Legacy & South Pointe: October 25-31

Hi everyone!

We had an absolutely incredible week! Last Monday Sister Cheyne had to go to the mission office but it was one of our ward trunk or treats and I needed to meet people in the ward, so we went on splits and I went to the ward party with another awesome member. It was great--so many people brought their friends! As soon as I got there I realized that it probably looked really bad that I didn't have a companion with a name tag...so hopefully that doesn't create any issues! I told everyone I met that the sister with me was my temporary companion, but I didn't get to talk with everyone. 

Right after splits we went to Dewanda's appointment but she wasn't there, and then some elders who sent a referral to us called and let us know more about the referral. This phone call made our timing perfect to see Dewanda! She was getting out of her car with her daughter named Neon and we were able to teach them a little more and invite them to come to church! They're excited to come!

We met a sweet lady named Kim when we felt inspired to knock on her door. We asked her if she believed in God and she said that she used to, until her mom passed away two weeks ago. I'm so glad Heavenly Father sent us to her! I feel like she still believes in God, but just doesn't know how to deal with this trial at this point...which is why we're here! We gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and we will be teaching her tomorrow, so I hope it goes well!

Later we were on the street and contacted a guy named Gannon who was long boarding down the street. He was pretty cool and we passed him off to YSA! Right after we met him we received a call from a contact saved in our phone that we didn't recognize. We answered and it was a lady named Cindy wanting to know if we could help her change her air filter! We went over and discovered that this vent was a large metal covering in her ceiling that had hinges on one side and screws on the others. We helped Cindy change the filter and then she came to the other ward's Trunk or Treat party that night!

Then the member who was out with us (and was giving us a ride) had to head out in a few minutes to pick up her kids from the bus stop, but we contacted one more guy named Dan who was awesome! He talked for quite a bit and when we finished, the sister went over to the bus stop and we walked for a while over to where our car was parked. I'm so glad it worked out that way, because we met some awesome people as we were walking that we couldn't have if the sister drove us back to our car! Thankfully she wasn't late to the bus stop :) She actually told us that the timing worked out perfectly for her too! The first person we met while walking back was a young mom named Jandie with three kids walking down a busy main street. She told us she's been looking for a church and wants to learn more about our message! We taught her briefly about the Restoration and then she had to leave, but we should be seeing her this week. Right after we met Jandie we contacted a high-school aged girl named Tori who told us that her brother had just met missionaries the other day too! Turns out we were the ones who contacted him, but his mom came out and told us they were happy with their church. But Tori was really interested and told us that she's always wanted to learn about religion and wanted to know why there were so many Christian religions! We didn't want to step on her mom's toes, so we gave her a card and told her about the chat feature on the website and then asked her to ask her mom about meeting with missionaries. Tori is awesome! I really hope we get to teach her!

We finally got to our car and were late to our next lesson with someone named Tristan, but that all worked out too! Tristan's mom told us that they wouldn't have been ready if we had come any earlier. Tristan's family is super cool--all of them besides Tristan and his dad were baptized about a year ago when a member driving by felt prompted to leave a copy of the Book of Mormon at their front door. Tristan's mom, Belle, had been praying the night before to know what her family needed to be happier and they were baptized shortly after that! Tristan hasn't been baptized yet because he wants to make his dad happy, and his dad doesn't exactly support the Church. But we had an awesome lesson about the Spirit with him and then later we heard that Tristan wants to go on the youth temple trip in two weeks to do baptisms for the dead and he wants to be baptized now!

We met an awesome kid named Michael as he was walking down the street--he said he's atheist and we testified of God and invited him to church. We went over for our next lesson and brought one of his 16 year old member neighbors named Morgan and taught him some more and he said he'll come to church to get the bigger picture. We planned to come by 15 minutes before church started so we could walk over with him. More on that in a few paragraphs--I write all my emails based off of notes from my journal entries and can't go out of order!

The mission tour was fantastic! Elder Dyches and his wife came. I'm amazed at how well Elder Dyches knows Preach My Gospel--he has page numbers memorized and probably every paragraph and red box too! It was a very humbling experience, because I thought that I was studying from Preach My Gospel enough but that's not the case! He also taught us about the importance of memorizing scriptures (like it says in PMG), which I thought was awesome because it's something I expected to be a big thing when I came into the field, but it wasn't. So I'm going to be working on that!

