Leaving one house.........

                                                        ...and enjoying the view at the new house.
Hello, my loves!

Well, on Tuesday night after we got home, we got a phonecall from our housing coordinators and they said, "okay sisters, we are gonna move you out of your apartment tomorrow at 2:30!"   errmm...what? We knew that we were going to have to move soon because Sister Belnap's daughter was going to need to move in.  But they didn't need us out of the apartment until June 1st, so we were thinking we still had about a week until we were to move.  But nope! So we packed everything up on Wednesday morning and had that entire thing emptied of our stuff, furniture, food, dishware, everything! And they packed us all up and moved us to the Long's house. They live all the way up by the sky resort. It's kind of far away from everything and it kills our fuel efficiency to drive up that steep mountain, but they have a really nice place for us to stay, and I am more than grateful that they have opened their home up to us!  We miss Sister Belnap, but the Longs are a great family, so we are excited to stay. (Plus they have dogs! :D I love living with pets again!)

The tough thing this week has been that people have been so busy the last few weeks, we haven't been able to meet with many of our investigators.  But the good news is, we were able to find a few new ones! Found a great new couple that just moved in. They have a brand new baby and aren't really familiar with religion or Christ, so we are excited to teach them the first discussion tomorrow.  Plus we met Drew, the old man with a huge grey beard that can be seen riding his horse up and down the streets of Inkom.  This week he was even taking his horse for a stroll in the rain.  He was very friendly, but he is baptist so wasn't interested in the church. But hey, we met Inkom's famous bearded horseman!

I love the Lord. and I love his scriptures. The more I have been able to immerse myself in the scriptures this week, the closer I have been able to get to Christ.  I've been reading in the New Testament lately and just marking it up like crazy.  It makes me appreciate the men who took the time to record the life of Christ. But it also makes me realize how much was not recorded, and how much there is still to learn.  It makes me grateful that we have modern day revelation and that we knew there is more that the Lord is yet to reveal to mankind here on this Earth! 

I love you guys soooo much!

Have an awesome week!

God Bless,

Sister Moreland

Quite an eventful week!

So on Monday, we were trying to find this referral, and apparently they live right next to these members, the Beus family.  So since we had their address from the directory, we were trying to find their street.  Well, we were way up in the mountains and apparently took a wrong turn to find their house and ended up on the very top of the hill/mountain to this gravel parking-lot looking thing.  There was a path that led to the other side of the hill, and we thought, well, let's see if their house is over there! So we began to drive down this steep inclined path but only got a few feet before we realized that this was a farming path, not even a gravel road, (keep in mind it had been raining for the last few days) and our car began to slip down the mud, and though Sister Leon, who was driving, tried to stop, the car ran right into a fence post.  Like I said, we had only gone a few feet, so the impact was minimal, so no injury.  The car damage wasn't even that bad.  But we were now stuck in the mud because the car's wheels were just spinning in place whichever way we tried to go.  So we had to call the Beus family, explain to them our predicament, and their two oldest boys came and spent almost an hour trying to tow us out. They got our car out and all was well, thank goodness! Crazy stuff.

There were a couple of days of this week where we met some people that really were not interested and really made it known how much they did not want to talk to us.  The fact that this happened several times within a short period of time really worked up my temper.  Luckily I have pretty good control of my anger, so I was courteous in front of them, of course, but it just really bothered me for the rest of the day.  I thought of all the ridicule that Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah went through while they were on their missions, as that is the part of the Book of Mormon that I have been reading lately.  They withstood so many people contending with them, trying to make fools of them, even hurting them physically and imprisoning them.  Then I thought, "well, whenever they are ridiculed, all they have to do is tell them that God will show them a sign, and then that non-believer is always struck down, or struck dumb, or something crazy happens!  But that never happens to us, of course."  The next day, I read about Aaron and his brothers proselyting to the Amalekites in Alma 21.  The Amalekites ridicule Aaron for his teachings, and verse 10 said:  

10 And it came to pass as he began to expound these things unto them they were angry with him, and began to mock him; and they would not hear the words which he spake.

