Mixed Feelings

Iaorana!

I am sad because I dropped off Sister Moran at the mission home yesterday and she flew away on a jet plane today. However I am happy because my new companion is Sister Tama and she is from Tahiti!!!! my people!! We are going to have so much fun and see many many miracles! So for Sister Moran's last week we had a great time working and going on adventures. Our adventure to the gold coast went well, we had a nice dinner with the man that baptised her and his wife and children. It was sad to see that his children just didn't know anything about God, and didn't have that relationship at all in their lives. It went well though and hopefully softened his heart a bit. It took two one hour train trips both way. I love the train so that was great! And that's now the farthest south I've ever been in my whole life haha. Too bad it was at night so I didn't really see much at all. 

We also went to a waffle house place for lunch and it was funny because waffles here are desserts not breakfast foods. So I got a weird look from the lady when I asked for mine without ice cream but with butter on top before the syrup and berries. We had a bunch of people at church again so that was joyful and had a really smashing Saturday which was basically her last full on working day of her mission. So it was a great week and I can't wait to see what the future will hold! It is weird to think this is my second last transfer though...so many missionaries that I love are going home soon! I will just have to travel the world to visit them all after my mission! yay! Love you all!

Sister Rasmussen

This Will Be Short

ALOHA!

Apologies, I have no time today because we are having a special P-day to celebrate our miracle 105 baptisms in JUNE WOOO! anyways so no time and also I had to sort out things for BYUH as well...scary. Anyways this week was GREAT! Sunday was just as hectic but not as much of that was negative in fact most of it was positive! We had a pretty incredible miracle this week I don't have time to write it twice sorry I'm going to copy and paste from my letter to my mission president:

We also had a miracle on Friday when a potential investigator we had planned to visit wasn't home and as we turned to leave her house a less active lady who lived on her same street came walking up with three of her small children. We stopped to say hello and she broke down in tears to tell us she was so happy to see us because her husband just recently left them and she knows she needs to come back to church and start building her life back up "the right way" living the gospel. We found a member almost immediately to be a perfect fellowship for her, one that has a big van and can fit her and her five young children in for church and they all came! It was so joyful to see Heavenly Father using us as his instruments and placing us in the right place at the right time. If we were only a few minutes off we would have missed her entirely and who knows when we would have gone to see her again. But Heavenly Father led us right to his daughter who needed him badly. I love this work!

So Sunday was hectic because of the five kids of this lady who came to church! yay! and also we had one of the young couples we are teaching come with their two kids and the girlfriend of another couple we are teaching with one of their kids and also a new investigator named James come on his own! So we were running around making sure everyone got to the right primary class and had a friend and all of that great stuff. This next week is the last week of my lovely companion Sister Moran's mission so it is going to be great! We are going on an adventure to the Gold Coast tomorrow to have dinner with the man that baptised her when she was a little girl and her mother and her joined the church. He doesn't go to church anymore and none of his family, wife or kids, are members. So that will be super exciting and fun! So that is what is happening    love you

more pictures

 Nathan's first trip to the temple...He was baptized back in April.

 With Sis. Kaifti on trade-off's in Kawana Waters.  The Pacific Ocean!!!

 I was so filled with joy just to hear the waves!!!  ha ha!

Sisters in the Brisbane North Zone.

Long Time No Email

 Crocodile & Kangaroo....tastes just like steak & chicken!!

 "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea..." On the road to Maryborough.

Shaun's baptism.  What a miracle!!

Aloha!

Well it feels like I was just emailing two days ago......

Actually to be honest it feels like I emailed 5 years ago because of how long and crazy everyday is as a missionary. It's such a weird phenomenon I don't even know how to describe it but it's like everyday is super long, but the weeks just fly by so fast if you blink you'll miss it. This weekend was very eventful as usual. Sister Moran and I went on a trade-off with the sisters that we live with, so I got to be with Sister Walter again! It was super weird being companions again in the same flat where we were companions before. We at least went to her area instead of mine, because that would have been just so weird haha. That was fun anyway. Then Sunday was just bonkers. Just off the chain crazy. It was the most spirit killing time I've ever had at church easily. Sacrament meeting was great, it's a bit crazy in our ward because of all the baby traffic, but that's nothing new to me coming from Centennial Pointe Ward. Gospel principles class is usually a bag of crazy, kind of like you never know exactly what you're going to get but you know it's going to be an experience. Well this week was just bad.... our recent convert got really offended over how our ward mission leader teaches the class. He's just really sensitive and must have been having a bad day already, plus he's already not a big fan of our ward mission leader. He chose to confront him and basically tell him how he feels about him in the very middle of Gospel Principles however....suuuuppperrrrrr awkward. And it didn't like blow over either it just escalated until the spirit was completely absent and the spirit of contention was fully there and the ward mission leader just gave up, sat down, and we just ended class early. After that I was happy to just try and get the spirit back somehow by going to relief society but that class ended up being bonkers as well, with people and children from primary running in and out the whole time. I don't know if the whole ward was just going nuts or what but the lesson itself was a bit crazy too with people getting all over the place with their input. After that we just couldn't wait to get out of the building! The elders were meant to drop us off at a members house in their area after church but something happened with them I'm not sure but they had to drop the other elders off somewhere and basically we ended up sitting at the chapel for an hour and in that time the worst thing of all happened. So this other good sister was extremely mad at us over something and decided to just confront us about it in the middle of the foyer after church in front of everyone....we were so confused as to what we did to upset her and she was asking us really inappropriate questions and just really angry at us. Then there was some more craziness after that because we weren't sure if our recent convert had a ride home from church. Eventually we made it out of that building and it couldn't have happened soon enough! I wish the rest of the night was relaxing but Sunday nights are the busiest nights ever for anyone in mission leadership because we have to make about half a million phone calls to different zone leaders of the sisters in our region, our zone leaders, the assistants and all the sisters in our region as well. Sleep was so welcome. Then I had a really crazy dream I was in a big house and this guy was chasing me around trying to attack me hahaha so even my sleep was a bit stressful. But that's alright we will move onward and upward. It's great when you hit an all time low because you have no where to go but up after that. There is definitely something to be learned after all that, not quite sure what it is but when I do figure it out I'll let you know! Hope your Sabbath was spiritual and refreshing! I'll send some recent pictures of things. 