The mission tour took up the majority of our day and of course at the end all of the missionaries wanted to take pictures, but thankfully the timing all worked out! We ended up being 15 minutes late to an appointment with a guy named Charlie, but as we were knocking on the door he pulled up in his car and told us he was praying that he'd be able to see us even though he was late coming home from a doctor's appointment! Charlie is awesome and we had a great lesson about the Restoration with him!

We had a meeting with our ward missionaries at the church and before it started, a lady named Melissa walked in and asked if the elders were there. Apparently Melissa is a nonmember and they were going to give her a church tour, but they were nowhere to be found! Melissa is planning to be baptized on December 3! She was texting the elders and we assumed we knew who she was contacting, since only one other ward meets at our building but later we asked the elders and they had no idea who she was. I'm interested to find out!

We were really tight on miles this month because of the mission tour with Elder Dyches and a Halloween party tonight at the mission office. When we totalled up our miles at the end of the day of the mission tour, it was 28, and we were expecting it to be 40-50! We drove 28 miles the day before, just staying in our zone! This is nothing short of a miracle! Sister Cheyne and I think it's one of the blessings from being a full tithe payer :) So there you go: a personal story about tithing PLUS Lewis' story about not getting shot!

I guess I've saved the best for last: we taught Derrick again this week about the Plan of Salvation and at the end he was hesitant to pray, but then we bore our testimony of it and offered to say a prayer first and then he could pray and he did! And he told us he felt tingles as he prayed, like he does when he watches a really good movie! 

AND THEN  Derrick came to church--and so did Michael! I LOVE it when investigators come to church for the first time!! We were in the parking lot and walking towards Michael's house to walk to church with him and we saw Derrick getting out of his car (and this is 20 minutes before church starts)! We took him inside for a quick tour of the building and I'm so grateful for the members here because every single one of them came up and introduced themselves to Derrick, which was just what he needed! By the time we finally sat down it was 8:58 and I felt pretty bad about not getting Michael, but then I looked over and saw him walking to the pew next to us with Morgan! She saved us! I am so grateful for her! Both Michael and Derrick had a great time and I think the sacrament meeting talks were perfect for them! Michael stayed for all three hours! Derrick had to leave because of a previous commitment, but I'm amazed that he came to 9:00 church when we also gave him the option to come to 1:00! Words simply cannot express how wonderful it is when people come to church because that's what's going to help nearly everyone prepare most to be baptized!

I am SO GRATEFUL to be serving my mission! I love doing the Lord's work so much!

Have a great week!

Love, Sister Bedont 

Legacy & South Pointe: October 18-24

Hi everyone!

Oh my goodness, I am so glad to be back in the Nevada Las Vegas Mission! I honestly believe that this is the best mission in the world! You might say that that's what every missionary says about their mission, but my time in Oregon helped me learn how much I love it here! I love it there too of course, but I am so glad to be back in my mission!

The day before I left Warrenton, we got out of the car to visit someone and saw two turkeys across the street in someone's front yard. We were like, "oh cool, turkeys." and just went on to the house across the street. The turkeys started following us, but we thought they wouldn't bother us because there was a massive ditch between the yard and the road, but sure enough they went into the ditch and a few seconds later saw their heads pop up as they came towards us. We got pretty worried, since all we could think of was how vicious swans and geese could attack and imagined turkeys were about the same. Luckily we made it back to our car safely! 

Since I've been back we've seen so many miracles happen! We have talked to so many people here--it was one after the other! Right after we finished teaching someone, we would find another person to teach! 

Also, I just thought I'd mention that we will be on bikes in my area! I am so glad to be on bikes! I didn't get mine until Saturday, so we spent a little time biking around. I'm glad the weather is so nice now!

We also have a mission tour on Thursday with a member of the Seventy, but I don't know who it is yet. I'm really looking forward to it!

