matchy!!

Skittles

HELLO FAMILY!

Life is good here in the land of Missouri. I have not got the Easter package yet but we hope to get it sometime this week. Let me just start off by saying... #Hallelujah!! I am pretty sure I have got that video memorized now because we have been sharing it with literally every one we can! In there homes, on there door step, it don't matter. as long as they got some sort of mobile device... we will show it to them! 

We actually found this guy named Sebastian, knocking on doors and started talking to him about Jesus. We asked him if he had a smart phone and if we could share the Hallelujah video with him. He looked it up and we watched it and after we watch the video he told us, "Ya know, if you would have came a month ago I would have told you guys to go away but I just recently started believing in God again. Thank you." So cool. We hope to see him again this week. 

This week our district leader challenged us to a talking to everyone challenge and skittles were on the line. You know me. I love my skittles so we beat them. Now they owe us skittles.

We went on exchanges this week as well. 

I can't remember if I said this in my last email but our ward boundaries just changed and so we lost a few families in our ward... including our Ward mission leader... So we have been going solo for a while haha We just got to be patient until the bishop calls a new one. It is good that the Ward boundaries changed! They formed a new ward! That means missionary work is progressing! 

Anyways! Love you all! Glad to hear from you every week. Only got two more pdays after this so make sure the emails are good! 

Love Britt

Making Crepes! Yum Yum!

Gotta represent Canada. Thanks to Grandma Fisher for the apron.

 Pday at the Mission home!!! I  Sister Morgan!

President Morgan said he didn't want to do a silly face because he didn't want to us to blackmail him haha 

New favorite place

Hello Family! 

That is quite the news this week! I thought I would be speaking the Sunday I would get home from my mission. I am kinda glad I have time to ponder my mission as well as adjust to my life at home until May 8th. I am also kinda sad that I miss my auntie dawns wedding! But I am excited that they are finally getting married :)

Well we finished all our zone conferences this week. we definitely feel like we did better on our training the second time. We had a lot of missionaries saying that this was there favorite zone conference yet! Although a lot of the missionaries are very green but still! It was cool to help motivate the missionaries in the mission and teach repentance. We have been crazy studying and talking about repentance and I think I am starting to understand what it means to repent and I am loving the simple principle of repentance. Repentance is good and positive and is not optional for our salvation. It is also needed daily. 

I have also been think a lot of how wonderful the missionary program is and how beautifully it prepares us to be true disciples of Jesus Christ and prepares us to be leaders. Since this is my last transfer I have been doing this "My Plan" course once a week that helps me set goals and lay a foundation to prepare me for when I come home. I have been really enjoying  it. Some of the topics have been about having a vision/one year goal, using my patriarchal blessing as a guide, spiritual goals, relationship goals, service in the church goal, educational goals, Goals, goals, goals,....

The last myplan training I did was called Continuing Discipleship. It mostly talked about how I can still have the spirit with me at home as strong as I have had it on my mission and can still have opportunities to serve. Prayer, Scripture study, Sabbath day observance, temple attendance, institute, technology safety, blah blah blah so many things that can play a part in helping me have a successful return home and to have the RM blues. But I think I am realizing how much of a plan I do not have! So I am glad I am doing this and taking time each week to think about it. 

We had a good week though. We set a baptism date for Patrick and Priscilla. He wants to get baptized so bad. He knows it's true it is just so sad that he has addictions that are keeping him bound. That is why I am really loving this study of repentance. It is really repentance that frees us from sin. True sincere repentance. I know Patrick can do it because Jesus Christ is on his side! 

Also did ya'll see the new Easter video?? #Hallelujah followhim.mormon.org check it out and share. I love sharing these initiatives! This is the best time to be a missionary and to see the gospel being shared all over the world through media! In so many different languages!! This is a fulfillment of prophecy!!! D&C 90:11

Anyways have a fantastic week! make good choices! 

Love britt 

​We had dinner at this place called Tom+Chee. that is short for tomato and cheese. It is a place that sells amazing grilled cheese sandwiches. This is a doughnut grilled cheese sandwich. So good! New favorite place.

Kinder Surprise

Hello! 