 11 Therefore, when he saw that they would not hear his words, he departed out of their synagogue, and came over to a village...

Aaron probably wondered the same thing I did. Why couldn't he show his power, or some great miracle, when his brother Ammon and Alma and many others were.  But that's just not what the Lord had in store for these particular people. So Aaron didn't busy himself with worrying about it or being angry about it.  When he saw that they didn't want to listen, he simply left. He left and searched for someone who would.  Well, that's the lesson I learned this week. Be patient in afflictions and pray for those that offend you.  It really does help to ask God to bless those that "curse you" and "despitefully use you". 

Then we had some MIRACLES when we found 2 new investigators and 1 family that has tons of potential to become a fantastic investigator.  I really don't know why the Lord is giving us all these miracles,but I know that He loves me and I guess that's His way of showing it!

This gospel is soooo true! Love you all sooo much!

God Bless,

Sister Moreland

P-Day hike with the elders in the district

Hello to my faaavorite people!

Whew, what a week! 

After a fun hike, last P-day, we prepared to proselyte again! We met a woman while we were out named Gena.  She was methodist, and told us that her son had been baptized LDS a year or two before at age 18, but that he was now no longer going.  She was very nice and told us that we could come back.  Yay!

The next day, we were driving down the street, and I noticed that there were a lot of people out on the street, so we decided to park the car and walk.  The first people we came across were a couple young men trimming a lilac tree.  We asked if they wanted help, and they said sure! Come to find out all three of them were active members, which I kinda figured, as one of them greeted us as "sisters!" This one happened to be our landlady's grandson, as well.  Well, we didn't want to walk all the way back to our car to get our service clothes and then have to find a place to change, so we just started helping them trim the tree in our skirts! After a few minutes, I thought "man this is sort of silly, we're not even really helping much, I'm in a skirt, people are probably driving by wondering what in the world we're doing, this is kind of a waste of time..."  But then, a car pulled up and it was another young man, one of their friends.  We met this new friend, whose name was Hunter, and he told us that he was baptized a few years ago at age 18, but didn't really go to church anymore.  Something clicked in my brain and I realized that we had just met his mom, Gena, the day before! Coincidence? I think not! We talked to him for a bit and invited him to a fireside that Sunday.  Hopefully we will be able to start meeting with him and his family soon!

Thursday was the BLITZ! We had been preparing for this event for weeks.  Basically, 10 missionaries came to our area and split up and teamed up with members from our 4 wards.  We all took 2 hours and went out in Inkom making visits to a bunch of new people.  It was very successful and we got a lot of new people that we need to go see because of it! We're really excited about the blessings and miracles that were seen from this 'blitz', and we thought it was a pretty neat idea.  

Yesterday we had a missionary fireside on "Faith", and me and another Sister in our district, Sister Aliasa who is from Hawaii, sang "Keepers of His Light".  To make a long story short, there had been some miscommunication between us and our pianist, Elder Gross. When I went up to Elder Gross in the chapel at 6:45 and apologized for being late to our practice, he replied, "What practice?"  I'm sure I went sheet white. He never got the sheet music.  So I went flying upstairs at 6:55 to print out sheet music for this fireside that started at 7:00.  I got it printed, but when I came down, the fireside had already started.  I sat down and signaled to Elder Gross that I got the sheet music, which he had never seen before.  He went sheet-white, too.  Well, when it was our turn to sing, we went up to the stand, handed the sheet music to Elder Gross, who looked at and said "Oh, yeah, I can do this"  and we performed with a pianist who had never played the song before, and we had never practiced it with him.  He sounded perfect. And I think Sister Aliasa and I sounded pretty good, too.  Although he was red in the face from nerves by the end of the song, Elder Gross played the song as though he had practiced all week.  What brilliance.   Thank God for blessing Elder Gross with that sort of talent to be able to play on the spot like that.  Without a doubt, the most stressful evening of the week!

God is here. No doubt about that.  We just have to reach out and seek Him, for He is always reaching out to us!

Love you all!