We felt prompted to knock on a door and found an awesome guy named Derrick! He told us that he just started going back to a Presbyterian church a few months ago because he just found out that his sister has cancer. We had an awesome lesson with him and he's planning to come to church! 

While we were biking we found a really nice guy named Ronnie who talked our ears off and then we talked with an atheist named Bob who told us everything about all the renters in the neighborhood we were in, but all of that helped us have the perfect timing to meet a guy named Zach! We saw him sitting down on the curb outside of his house and he told us he used to be a Mormon. He's married to someone named Kayla and has a 10 month old daughter named Quinn and he wants to come back to church! He also said Kayla wants to learn more about the gospel, so we'll get to go over and teach them all!

I also found out that both Adrian and Brianna were baptized last transfer!!!

Sorry I don't have much time today, but I hope you all have a great week! 

Love, 

Sister Bedont 

Warrenton: October 11-17

Hi everyone!

We've had a TON of meetings this week--we haven't had a full day of proselyting for at least two weeks! We had new missionary training, interviews, zone training council (except here they call it zone meeting), weekly planning, church, and preparation days. Also, because of all the storms, our zone was on lockdown on Saturday and Elder Anderson's visit was cancelled. It was such a bummer! But, I had always looked forward to having an entire day to study the scriptures. Doing that is actually really hard! I think we went slightly crazy from being stuck in the same room all day, but we're better now :)

Gabe is doing so well! He told us he wished he set his baptism earlier, and we don't blame him! It's planned for December because we want to make sure his dad (named Derek) will be ready to preform the baptism and he's right on track so far! Derek is sharing the gospel with his friends--and one of them at work wanted to learn more, so we went over and taught her! Tier 3 missionary work is awesome! Her name is Lynna and it's pronounced "line-ah". As in "line upon line, precept upon precept..." :) Lynna is amazing! When she opened the door she told us she wasn't expecting us to show up for another week or so! She moved her with her husband and young daughter a few weeks ago and doesn't have much of a religious background, but she's soaking up everything we teach--especially the Book of Mormon! She summarized 3 Nephi 11 for us on our second visit and said it was about baptism...and she thinks it would be a good idea to be baptized! We don't have a set date for her yet--she wants to pray about it first and we'll probably arrange something with Derek and his family, but it should be coming up soon!

One night we had an appointment with a less-active member and before we went up to her apartment, we felt impressed to knock on a certain door in a separate duplex. Immediately a guy named Larry answered and told us that he had just gone through a divorce and was looking for a new church! He was so grateful to receive a copy of the Book of Mormon, knowing that it will help him find joy!

Right after we taught the less-active member we had 20 minutes before curfew, so we went to our next plans just down the street, parked, prayed, and then got out of the car. We walked around the bushes that we parked by and found 3 teenagers piling into a car about to leave and taught them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ! The timing was incredible!

Each week we volunteer at a food pantry and this week there was an engaged couple who started asking tons of questions about what missionary life is like! It was awesome :) 

We had another lesson with a recent convert couple whom we are preparing to go to the temple and they invited friends over for the lesson! We had no idea about it, but apparently they do it all the time. It was fun to balance the lesson between teaching them and teaching their friends!

I'm going back to Las Vegas on Thursday and I can't wait! It is the best mission in the world :) I have learned so much from serving in Warrenton! When I get back to the Nevada Las Vegas Mission, I'll be serving in the Legacy and South Point wards in the Green Valley stake and my companion will be Sister Cheyne from Australia. I think that means I will have served in every single stake in Henderson! When I was in the Eldorado/Lake Mead zone, we always joked about the possibility of creating a Nevada Henderson Mission--hopefully it happens! 

I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Love,

Sister Bedont 

Picture: one day I was staring at a map of our area during our lunch break--see if you can spot the missionaries!

Warrenton: October 4-10

Hi everyone! 

Biggest piece of news first: we picked up Sister Dearden's trainee named Sister Neus on Wednesday! She's from Arizona too.

We were walking down a street and saw a boat named SU FISH NT, with the fish symbol around the word FISH. It also had a reference for 2 Corinthians 12:9--Christ's grace is sufficient! We just had to go talk to the owners about their boat, and we found two awesome new investigators named Rhett and Jesse! They're both YSA--we've been finding tons of YSA individuals and there's no YSA ward here so we get to teach them!