So I didn't think of asking Sister Turpin about Tyler Hill until after I emailed you last week but we did make the connection! I told her that Tyler babysat us once or twice. She thinks Tyler was awesome and an awesome Seminary teacher but I guess he is in the bishopric in her home ward now. And he became neighbors with her family right before she left on her mission. Small world right?? so awesome. 

But ya I got my flight info in the mail this week. that was weird. So I am going from St Louis to Detroit then Detroit to Minneapolis then Minneapolis to Calgary. That will be a very long day. Not really excited for that but excited to see you all! 

This week was a good week! We have been doing our best talking to everyone we see and we have a lot of good lessons set up this week! We have just been having a hard time finding legit people. It is so funny talking to random people. Me and Sister Turpin are making a quote wall in our apartment of all the weird things people say and funny inside jokes. Like when we read 3 Nephi 11 with an older lady who crazy believes in aliens said "where do you think he descended from? From his invisible spaceship. Jesus Christ is extra terrestrial. Doo Da doo doo! Doo da doo doo!" haha I don't even know anymore. 

And that is cool information sent me about Missouri. I don't really know of any cool book of Mormon history here but I can ask around. may make for some good dinner conversations.

Hope you all have another stellar week! 

Love Sister Fisher 

 PS Can you please send me Kinder Surprises for Easter?? They don't got them here in the USA and Sister Turpin wants to try them! And I love them too :) 

New Car

We got a new car!!! We went from a 2015 chevy cruze to this beautiful 2016 Nissan Rogue!! We named it Juawn the Nissan. It had 47 miles on it when we got it!  haha 

Also this is Sister Turpin from Pocatello Idaho and she has been out 9 months! I love her! This is at MLC (missionary leader conference) and so the next couple weeks we will be preparing our training for zone conferences! We are focusing a lot on repentance. I really like what president trained us about teaching repentance and baptizing converts! He said that the quality of our teaching determines the quality of our converts. We don't just want baptisms but baptized converts that will go to the temple in a year. 

We take what we learned from MLC and coordinate with the zone leaders with what we teach the zone... sometimes I am amazed with how much trust the mission president has in us... but I am excited and nervous! haha We have a zone conference on March 3rd and March 9th so pray for us!

Here we are with the temple. We need to plan a date when we can all go to the temple when I get home. That would be awesome. I get to go through the temple on March 30th with all the departing missionaries. Super excited.

We have had a really great week. We are teaching lots. One of our investigators named Patrick didn't come to church. You would think since our church starts at 1pm sleeping in wouldn't be a common excuse anymore but I guess I am wrong. It doesn't matter if church starts at 9am or 1pm people still like to sleep in on Sundays. So we taught Patrick how to repent the other day. It went well. He is the investigator that is struggling with addictions. He is cool.

We had a lot of fun street contacting the other day too! The weather has been so nice it is hard not to want to walk around! 

Any ways hope you all have another great week! 

LOve Sister Fisher 

AP Challenges

Oh Dad haha I am glad you are having fun "likening" the scriptures to my life.

But now it is time for transfer updates! For my last transfer in the mission I will be staying in O'fallon MO with Sister Turpin! I will tell you more about her next time but We have served around each other before and she is awesome! 

This week has been kinda crazy but really good at the same time. I don't know much info to give you but the decisions made at transfers is really good. Me and my last cpmpanion are both STL's serving together and after talking with president Morgan she will no longer be an STL just to help her have less stress for the rest of her mission. It will be good. 

We did that list thing you suggested! it worked out really well. I felt like I had a better idea of how to help her. And it made this week a lot easier. Anyways I do feel like we were meant to be companions. I have learned a lot from her... especially about patience and endurance haha She has also allowed me to humble myself a little more and become better. I love all my companions. They all teach me a different way to love :) 

On Monday we made prayer/study journals with one of our recent converts! We got to be all crafty with her. I want to work on it more today.

On Tuesday we met this less active named Brother Piper who is way cool and just had heart surgery. No one in the ward really knows him so I am glad we found him. His testimony is super solid and loves family history. It is just sad because he is getting old and has a lot of health issues. It was fun to talk to him he has some friends and family members who may be interested in learning about the gospel too so that is sweet.

