#BashersCantStopUs

Date: 02-27-2017
Companion: Sister Staker
Area: Vancouver North Stake, Walnut Grove Ward

Hello hello hello everyone! This week was a whirlwind of everything! Lol. Everything here in the Walnutty Groovey Ward is awesome. This ward is so good! (Almost as good as the North Ogden 1st Ward...lol). We had a couple of funny and awesome stories this week!

So there is this thing called a blitz, and that’s where all the missionaries in a district work in one area or ward. So we decided to do a blitz in the Walnut Grove Ward. There's two other sets of Elders in our District. So there's 6 of us missionaries, standing in a circle in this parking lot, and we were trying to tell the Elders what part of the ward we wanted them to go to and what we wanted them to go see, and we're just about to leave, and this car pulls up right next to us. Which we all thought was kind of weird cause we were in the back of the parking lot, but this guy who's probably 20-ish and his little brother who had to have been 13 or 14 get out of the car and they ask if we're Mormons. Lol. So then they start asking questions and we start answering them a little and they just get more and more mad the whole time we're talking. Elder Brown and Dastrup are trying so hard to just talk with the guy and answer his questions, but every time they say start to say anything, the guy interrupts them with another question or tries to disprove them before they can finish what they're saying. It was incredibly frustrating and also hilarious. It was so hard because you just wanted to shake him and say "Hey fam, we just wanna give you the gospel and all the happiness and joy it can bring ya" but he wasn't there to learn, he was there to put us down and try to tell us we're wrong.

Sister Staker was talking to me after and she said the best thing to do in that situation is to just bare your testimony, cause they can argue with stories and verses the whole day, but they can't force you to not believe in something. Just like we can't force anyone to believe anything. God has given us agency and it’s such an awesome and good thing, but also frustrating. I know that when we give our agency and our will to God that he will give us so much more in return. When we focus on the feelings we have, even if other things don't make sense, it will all work out in the end. GOD IS AWESOME!

The Elders felt bad that we didn't have as much time to do the blitz, but we do this thing called a miracle text, where anyone in the zone will text the zone leaders and tell them of a miracle they just had and the zone leaders will send it to everyone in the zone, and it's just a fun thing to do and it boosts everyone's energy and it’s so fun to see everyone having miracles, and everyone's been doing hash tags in them so we decided that if we had miracles on the blitz we'd text them in with the #BashersCantStopUs. So now Sister Staker and I have been saying it every time something hard or stupid or funny happens. Lol

One more story! This one's an awesome miracle!

Yesterday, Sister Staker and I decided that we were going to find 2 new investigators. We went to this apartment complex to find this lady we'd talked to the night before. But we couldn't find her apartment. So Sister Staker asks what I want to do and I say "we said we were going to find 2 new investigators, and we haven't done anything to find new people!" (We had been going to less actives) so we start knocking on the doors on the bottom floor with no luck, and I could tell Sister Staker was frustrated with me (later she'd said it was because she felt like we could have been doing something more productive with our time). So finally I said we could go and visit some people the Bishop had wanted us to go to, and Sister Staker says "no let's go knock the top 3rd floor, I have a feeling we have to go there" So we go up, and there's not luck and it’s just kind of defeating. So we leave and go to church which was at 3:00 p.m. this week because one of the other wards was having stake conference, so the ward decided to do a linger longer after. The Tellez family is awesome!! I love them so much! They brought 4 investigators with them, and we asked them if they wanted to see the chapel. We did a chapel tour with them for a little bit. And 2 of them, Mi. And C. Start asking so many questions, and the other two left. And the Tellez family was like "Hey why don't we go to our house and talk about this more!" It was AWESOME!!!!!!! So we went over and these guys were seriously so cool! Mi. is 18 and C. is 17 and they asked so many questions. And then Mi. kept saying he wanted to be Mormon so bad and he knows he's supposed to go on a mission. Honestly the spirit was so strong. He said "I don't know anything about the church, but I know that it's true and it’s where I'm supposed to be. God has done so much for me. God has done everything for me, the least I can do is give up 2 years for him" I'm not kidding the spirit was so strong. Brother Tellez told his conversion story and it was just so cool! So then we left and Sister Staker and I were freaking out! We had followed the spiritual promptings we had received, and we felt like we were going nowhere, but we showed God that we were willing to listen to Him, and he answered our prayers by giving us two new investigators! GOD IS SO REAL!!!!

When we act on feelings we have and they don't turn out the way we think they should, don't get frustrated! God has another plan in mind! Something better than your plan would ever be! It's GLORIOUS! The church is true. GOD LOVES YOU!

Sister Emma Hansen