On Sister Neus' first night, we were on a street about to go to our next plans but I felt the slightest impression to knock at a certain house before we left. We did and an amazing girl named Nicole opened the door! Funnily enough, she's YSA. She immediately invited us inside and asked if it was all right if she went to her garage to grab a book that she wanted to show us. I was kind of wary--did she want to bash? But the Spirit was there and we felt like it was okay to stay there and teach her. She came back without the book because she couldn't find it and told us some of her story. She used to be a hardcore drug addict but recovered largely because of her incredible faith in Christ! Her testimony of the Atonement is so strong! She's a fisher and has a lot of stories from that. She told us about many of the miracles she's experienced and asked us if we had any that we would like to share! She called them "God stories". We taught her about the Prophet Joseph Smith's First Vision and the Spirit was SO STRONG! And Nicole was so absorbed in it! After each sentence in Joseph Smith's account, she exclaimed "oh, wow!" or other phrases to that effect. Her reaction made me rethink how I feel about the Restoration! We asked her how she felt and she described it as feeling full of light and pure joy. She was sooo happy to receive a copy of the Book of Mormon! We taught her about baptism and the sacrament too and she told us she'd love to come to church! She was sick this Sunday, though. The Spirit throughout Nicole's entire lesson was the strongest I've ever felt so far in my life! She's like the ideal investigator that we role played in the MTC!

We taught a less-active couple about the temple and the Spirit was also super strong! Then we found a girl named Christina who told us she served several missions in Mexico helping build schools. We gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and she's excited to read it!

On Sunday Elder Blunck from the Quorum of the Seventy came and I learned tons from him! He shared a story about a General Authority doing a question and answer session and there was one individual who kept asking questions after he taught about something. The General Authority would answer, but eventually he told the individual: "When I read the scriptures, I look for answers. When you read the scriptures, are you looking for questions or are you looking for answers?" I thought that was powerful and it's definitely changed the way I approach my scripture study. 

Elder Neil L Andersen is visiting the Washington Vancouver Mission on Saturday! I'm so glad I have the opportunity to participate in that!

Also, I'm set apart for the Nevada Las Vegas Mission and I'm convinced that that comes with special blessings regarding climate. The Las Vegas summers never seemed too hot, but now that I'm on the Oregon coast in October, I'm freezing!

I love you all!

Sister Bedont 

Warrenton: September 27 - October 3

Hi everyone!

I am so grateful to be back on my mission! I'm serving in Warrenton and part of Astoria, so I'm at the furthest northwestern tip of Oregon. It's so different from Las Vegas, yet it's the same work! I feel like I'm back with Sister Wilde exploring Yucca, except it's super green here. Many people live very far apart from each other!

My new companion is Sister Dearden from Gilbert, Arizona. We've been out for nearly the same amount of time and we're having a blast! Sister Dearden is going to be training this transfer and we'll pick up our new companion on Wednesday! We live at a member's home in a loft above their garage, so it's pretty fun! I'm freezing my tail off though, which is a good thing I guess because humans shouldn't have tails. 

I hope you all enjoyed General Conference! If you haven't seen it or have never heard of it, check it out on lds.org. It's the perfect opportunity to receive answers from Heavenly Father, and sometimes they come in ways you don't expect! The Saturday afternoon session hit me hard. I love how bold and direct Heavenly Father is! I don't know for sure what will happen for the rest of my mission, but I'm still learning to put all of my trust in God (which is way easier to do when things go the way I plan them to). Also, I saw my BYU chemistry professor singing in the choir on Sunday! 

On my first day here, we were on our way to contact a referral and parked on the side of the road. There was a guy outside named Ron and he's awesome! His dad died on Halloween and the stress from that led him to become a heavy alcoholic. His wife divorced him because of that, and then in January he became sober and hasn't had any alcohol since then. He told us he used to be a firefighter until he injured his knee, and that he always tries to think positively! He's one of the most positive people I've ever met. We taught him about parts of the Plan of Salvation and gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon! Ron was so grateful to receive it. He told us he used to be the guy who would tell missionaries that he worshipped the devil so they would go away, but his heart has definitely been softened! He told us he felt s lot better after talking about the Plan of Salvation!