On Wednesday we picked up 4 investigators! What?! For a while we had no gators and then this happened so that was a huge answer to prayers. I am really excited about Tracy. She had a sticker on her door that said forever families and so we commented about it on our door approach and talked about the plan of salvation. She told us that that sticker was on the door when she moved in and she just never took it down. I am excited to teach her again! Patrick and Priscilla are newly weds and have been investigators before. I have never taught them before. Patrick is struggling with various addictions and is hopefully more willing to keep commitments. He has his wife to support him and take the lessons with him this time. We are going to make sure he gets to those addiction recovery classes that the church offers. I am excited :) And then Cacillia... I don't know how long we will teach her. I don't know how interested she is.

Thursday was our crazy day.

On Friday we did our weekly planning and met with Travis who got baptized back in October. He is so cool. Reminds me of my little brother :) There family is interesting because all the kids are members but the mom isn't. She is not baptized because she still lives with her boyfriend and the boyfriend wants nothing to do with the church but they still want to live together. For now at least. I think they are planning on moving soon... But they are cool because they all want to serve missions and their mom is totally supportive of it. Travis was making fun of Canada and of me for being from Canada (What's new. everyone does it) And so I told him he better watch out because he is going to get called to Canada for his mission haha 

On the 6th week of the transfer the APs send out challenges to all the leaders and we compete and try to get more points then the other leaders. So on Monday we had to come up with an epistle name so when we send in an epistle to the APs they can send it out to the other leaders. It is kinda like twitter but it is just sending out fun messages on our phones and we call them epistles haha That probably made no sense.  On Tuesday the challenge was to contact as many people as possible by starting out the conversation by talking about the weather from 10am to 12pm and then next we had to start the convo by talking about sports from 1pm to 3pm and then next we had to start the convo by asking for directions. If we picked up an investigator we would get more points. On Wednesday we had to find money on the ground and then buy something from white castle (fast food restaurant) and give it to a homeless person. On Thursday the APs would send out descriptions of different leaders in the mission and we would have to guess who it is. On Friday we had to follow up with all our investigators and then Saturday we had to give out books of Mormon to as many people as possible. Not just give out books of Mormon but we had to share a scripture with that person too. It was super fun. We didn't win haha next transfer though!!! 

SO on Saturday we found another investigator! We have a list of people in our area book who could potentially become investigators (people that missionaries have come in contact in the past and have shown some interest) and we saw Kristine on that list. So we tried to visit her. She was super nice! We gave her a book of Mormon and shared a scripture with her and she actually seemed really interested! So we got bonus points for finding a new investigator by giving out a book of Mormon! haha 

On Sunday we had church which was lovely as always. 

So that was long but that was my week! The Lord's hand was definitely in it! 

I hope you all have a great week!

Love Britt :)

Church cancelled

Hey Dad! 

Thanks for sharing your mission stories. I like hearing about your mission. It makes me think about before I left when I was listening to those tapes you recorded on your mission. Your voice was so different! I hope my mission experiences will help my kids some day.  I wish I could just call you up and ask for advice sometimes. But that is what companions are for. And Mission Presidents. I print off your letters sometimes too. So then I have you for the rest of the week haha I will print this email off :)

As for the highlights of the week: on pday we got to hang out with some sisters and go to the Galleria mall in St. Louis! It was fun :) I love St. Louis so much! 

I don't know if you remember my past companion Sister Bustillos... She was the first sister that I trained but while I was with her I remembered that she said that she has family in the O'Fallon area so I emailed her a couple weeks ago and told her that I was living in O'fallon! She gave me the address to her Grandparents and her Aunt. Her Aunt is in the ST. Peters area so Elders got to contact her and they said that their visit went really well. I got to contact Sister Bustillos's Grandparents and they let us in and we talked about Sister Bustillos and she gave us hot chocolate and she was super nice! We asked of her views of the church and she didn't have bad views but she didn't want to take the lessons because she didn't want to waste our time. She is really good at Crocheting and she said that we could come back any time and she would make me a scarf! haha This is them here :) 

Also, Church got cancelled this Sunday! Not because it was valentines day but because of the snow. This is what it looked like that morning...

We would have no church all winter if they cancelled it when ever it looked like this! But I guess the ground hog never saw his shadow here so spring is coming soon! It is suppose to get in the 60s coming this weekend.