God Bless,

Sister Moreland

(Excerpt and comic from Sister Moreland's latest letter home)

We were walking the streets of Inkom the other night, and this came into my mind: 
The 3 scariest people to see walking toward you: 

Seriously, you'd think when we walk by it was some gang bangers walking by.  People, like, run away from us.  They sometimes even hide.  Grown men will actually try and hide from us.  We're not dumb!  We saw you jump that fence and hide behind the shed when you saw us! (that actually happened today!)

(Email Monday, May 11)
Hellooooo

Well, it was an excellent Mother's Day, getting to talk to you guys! I loved seeing your faces and hearing about everything that's going on at home.  I cannot thank my God enough for the wonderful family He has given me.  Without my parent's support, encouragement, and example, I have no idea where I would be.  I am so proud of you two for gettin' out there and being fantastic missionaries!

We had a lot of lessons cancel this week, so much of our time was spent knocking on doors and trying to find some new people to teach.  We did have a really great lesson with the KC and his kids.  It was a lesson on the Atonement and the Sacrament.  We showed the video from lds.org called He is Risen, which is so powerful.  It really invited a spirit into the room, showing each of us just how important the sacrifice of the Savior was. At the end of the lesson, KC was talking about a friend of his that wasn't a member and that was struggling.  Apparently the missionaries had visited this man before, but he hadn't been interested.  I had a thought that I should ask KC to invite this man to our next family home evening with them.  But then, I thought "Well, KC probably won't want to invite him, especially if he has already told the missionaries he's not interested..." But as soon as that thought entered into my head, I was reminded of a missionary meeting we had had the day before where one of our APs said, "If you have a thought to invite someone to do something, or to go talk to someone, or help someone, Do It! These are promptings from the Holy Ghost. Don't let your fear hold you back from following them."  So I asked KC if he would invite the man, and KC said of course he would! I'm really glad I had the courage to follow the prompting I received from the Holy Ghost.  Who knows? It may lead this man to the knowledge of his Savior someday.

 I've been thinking a lot about faith this week.  We have a fireside about faith this weekend, and we've been talking a lot about the scripture in Mark chapter 9, where a man asks Jesus to heal his son, and Jesus in response asks if he believes. Mark 9:24 says:

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord,  

I believe; help thou mine unbelief.  

The man believed, to a point, but he was still struggling with his faith in part.  Christ goes on to heal the man's son.  I think it really shows that the Lord does not expect perfect faith from us, because He knows that we all have doubts and struggle with believing sometimes.  But He can help us develop our faith.  Through Christ, our unbelief can turn into rock-solid faith. It reminds me of the other scripture in Alma 32:27. It reads:

27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an  

experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can  

no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe 

 in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

That's really helped me a lot this week.  Having faith that the Lord has prepared people in Inkom, Idaho, to learn of the Gospel can be tough to believe sometimes, especially when it's such a small town that it seems like everyone who is not a member has been pestered enough by missionaries.  But I know the promise we have received is true.  Otherwise, there wouldn't be missionaries here in Inkom.  I just have to rely on the Lord to help with any lack of faith that I have.  I encourage you all to study faith this week! What a wonderfully simple principle of the gospel that we can never outgrow. 

Love you all so very much!

God Bless,

Sister Moreland

Hello my loves!

I know that what I am doing out here is everything that God wants for me, and I love this work.  Coming on a mission was the best decision I ever could have made.  I thank God every day for giving me such a strong impression that I needed to be here.  If he hadn't have, I don't know that I would have had the courage to serve.  I know that Christ lives.  I know with everything I have that God's plan for us is to follow his Son, Jesus Christ, and be purified through Him so that we can live with God as eternal families.  I wish that everyone knew this so that they could have the true, deep happiness that I do.  That is why I am here. To share it.  I love Christ, I love his Gospel, and I love all of you! 

We are teaching Preston and Rob, still, but they are working a lot so it's been hard to get an appointment.  We showed up on Monday, which is our usual time for a lesson.  They had forgotten about it, so Rob was there, but his son, Preston was not.  We were just going to reschedule and then leave, but to our surprise, Rob said, "Hey, don't you want to read me a scripture or something? Here, sit down!" So even though we couldn't go inside his house (because we didn't have another woman with us) he pulled up some lawn chairs and we sat outside and read a bit out of the Book of Mormon with him.  It was so neat to see him excited about reading scriptures--wanting us to talk with him.  And he wants to get his patriarchal blessing, too! It's wonderful to see the spirit fill someone's life as they come back to God. 