Then we had a lesson with an older guy named Roy. We taught him about General Conference and he told us that he really wants to come to church! I invited him to be baptized and Sister Dearden quickly leaned over and whispered, "he's less-active!" Whoops! I guess I missed that part about him when Sister Dearden was telling me what we'd be teaching him before we went in. 

Also on the drive to our area from the mission office (I'm in the out-of-valley zone of the Washington Vancouver Mission), I felt two distinct promptings to ask Sister Dearden when her birthday is--and it was that day! Crazy how things work.

We planned to visit a less-active family (this mission teaches a TON of less-active members) and knocked on the door and discovered we were at the wrong house! The lady who answered the door was super nice and I know we were sent there for her! 

We taught a part-member family about General Conference and the Spirit was so strong! And as a bonus, they had a pet hedgehog, so I totally got to pet it.

We were at a certain street and about to leave to go to our next plans, but a house on the next street stuck out to us. We could only see the corner of the roof from where we were at, but we knew we needed to knock there! We met really nice girl named Alincia who is a senior in high school. She told us she has some Mormon friends and has some questions that she's always wanted to ask them, but didn't want to offend them. She said she was confused by how many different Christian churches there are and didn't know which one to join, so she was overjoyed to learn about the Restoration! I'm excited to help her find more light and truth in her life!

We met another less-active member named Pauline. We stopped by her house around 8:30 and her nonmember husband invited us in. She said she was going through a difficult trial and asked us to pray with her, so we did and then asked her if she wanted a priesthood blessing. I am always amazed at how we meet people at the perfect time in their lives because of our inspired planning sessions!

We taught a family that has a 9 year old boy named Gabe who is preparing to be baptized in December! I love this family so much! The dad's name is Derek and he's a recently activated member who is preparing to hold the priesthood so he can baptize Gabe. The mom's name is Melody. They have a 4 year old girl named Maisy and she is full of energy! Sister Dearden taught most of the lesson while I distracted Maisy with the drawing feature in the notes app of my iPad. She found my stickers that I give to young kids and within 2 minutes I had stickers on every appendage, just like everyone else in the house. I'm excited for that family! Melody started asking some really good questions about the Plan of Salvation, so we had another mini lesson with her! Apparently she's never opened up like that to missionaries before.

On Saturday after General Conference we were in a sparsely populated part of our area and we were walking up a long road and a truck came down and a lady rolled down the window and said, "you need to get off our street" and the spirit of contention was immediately there. Then Sister Dearden said something in an argumentative way and I was shocked, because that was not like her at all! Then I realized the lady in a truck was a member. Oh my goodness. I totally fell for their trick!

It was pouring rain and we went to another house and an older lady opened the door and invited us in! She told us that she has really strong faith in Christ and shared her story with us, which reminded me a lot of Alma the Younger's story so we shared it with her. 

Still in the middle of nowhere, but on a different day, we knocked on a door and a guy answered and said, "how did you find us?! We haven't heard from you in 15 years!" I thought he was less-active but he's a nonmember. Again, I know that Heavenly Father used us as His instruments to remind this man about Him!

Last night we met a super nice Filipino family that invited us in and we showed them "Because of Him" and taught them about the Restoration! They were Catholic but said they're always happy to talk about God. They told us that when they were living in the Philippines, missionaries came over every month and showed them the same video!

I don't know if anyone else noticed, but it seemed like General Conference focused on missionary work! I know that "more happiness awaits you than you have ever experienced as you labor among His children", so don't be afraid go invite others to learn more and experience the joy of the gospel for themselves! 

Love,

Sister Bedont 

September 10-26

Hi everyone!