I love you! Hope you have another great week full of surprises! 

And Happy "Valiant times" day! And be valiantly keeping the commandments like those Stripling warriors. (That is where I am in the Book of Mormon right now!) 

Love you! 

Britt 

AHHHH

Hello! 

I get your emails. I love and always look forward to them! 

I am not going to lie I have been struggling with my companion. I have never struggled this bad with a companion before but she drives me nuts!!! I am trying to be a good example for the other sisters and I have been trying to work really hard to love her. My companion struggles with anxiety and recently she has been trying to figure stuff out with her medication and different coping strategies so she has been to the doctor a couple times since I have been here. She is so uptight and she constantly challenges me and questions every decision I make. She always tries to control things herself and acts like I don't know what I am doing. She even corrects my driving! We had to cancel an exchange this week because she had an anxiety attack. I have been getting a lot of head aches recently because of how much this is pushing me. Her anxiety increases when things aren't exactly perfect. pretty soon I am going to have anxiety.

I just want you to know that I am not a disobedient missionary. I am really really trying hard to be patient and do my best. I keep trying to remind myself that it is her anxiety. She really is a good missionary.  

Last week we had to split up some sisters in our zone because they weren't getting along. It has just been so stressful. I have been studying about the Spirit a lot. Ever since Elder Rasband came I can't stop thinking about the spirit and how the spirit works. Scripture study is relief right now. personal studies recently have been so strengthening and have been my peace. I want so badly to have the spirit with me and I know when there is contention and no companion unity it is hard to work and teach with the spirit. I am trying to master the natural man and yield to the enticings of the Holy Ghost. Have virtuous thoughts and develop Christ like attributes but I am sadly not perfect. I am just trying to endure well to the end. I don't know what I will do if I have to endure my last transfer with her.

We had president interviews a couple weeks ago and we mostly talked about the other sisters but we had some time to talk about how I am doing. I told him that "for the most part we get along but sometimes it's like...ahhh!" He just laughed. I must not have been the only missionary who has felt like that. I asked him what I can do to be a better STL and he told me to be a happy missionary and serve Sister Schow. So simple but so hard!!!! She makes me want to go home so bad. 

I am sorry I have been whining a lot and I know I have complained about other things in my mission but It is nice to just rant sometimes. I don't expect you to have the perfect answer. I just am grateful for the emails and love. 

But on a more happier note, the members here are awesome. We have been able to go out with some young women. We have been working a lot with members of the ward council and they have been really great at helping us with the less actives so we have lots to do. The sisters in my zones are doing a lot better and are getting along and are finding lots of success. It is like how Alma said in Alma chapter 29 how he finds great joy in the success of his brethren. I have definitely felt that joy. I have loved going on exchanges with the other sisters. they are so awesome :) 

I love you all. I love Jesus. I love Pres. Monson. I love the scriptures. I love... lamp haha 

Have a great week!!! 

LOVE Sister Fisher 

PIC: Exchanges with the parkway2 sisters!! 

Swans

Hello Family! 

All is well in St. Louis! 

We got Swans in the pond near our home! 

​I am sorry I am struggling what to write. haha We had a good week. We had exchanges and were able to see a lot of people. 

Something I learned this week comes from Sunday school class about faith. How faith is more than believing and not a perfect knowledge of things. Sometimes we are in different stages in our spiritual journey. Let me show you this here: 

Desire => Hope => Believe => Faith => Knowledge

There is never a final destination in this life in our spiritual journey. A testimony is something we always need to maintain or nourish. Sometimes we may just have a desire to believe and other times our faith is burning bright. But it is a constant cycle of exercising faith that helps us become more like our Heavenly Father, when we will come to know all things. Sometimes I forget that it is okay not to know everything right now. I need to remember that there is a bigger picture. 

Love you all

Sister Fisher 

Exchanges with the Lake St. Louis Sisters

Missionary Broadcast

Hello! 

