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

Read the Book of Mormon

Hey!
This week has been fun! With the new year and exchanges and all other sorts of shenanigans.

Also I forgot to tell you last week we are having another Mission Conference! For real?! Elder Rasband (the new Apostle) will be visiting our mission with Elder Martino from the quorum of the 70. I can't wait for all the goods they will share with us! 

We were able to pick up two new investigators. A lady named Chantelle and her 8 year old son Anarion. (Black people have cool names). They are former investigators but we were able to stop by at the right time and talk to Chantelle for a bit. She told us that the missionaries used to stop by all the time and share messages with them. So we asked her if we could share a message with them right then. She called over her son and we used some cut outs of the plan of Salvation that I carry with me to teach the plan of Salvation. It was cool they seemed to like it.

We also picked up an investigator named Kayla. Missionaries before us found her tracking and we finally got to actually have a lesson with her. She agrees with a lot of what we taught and she wants to refer us to her friends. Hopefully something good will come out of it! 

We also had some awkward moments. I talked about Duane a couple weeks ago and how we are having a hard time to get him to do anything. Well we were having a hard time getting a member of the ward to come with us to his lesson. Literally every sister in our ward was busy when we planned to see him. It was ridiculous. So we texted him asking him to reschedule. He texted back stating that was fine and then he asked us if Mormons date or get married. We told him absolutely! We explained that to him a little bit and then he asked "wow have any of you ladies considered marriage in the near future?" We replied, "Well not to you but ya when we go home.." and proceeded to tell him how families are ordained of God. Then he asks "well what's wrong with me?" I replied with, "You don't read the Book of Mormon!" haha we ended up telling him that he was too old for us. We won't be visiting him anymore.

Wasn't the first time something like this happened but I am safe so don't call president Morgan. 

Anyways I was glad we couldn't find a member to go with us that day. I am sure God's hand was in that. 

Another situation where we saw God's hand in our lives, we were trying to find someone to teaching one evening and we didn't know where to go. We were sort of hesitant to try this guy named Shay (He was the guy that prayed over Sister Grover when she had the coughing attack) but we were like what ever we will just try him. So we knocked on his door and Shay was like, "Hey! I was just talking about you guys with my wife like 10 minutes ago!" He kept saying I am "Trippin out! That is crazy!" And I guess that was the first time he talked about it with his wife. We got to teach him a little bit more about the Book of Mormon. He said he was worried about us because he doesn't want us to be miss led by false prophets but we were able to bear testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. It was cool because he told us of an experience of when he prayed and asked God if Jesus really was there and died for him and he said that he felt this overwhelming spirit and he said that he knew it was from God. We told him that he could know by the same power that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith really is a Prophet of God. It was a pretty cool conversation.

It was cool to be placed where God needed us at the right time. Even though we felt lost at the time, looking back, the spirit was definitely guiding us to where we needed to be.

Love you guys! Have a great week!

Love Sister Fisher!