Tomorrow I'm going to be serving my mission again! I found out that all of the symptoms I had weren't from hydrocephalus—I just had a migraine, and the symptoms were incredibly similar! Thanks for all your prayers! I know they've helped :) I've had a lot of time to ponder about the purpose of my life while I've been home. You'd think I would know the answer to that, with me being a missionary and all! I don't think I had the slightest idea why I had to come home from my mission until I was told that my call would be temporarily reassigned to the Washington Vancouver Mission, and then I could return to the Nevada Las Vegas Mission in about a month. While I'm in the Washington Vancouver Mission, I'll be serving in Warrenton. I suspect I need to learn something from the people there and the missionaries in Oregon and serve the people there! I learned some valuable lessons from being home about working with members and viewing things through others' perspectives that I know will help me on the rest of my mission. I am so excited to devote all my time and attention to serving the Lord again!

Have a great week!
Love,
Sister Bedont

September 6-9

Hi everyone! 

Sorry I didn't email yesterday--I'm actually at home on medical release and got caught up with other things yesterday. I'll explain a little more throughout this email. 

Tuesday was transfer day, so Sister Gonzalez and I met some other missionaries at the temple and then I was with Sister Mozos all day. In the afternoon Sister Snow, our mission president's wife, called me and asked if I had thought about going home to get my medical issues taken care of. There aren't very many neurologists in Las Vegas and it can take months to get in to see one, and by that time my vision loss could potentially be permanent. 

I actually hasn't thought about going home at that point and immediately went against what Sister Snow said. I thought that putting my mission on hold would be giving up and taking the easy way out, plus I had the faith to be healed or not to be healed and I'm serving a mission, for crying out loud! Is there anything better I could be doing?

Soon I realized that I was being very stubborn and hard hearted, because if God's will was for me to go home, I wasn't accepting it. Then a scripture that my wonderful seminary teacher pointed out to our class came to my mind: 1 Nephi 2:16. Before this verse, Lehi has told his family that they need to go to Jerusalem and so they went. Two of Lehi's sons, Laman and Lemuel, murmured and complained because they didn't know about the dealings of God. Nephi is one of Lehi's righteous sons, and verse 16 is him telling us about what he did. "And it came to pass that I, Nephi, being exceedingly young, nevertheless being large in stature, and also having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father; wherefore, I did not rebel against him like unto my brothers." 

As soon as I mentally reviewed that verse, I prayed for my heart to be softened. Throughout the course of that day, I realized that I would have to go home. While we were in the car I prayed to confirm that decision and THE CRAZIEST THING HAPPENED. It was similar to how Jordan from Foothills YSA received the answer to his question about if the Restoration is true. He was flipping through the channels on TV and caught snippets from each channel: "God. Says. True."

Well, as soon as I asked that question, a song from Sister Mozos' USB started playing. It's from Les Miserables. Any guesses to what it is yet? The instrumental part at the beginning is hard to distinguish because so many songs in Les Miserables have the same chords. I listened and then all of a sudden it hit me: the song was "Bring Him Home". You've got to be kidding me! I was not expecting an answer like that! Oh, Heavenly Father...he sure has a sense of humor! I don't think I'll ever be able to think about Les Miserables the same way any more. 

I called President Snow that night and told him what had happened. Another thing I should mention: I also didn't want to go home because I knew how much of a headache it would be for President Snow to deal with, especially for it to be at the beginning of a transfer when he probably has over a million things on his mind and gets two hours of sleep each night. I was supposed to train, so what would happen to my trainee and the area we would be transferred into? Would the area need to be closed?

Well, during that phone call President Snow told me that there was a sister who was assigned serve in a trio in the North stake where I would have been transferred. He would just pull her from the trio to train a new missionary in the Harmony Hills ward. Again, it never fails to amaze me how perfectly orchestrated Heavenly Father's plan is. That certainly wasn't a coincidence!

Also, at some point on Tuesday we were inspired knocking on a street and at one house, a little boy that looked like he was about 3 opened the door. A dog that was bigger than he was was right behind him. Throughout the time we were there the dog kept trying to go outside and the boy would pull it back in. We asked him if we could talk to his parents and he said something like "mommy's on an airplane". We couldn't figure out if anyone was home with him, but we gave him a note to give to his parents and went on our way. Later, on our way back to the car, we saw the same dog running around on the other side of the street at the same time we saw a family in their garage. I figured we could grab the dog and then talk to them, so I caught it and the family gave us a leash so we could take the dog back to the owners! We returned the dog and saw an adult asleep on the couch this time when the boy opened the door. We made sure the dog was inside when the door shut and then went back to return the leash. The family that let us borrow it is pretty cool! They have a lot of Mormon friends and didn't feel like they're ready to learn more right now but they were happy to have a conversation.