Another crazy week has gone by! Lots of planning and getting things situated for the transfer. My favorite part of the week was when we had the missionary broadcast! In the morning we had ZLT with the St, Louis Zone and got the zone pumped for the new year and crying repentance and going back to teaching the fundamentals of the gospel. I learned a lot from the Missionary Broadcast. I think the main thing that I got out of the Broadcast is that we are called, we are set apart, we are suppose to be there, we are suppose to open our mouth but we are not suppose to get in the way. The Holy Ghost is the teacher and we are the instruments. I like that because it makes our calling sound so much more simpler and allows everyone to be qualified to have the same calling. We bring the Holy Ghost to them and the investigator is the one who has to invite it into their hearts. 

What we taught to the zone is that we want our investigators to have faith. Faith is the goal. The Fundamentals in Preach my Gospel that we learn in 12 week help us see what they need to over come. And then the teaching skills are how we can deliver the message with the spirit to each investigator. 

Another part of the broadcast was working with members. Whether we are teaching with active members, less active or recent convert they told us to teach them the doctrine of Christ (the fundamentals/missionary lessons) and ask them "Who do you know?"

I thought the broadcast was fantastic on focusing the missionaries on our purpose to "invite others to come unto Christ"

The guy named John that I talked about last week... Ya he stopped talking to us  

But we went on our first exchange this week with the YSA St. Louis sisters! I stayed in our area with Sister Day so this is us here:

She is from Utah and has been out 6 months! My MTC companion trained her :) She is cool! 

All is well in St. Louis! 

As for the weather it has been getting warmer but for a while it was pretty cold. There is some snow on the ground but no flooding where I am serving. The flooding that happened a while back was in Eureka (Where Six flags is) and in other places in the St.Louis and St.Louis South Zones. I live in the St. Louis North Zone. The cold here bites because of the humidity so I am excited to get back to that dry air. Looks like this week is going to stay pretty warm which is awesome! 

LOVE YOU ALL!

Have a great week! 

Love Sister Brittany Fisher 

O'Fallon Ward

Hello! 

Life has been weird and busy and everything else! I am so tired but I am excited.

SO my new companion is Sister Schow. She is from utah and she lives 20mins south of Salt Lake City. She is a sweet heart and very good, dedicated missionary. She came out a transfer after I did. I feel like my humor is too casual for her though, she can be uptight sometimes especially if she is stressed so it can get awkward when I am trying to lighten things up with jokes... But I think we will get along just fine :) 

Anyways the O'Fallon ward is awesome! We have so much help here with the missionary work and the less actives like us and I am coming in at a really good time where we are re activating some families! It is so exciting! A lot of the investigators we have are found through members and less actives too! It has been really fun meeting the members. Sister Schow is really good at working with members. And I love being so close to the city again!!! Maybe I will be able to go to the Arch again before I go home!

  

It is kinda weird because we have been doing a lot of planning and going to a lot of meetings this first week. Friday we had a Missionary Leadership Council meeting that lasted all day. It is where  President and Sister Morgan, the APs, Office Elders, Zone leaders, and Sister training Leaders meet and discuss the work for the transfer.The first hour we just asked each other questions and answered each others questions and got advice on how to help our areas and our missionaries. Then the APs gave a training and then after lunch President Morgan took us all to the temple! We had the rest of our meeting in a room at the distribution center right next to the temple where president and sister Morgan gave more trainings. We also decided our new baptism goal for the year! It was really cool to be apart of deciding our new goal to help push us this next year. President Morgan talked about how there is a growing trend in North American missions where the number of baptisms for the year are decreasing and decreasing drastically in a lot of missions. 2015 we ended the year with 360 baptisms. The year before that I think we had 394. We decided our goal this year will be 380 baptisms. Also we are preparing to watch a world wide missionary broadcast on Wednesday January 20th where general authorities and the missionary department are going to talk to us and help us redirect our focus. I guess the General Authorities worry that missionaries have too many responsibilities and that we are losing our focus of declaring repentance and baptizing converts. So hopefully we can receive lots of direction this wednesday. We will also be having Zone Leader Training that day so hopefully we can excite the missionaries with this new goal and break this trend! Exciting stuff to be apart of!

There are 10 STLs and we realized that half of them are the same generation. There are four other sisters who came out at the same time as me. It's crazy to think that 15 months ago, we were all on the plane heading to St. Louis and now we are all STLs. That is the picture of all of us.

