The Last Days

Hello,

Well it's my last P-day. That is super weird. 

I won't have to communicate solely via email any more, except to all my missionary friends that will still be here in the field. I guess I'll still be in the field too though, just a different field than Australia, and I won't have entirely the same role in the field, but a very similar one. We are all in the field really. 

General Conference was amazing! I loved so many of the talks. I can't believe that I never used to get anything out of general conference. Probably because I used to always just be asleep, how sad! General conference is an amazing event. I'm glad it's every 6 months. 

Thanks for the birthday wishes, it didn't even feel like it was my birthday really. I don't know how I feel about being 23...

We had our miracles from last week come to general conference this past weekend. And we've been teaching them a lot. It's been incredible. It was so good to see the young couple come as a family to church. The other family that I wrote about last week, we are teaching and they are so great. We set a date for them to be baptised this next weekend. I would normally say that I'll email pictures next week..... anyways they are the coolest kids ever, 14 and 12 and just soaking the gospel up like little sponges. They ask the best questions and we've really been having a fun time teaching them. 

It's really surreal to be coming home. I won't try and summarize or compile all the reasons I thank God every day for directing me to come on a mission, but this is the best thing I've ever done with my life and the reasons are many. I think it's been the hardest thing I've ever done too. That's okay though, I've learned more in this 1.5 years than in the all the 21 years before it even with going to church regularly. Just goes to show that you can go to church ready to receive revelation from God or you can go with a hard heart and get nothing. I'm grateful that I had enough of a little faith to prompt me to at least come out here, and I attribute that pretty much entirely to my parents, grandparents, church leaders, and good friends that I've had through my life. I can't thank Heavenly Father enough for sending me to a place where I would have people around me I could spiritually rely on because I was too weak to support my own testimony, and then thank Him again for helping me come here on a mission so I could find my own testimony and strengthen it, even to the point of being able to help others. "I Stand All Amazed" comes to mind. I know that Heavenly Father really does have a plan for each of us. I don't know what the rest of His plan for me is, but I don't mind because He's been doing a really good job of taking care of me so far and I haven't even been listening most of the time. I know that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is real, because I have felt it change me. Can't wait to see you all! although I'm not going to lie I'm pretty nervous too...

It's going to be weird. 

Love you all!

Sister Rasmussen

Sprinting to the Finish!!

Aloha family!

Well this week has been a week of craziness, and also miracles! I will write all about it to make up for my lack of good emails lately. 

First of all we got a mini missionary for the week. That is when the youth here in Queensland from a particular stake give up a whole week out of their two week school holidays to go and live and work with the missionaries throughout Brisbane. They arrive on Saturday morning and then stay until the next Saturday. We knew before hand we would be getting one, but the other two sisters in our flat received a surprise when another mini missionary showed up at our flat on Saturday morning. So we had 6 people living in our tiny flat. We have a five seater car. We have only one bathroom. It was great! 

We also went up to the Sunshine coast for my last trip up there to see the sisters and go on exchanges with them. It was a lot of fun. While I was with one of the sisters in Gympie and our mini missionary we were knocking on some doors and walking down the street and we saw a mother on the street ahead of us pushing a pram with a big plastic container in it, holding a screaming baby, and struggling with her bags. She was a pretty far way off but the sister I was with told me to go talk to her so I said yup and ran over to where she was, grabbed her pram and asked if I could push it for her to her house. As we walked to her house I told her who we were and what we do and asked her about her belief in God and about her life. When we got to her house I asked if we could come in and teach her a little bit about God and she said that normally she's say no but she felt a different "vibe" with us and it seems good so she let us in and we taught her how to pray. It was so great! When we went down to Kawana Waters we went talking to people at this lighthouse and down the cliffs from us was the ocean and there were all these people surfing! The waves were really choppy and not the best but it was still cool. I was just trying to speak to al the surfers and tie the gospel into surfing and give them cards before they ran over to shower. It's good because it's warming up so not everyone was in wet suits. So that was exciting, the problem with those two days is that it was warm and we were out in the sun working hard all day and our poor little mini missionary just couldn't handle it so she got really sick and had to go home :( sad. I think girls need to realize that part of missionary preparation is being physically fit, we don't walk around in our pretty skirts all day and stay pretty. We come home every night hot sweaty dirty and exhausted.  It's very physically demanding work. 

When we returned to our area on Thursday we had to work double time to make up for the time we had lost. We did witness some amazing things though! So Friday night we went over to a families house who we have been teaching for a while. They are a young couple with three young children, who aren't married. The man is a less active member, and his partner grew up going to church occasionally but was never baptised. We planned to have family home evening with them. We planned to read through Lehi's dream and to draw pictures of it as we read to show each other at the end. When we got there He told us that earlier that week he had an amazing experience where he decided he should truly repent so he looked up the steps of repentance and applied them, and he had the most amazing feeling. He'd since cut down his smoking considerably and started to read the Book of Mormon everyday. He had just finished reading about Lehi's dream and had prayed and asked Heavenly Father to help him understand it better and apply it into his life. Then we came with that lesson planned! We asked him something our mission president asked us in our recent zone conference "where are you in Lehi's drea?" He said last week I was in the building, a few days ago I was drowning in the river, but now I think I'm at the end of the rod in the mist trying to hold on. It was awesome. They told us they are committed to coming to church and to really living the gospel and changing their lives. They went to church on Sunday and he bore his testimony of repentance and his experience this past week. 

Then on Sunday we were at church and there was a new family that came in and sat at the back. The mum got up to share her testimony and she began by saying she hadn't been to church in 41 years. She has had many experiences in the past 2 months that have led her to realize she needed to return to church and bring her children into the gospel. They want to be baptised! She said "I left the church but Heavenly Father never left me, and now I'm back and I'm here to stay." We realized as she was speaking that we had received her family as a referral about 2 months ago but every time we tried to contact her we were never able to catch her at home. We know Heavenly Father was waiting for his timing to be right and now it is. We have an appointment with them tonight that we are really looking forward to. 

Later that afternoon we went out to have splits and my companion was able to find a miracle new investigator as well. And then that night we received a call from the assistants letting us know we'll be receiving a car! Which is another miracle in and of itself because we have so much going on in the next two weeks and we had no idea how we were going to manage to get to any of it. So it has truly been a week full of miracles and I am just full of gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the opportunity I have to be an instrument in his hands, and to be a very small part of his great work. 

Hope everyone's week is going great!

Much Love,

Sister Rasmussen