Love you all!

Sister Rasmussen

It's Been too Long!!

ALOHA..finally

well it's been a very long time since last I had a P-day. It's just been a really crazy week. Our P-day was meant to be yesterday actually, because we were meant to go to the temple yesterday and have interviews with our mission president on Monday. Then we got informed that interviews had been re-schedulesd until Thursday and our P-day was changed to Tuesday. However someone hadn't thought that one through properly because the temple isn't even open on Tuesdays so then on Monday morning they changed it to Wednesday, but then later that afternoon they ended up changing it to Friday. Then on  Tuesday night they let us know our interviews would actually be Wednesday afternnon. It's a bit "all over the shop" as they say here in Australia. We just gave up trying to schedule and re-schedule our appointments by the end of all that. We almost couldn't believe it was true when we finally got on the train this morning to go to the temple. But we made it! and as usual it was beautiful and peaceful and amazing and just what I needed.  Now we are emailing from wonderful Brisbane city before we head back to the north side. Interviews were cool, president and sister Henderson came to our flats for this one so that was a new experience for me. They had done that before but I was in Toowoomba then which was too far for them to travel. It was funny Sister Henderson couldn't believe we don't have an oven. haha We were like take a look around, where would they even be able to fit an oven?! not that we have time to cook anyways so it's all good in the end. President interviewd me for about 30sec it feels like and was proabbly more like 5 minutes, which at the end he said alright you're good, you don't need anything and stood up to go...so I guess that's a good sign? haha I love him!

So this week hasn't been the best as far as appointments go, that has a lot to do with things getting re-scheduled and also just I have this firm belief that Satan attacks us and our investigators just before we go to the temple, and he knows when we are weaker, like when it's been a long time since we had a P-day.  But never the less we are doing great and seeing miralces. When we split our ward with the elders and then after Shaun was baptised we realised we didn't have many investigators to work with anymore. At least none that were really solidly progressing or anything. But it didn't take us long at all to start finding people, and not in the usual way. I'm used to having no one and then knocking on heaps of doors until we find a few people here and there, mostly crazies, with a few goldens thrown in there. This time we just keep meeting part member families. I think at the moment we have about 8 young un-married couples and 2 recently married, where one or both of them are a less active member. It's interesting teaching them because most of them are right around my age, but we are just in such different places in life. They are pretty much dealing with the consequences of major transgressions of the law of chastity, which is why they've all got 1 or 2 young kids and other sins as well addictions and what not. They know they want to have a strong family and have a good foundation to build on, but the problem is they started building already before they could even lay the foundation down. So now it's harder because it's like we have to lift the house up to make room for the foundation under there. It's interesting because none of these situations is going to be a quick miracle baptism. In Queensland it takes at least 30 days if not more to be married because of all the paperwork and stuff. (haha there are no drive-thru wedding chapels here! and they call it brisvegas......hahah) anyways it's going to be a long road and a lot of hard labour but I know it will be worth it in the end if we can help just one of these families to start now and see how bright their future can become. So that is what is going on here. In other news because of the mission achieveing our goal of 100 baptisms we get to hae some sort of celebration in the next few weeks! should be fun ;). We also get to have a meeting with all the sisters in our region. It's weird I still don't feel like I should be a leader of any sort because I still feel really new but then I realize that I hit my 15 month mark yesterday...my companion only has two weeks left on her mission so that's making it a bit hard not to freak out about the future and how I'm going to have to join real life again soon, but I'm going to try not to think about it and live it up for the time I have left.

I'll be emailing again on Monday so not sure what I'll even have to say. Happy 4th of July!

Love,

Sister Rasmussen