Saturday we prayed a lot to know where the Lord wanted us and who we needed to see. We decided to stay out and contact a referral rather than to stay in and work on our training. It was good because we found John! Members who live across the hallway from him referred us to him and when we showed up John told us that our timing couldn't have been better. I love those moments. We just talked to him outside because he was embarrassed of his messy house. He is a single dad with three boys and two different ex wives so he gets his kids a few days every other week. But he definitely feel that his relationship with God is distancing. We talked about how God has a plan for us and that for a time the understanding of this plan was lost but has been restored through a prophet called of God... so on and so on. He was very open but he told us that he is not going to believe so easy. We gave him a restoration pamphlet and a book of mormon and we set up a time to meet with him the next day. When we went back the next day his house was clean haha! and He was expecting us. We had the members with us and when we asked him if he got a chance to read the pamphlet he said that he did and that he read 20 pages of the book of mormon! Yaya! The thing with him is that he believes in all religions and that all things are true and it is hard to pin point just one true church. He said that he has never thought of just one. We were able to go over the restoration a little more and really lay out what we want and he was willing to take the lessons, read the book of mormon and pray to know if it is true. And he wants to meet with us again on thursday! It is exciting! And it is beautifully perfect because his fellow shippers live right across the hall from him! So awesome :) 

I am reading the Book of Mormon again before general conference with the mission. I am in Mosiah 21 right now :)  And I am also doing the D&C count down but I am behind haha only by a couple sections though. I will try and catch up! 

Thank you for the LOVE! Hope you all have a great week! 

Sister Fisher 

Mahomet Ill. to O'Fallon MO. Becoming a trainer

Hey so this week was wacky weird and wild. learning lessons left and right and seeing God's had in my life! 

First things first yes I got your jerky and it was very delicious. The skittles were great too! thank you :) 

So I feel like I have been at the car dealership this whole week. near the beginning of the week we woke up and went out to our car and saw the the hood was popped open on our car. not completely open you still had to undo the little latch and open it but it was popped open and we thought that was weird but thought nothing of it. so Sister Grover walks to the back of the car (because she has to back me out of the drive way.) and I am about to get in the car when I see that our car is a complete mess! There are pass along cars all over the seats the glove box was open and papers were everywhere and it looked like they were trying to tare off the back seat because it was really bent. I don't know what they were trying to do. I don't really know if it was through the trunk that they got in but it was a mess. I asked sister Grover, "Do you remember leaving the car like this? I didn't think so." 

So we call the district leader he tells us to call the vehicle coordinator and the first thing he asks if "tiwi" is okay. haha i hate "tiwi". but yes he was okay and then he tells us to take it to the toyota dealership so see how much the damage is going to cost and what else needs to be fixed. We drive to toyota and I am worried that they did something to the engine and the car is going to explode on the way there. But we got there safely and things were checked out and everything was fine the only thing that needed fix was the back seat. We had to go back another day and get an oil change too. 

But the cool thing about that experience is the night before I decided that I was going to bring my gps in to help us plan for the next day and that was the first time I have done that! And it just so happened to be the night our car got broken into! Following impressions received from God! crazy! Also they never found our gas card so I guess we did a good job hiding that. 

So then on Saturday morning I had the responsibility to drive 3 and a half hours to St.louis with 4 other sisters in Rain/Snow! We arrived safely to hear an Apostle of the Lord speak to us. Elder Rasband is amazing. From this mission conference experience I have learned what it means to "come prepared with a question in your heart" you hear people say that a lot. So to explain...

I told you about shay last week and that was awesome. We got to meet up with him again this week but this time he brought a friend and his friend brought some other friends and it ended up that me and sister grover where teaching like 5 people. But his friend named Blake is a preacher I guess? He holds bible studies. I don't know. The best way I can explain there beliefs is they are hipster Christians. They believe in the apostasy in saying that true christian beliefs were changed. They are not part of an organized religion. Blake i guess has studied most his life on hebrew and greek writings and bible stuff. And Blake is saving all his friends. Anyways in our discussion we talked about asking God to know what is true and receiving answers by the Holy spirit. Blake rambled on and on about how he knew what was true using hebrew and greek terms and I was trying really hard to follow what he was saying. But I pretty much said that you can do all the research you want but you to get to a point where you can't do any more research and you have to ask God what is true. And it is by the power of the Holy Ghost that we can know the truth of all things. Then he went on about how the devil can deceive us and make us think that we are receiving answers from God but really we are not. And we shouldn't be naive and just trust completely in feelings and especially in a man who had 40 wives. But in the end we gave them all a book of mormon and Blake said he would read it if we would read the New testament. I told him no problem! so I guess that was cool.