  

"Cancel, cancel, cancel."  That's what Sister Leasi used to say about Inkom. And she wasn't kidding. We had an appointment for almost every hour in the evening this week, and all but one of them cancelled.  But I think it is a blessing in disguise---because we have been praying to find new people to teach! How else could we find new people if appointments with people we are already teaching are taking up all of our time?  In an odd sort of way, Heavenly Father is answering our prayers.  So that we can go out and find!

We had exchanges with our Sister Training Leaders this week. Sister Leon went to their area and Sister Towers came with me in Inkom. It was a bit hard leading out the area after only being here for 3 weeks, but I was surprised how well I actually knew where everything was. Sister Towers is from Australia, and it was fun to be with her.  And try in vain to do her accent.  She says my "Australian" accent is a weird mix between British and New Zealand (I guess it's from trying so hard to do Elder Te'okotae's accent in Blackfoot!)  I learned a lot from that exchange; about inviting people to be baptized, talking to everybody, and not being dismissed so easily by those who don't feel like talking to us.  In other words, just being bolder.  So I'm going to try it out!

Hope all of you are having great experiences and that every trial that you have stretches you and challenges you but always helps you get closer to Christ in the end.  

God Bless,

Sister Moreland

                                                                                    Blackfoot Zone
Hello all!

Not really that eventful of a week, to be honest. Although Monday night, we did have a fantastic lesson with Rob and Preston on the plan of Salvation! 

 I LOVE teaching the plan of salvation!! It is my absolute favorite discussion out of any of them.  Just seeing the light bulb in the investigator's head turn on as we talk about answers to some of life's greatest questions. Answers to the "questions of the soul", as we call them.  Why am I here? Where did I come from? What is the purpose of life? Where will I go after this life?  When we talk about those subjects in relation to God's great Plan of Happiness, everything just makes sense to me.  And everything begins to make much more sense for the people that we teach.  There is so much to talk about in the plan of salvation, as well.  So much about the Atonement to cover, so much depth when discussing the fall of Adam and Eve...I could go on and on during our discussions, but usually we only have about 45 minutes, so a lot of times we end up splitting the plan of salvation discussion up into several different parts, depending on the level of understanding of those we are teaching.  If you ever want to share/explain some part of the gospel with someone to get their brain juices flowing, talk about God's plan for us.  If that doesn't stir people's minds to ask questions and ponder topics of life and God, I don't know what will!

                                                                                          Service Project

(This is the) service that we did this week! They had a big ward breakfast/service thing on Saturday.  We had a big pancake breakfast and then did a bunch of yardwork around the church building. Sister Leon and I were raking with this one lady who had served her mission in Scotland! and now she has a son out, I think somewhere in South America.  So we talked a lot about Scotland and Ireland and had some "good crack", as the Irishman call it. hee hee. 

 

Ehh...I can't really think of anything else...but I just want to thank everyone for their emails and letters of love and support! I love you all so much and pray for everyone back home all the time! Know that you are loved so deeply by our Father and Heaven.  When all is lost and it seems like nobody else is there for you, HE always is.  Love you soooo much!

God Bless,

Sister Moreland

                    Sister Moreland! I didn't know you were serving in the Ireland-Scottland mission!?

                                                                      Neither did I.  Neither did I. 

                                                                           Inkom in all its glory.

Pday at the Nickells' - roasting marshmellows and playing football, guitar, singing, and tire swings

This week, it was 70 degrees. And then the next day, it snowed. And then the next day, it snowed. And then the next day, it was 75. Wat.

Hello, my loves!

Well, Tuesday-Thursday was kind of uneventful this week, so I'm gonna skip straight to the highlight of the week--Friday.

On Friday, one of our Sister Training Leaders, Sister Hill, came around with us in Inkom. She's from Texas, too, so it was kind of funny when people asked us where each of us were from, and we all 

say the same thing.