Wednesday afternoon was new missionary assignments, so Sister Mozos and I went up to the mission office to pick up our trainees. I would be in a trio with the new missionary and Sister Jane, who was taking my place. Before Sister Mozos and I traveled to the mission office, we had an hour to proselyte so we went to a referral's house to contact and teach them. We got there and discovered that the house had a massive fence surrounding it. We had no way to get in. Then that one District video started playing my head where the sisters had a similar experience and they saw a little kid outside and said, "Nigelli, come here!" So I was expecting something like that to happen. Sister Mozos wrote a long note and right after she tucked it into an obvious part of the gate, the garage door opened and a YSA girl walked out and asked if we needed any help! We told her who we were looking for and she was like, "that's my dad! He's literally going to be here any minute because he's picking me up". We didn't want to stick around because we had to get to the mission office pretty soon, but a car rolled around the corner and we met the referral! I don't think words can actually convey how perfect the timing was. This guy is awesome! We were able to teach him quickly about the Restoration and set up an appointment with his whole family!

We arrived at the mission office and had extra time because President Snow needed to finish interviewing all the incoming missionaries and figure out which trainers they'll have, so I rearranged my stuff in my suitcases to prepare for departure (the 50 pounds or less type thing for flying). 

Then new missionaries were assigned companions and Sister Jane and I (mostly Sister Jane) were assigned as companions for Sister Garn! She is an amazing new missionary!

We got back to our area with only an hour left to proselyte and the previous missionaries arranged a lesson and a member to come out at that time. The lesson fell though so I went on splits with the member while Sister Jane and Sister Garn went off and found other people. The member I was with was awesome and we met lots of prepared people who became new investigators! 

On Thursday we had new missionary training, which took FOREVER. I don't think we got out until around 4:30 and we were carpooling with some elders, but we also needed to go to Walmart to pick up Sister Garn's bike. I realized while we were in the parking lot that this would probably be the last time I'm able to be in public as a missionary, since after dinner that night I'd be going to an amazing member's house to back up all the pictures on my iPad and then flying to Portland the next morning. We can't go up to people in businesses and teach them, so I prayed and asked Heavenly Father to give someone the strong desire to approach us and ask us something so we could teach them. 

We walked to the back of the store and then Sister Garn realized she left her photo ID in the car, so we went back to get it and left the elders in the back of the store. On our way back, a 24 year old girl named Angelica stopped us and exclaimed, "Wow! You all look so put together! How old are you?" We're all 20. She was like, "no way! I'm 24 and still trying to dress like a teenager! How do you all do it?" We explained that we're missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and she said "I'm so sorry I don't think you're going to like this, but I think I'm losing my faith." She then told us that her parents had forced her to go to church when she was younger and then as soon as she could she stopped going. At some point the elders heard us and walked over to join us, so Angelica was surrounded by 5 missionaries. She said she felt like she was surrounded by a wall of faith! We taught her a little bit about the Plan of Salvation (I think) and then gave her the Robindale YSA ward information. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father answered my prayer! 

I can't wait to go back to the Nevada Las Vegas Mission. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to work in the temple and go out with the missionaries as often as possible! Do I understand why I am here? Not at all. I have only a few guesses, and after receiving my MRI results that said hydrocephalus isn't a problem, I don't even know if those guessed are accurate. I do know that everything happens according to God's purpose and everything will work out in the end! I've prayed for patience nearly every day of my mission and I think this is the ultimate test so far. After all, Preach My Gospel states that patience is "the capacity to endure delay without becoming anxious". That's still a work in progress for me, but I know I've come a long way! 

I still firmly believe that since I was called to serve for a period of 18 months, it means I am called to serve for 18 months. Not 19 or 17 or anything else. I just can't wait to go back!

Love,

Sister Bedont