So going back to Elder Rasband, I have been studying a lot about the spirit. And more specifically the difference between the Spirit of God and the Spirit of the devil. I was trying to distinguish the too and learn how to recognize what is from God. I made a chart in my notes and put spirit of God on one side and spirit of the devil on the other. From looking at different scriptures I learned that it is very important to understand the spirit in this life because it helps us know how God works and who he is. (Eccl. 11:5;John 3:8) And that the spirit that we choose to obey really does effect our salvation. (Alma 3:26-27) A lot of verses in the bible talk about the spirit of the devil being "familiar spirits" which I thought was interesting. But how can we distinguish the too? Well I got the obvious out of the way anything that testifies of Christ and leads us to Christ is of God And anything that takes us away from Christ is not. And the spriti of God always is true and the devil always deceives and gives us error. (1John 4:1-6; Moroni 7) And I like how in John it says try the spirit. Because for little things where it is not so obvious we have to test it for example live the teachings in the book of mormon to know if it is true. Or in missionary work, talk to the person you feel prompted to talk to and you will see if it was actually God talking to you or not. And when we practice and try the spirit, the spirit becomes easier to recognize. Like How if I was in a crowded room and I hear mom voice, I would recognize her voice because I know her. It is the same with the spirit. 

SO with that being said, I had this question and I figured a lot out on my own. Like what you said in point two of your President Eyring reading. He wasn't expecting an answer until he did everything he could to study it out in his mind. (D&C 9:7-8) When I went to mission conference I was prepared. And there was this one part that really stuck out to me that really solidified my question. He talked about bridling our passions (Counsel Alma gave his son) and letting virtue garnish our thoughts (D&C 121:45) So he said when we are obedient and when our thoughts are virtuous (uplifting, humble,pure etc.) we are entitled to the Holy Ghost. There is no reason we should not expect to receive promptings. He told a story from when he was a mission president in New York New York mission how some elders were in a restaurant in the bronks and a family walks in which doesn't happen very often and one elder asked the other "should we talk to them?" and then the other one said "nah they are busy eating." And then they never ended up talking to that family. and Elder Rasband asked why do we do that? Is it the devil prompting us to not talk to these people? And then Elder Rasband says, " It is not the devil prompting us to not talk to that person. It is the natural man. The natural man is an enemy to God UNLESS he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit. I never took it from that perspective before and I was really grateful that I was given some light to my question. The familiar spirits is like witchcrafts and that weird stuff but the devil uses the natural man in us to lead us slowly away.

Anyways now that I bored you with that rant and it probably makes no sense to you but that is okay because God spoke to me through his Apostle and I do not believe in coincidences!

So Elder Rasband was amazing. from all the Apostle that have come to speak to us I have come to realize that they are just regular dudes but they are so inspired. I also liked how he said that we are not robots. we can receive revelation for our areas and our investigators. He talked a lot about how divine our calling is and that we are sent to where the Lord wants us to be. and that we should never be a whiner about an area.  

So with that being said, we also got transfer calls this week. President Morgan called meSaturday night and I was worried that you guys talked to him again but it wasn't that. He asked me if I would be upset with him if he took me out of Mahomet. I told her that I would never be upset with him :) haha he just laughed. He then told me that he needed me to be an STL (Sister Training Leader) in O'Fallon MO. It is in the outskirts of St.Louis. I guess you could say that a stl is like a female version of a  zone leader. I will be going on exchanges with all the sisters in the st louis north and st. louis zones and go to other leadership meetings and give trainings and stuff like that. I am trying not to freak out but I am not going to lie I am kind of nervous. hopefully the saying "whom the Lord calls, He qualifies" plays into action here.

So sorry this is super long. I love you all. And miss you. 

LOVE Sister Fisher