So the first half of the day consisted of a heck of a lot of piddling around the neighborhood, knocking on doors and trying to find someone home, but with no success. With that afternoon combined with the previous few days which passed quite unproductively, I was starting to get kinda down, wondering why in the world there were even missionaries in teensy little Inkom all all. Thinking there simply isn't enough work here.  After feeling quite useless, we finally had a lesson--a great one--with investigators Rob and his 18 year old son Preston. We simply read the first chapter of the Book of Mormon with them, and they talked about how The Book of Mormon seemed much easier once we just sat down and read it together.  

Then later in the evening, we had an appointment to have a lesson with a part-member family, but 10 minutes prior to the lesson, they called and canceled. Well, now we were left having to find something to do again. From the parking lot we had stopped in to decide where to go, I suddenly spotted a man outside working on his boat, so I said to Sister Leon and Sister Hill, "Hey, let's go talk to that guy!" So we did. He ended up being a less active guy that wanted to come back, and his wife is a former investigator. He said that he had seen us drive by a few time during the week, and thought to himself "we need to start meeting with the missionaries again!" Lo and behold, here we were! I'm really glad I followed that prompting of the spirit to go see him, because now we're going to start meeting with him and his wife again!

Then, as we knocked on another door, who's owner wasn't home, we saw two men walking down the street (which is odd here in small-town Inkom) . How do I describe them...well these guys had their gangstah pants on. But we approached them anyways, and I was kinda being doubting Thomas over here, thinkin, "Man, these guys are punks. They're not gonna want to hear about God from us Mormons."  But surprisingly, one of them was very friendly.  The friendly one ended up being the son of a couple that Sister Leon had been seeing before I got here.  His friend was a non-member from Pocatello, and although he was stand-offish at first, as we began to talk about Christ and ask them questions about their lives, they slowly began to open up.  We told them about the Book of Mormon and how it testifies of Christ, and offered them each a copy, which they both took gladly. In fact, one of the men, seeing that his friend's copy of the Book of Mormon also had a pamphlet in it, said "Hey, how come he got a pamphlet, I want one too!" Haha, it was so great! So we gave him one, too :) We set up times to see them both (Sister Hill happens to serve in the area where the nonmember friend lives).  What a MIRACLE. What a testimony that there is always someone who is prepared to receive the gospel, even when grumpy ole' me thinks that there isn't.  What a humbling experience. What a blessing in disguise that the one family canceling on us turned out to be! If they hadn't canceled, we wouldn't have ever met those 3 men that were in need of Jesus Christ in their life.  When one door closes, 2 more open.  

On Saturday, we went "rock picking"!  Don't worry, I had no idea what that was, either, before I did it.  Basically, the farming fields in Idaho get these big rocks in them every year, and a big group of people volunteer to go out to the fields to pick up the rocks for this year's planting. It's a huge service project, because if the rocks are left there, they get stuck in the plowing machinery and cause a lot of problems. So I go there thinking that we are going to be picking up these golf-ball-sized and orange-sized rocks. Then when we got there, the guy in charge told us to leave the little rocks there and only worry about picking up the rocks that were grapefruit-sized or bigger. I'm thinking "psshh there aren't going to be hardly any rocks that are bigger than a grapefruit! This will take like 30 minutes!"  Boy was I wrong. The field was covered in rocks bigger than basketballs. Talk about some back-breaking work! I brought my camera with the intention of taking pictures when we got there, but I completely forgot. So sorry, no pictures of rock-picking. But I did get quite the farmers tan! :D What fun, Idahoan week!

I would like to briefly emphasize the importance of friendshipping new converts. and not just saying hello in church for a few months. These people need true, solid friends. Someone to be there for them. Someone to spend time with outside of "church" things.  A support system that they can turn to with their questions, concerns, and doubts.  In reality, we all need that. But it's especially important when someone is coming into this completely foreign world that we call the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  Please try and find ways to make friends with those who are struggling as well!  

Well, that's the news and updates for this week! Love you all so much!

God Bless, 

Sister Moreland