9 months and counting!

email 19 May 2015

Howdy y'all! 

This week was so good! Just an awesome week of working hard! 

First of all.....my 9 month mark is tomorrow. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!?!?! So Elders burn a shirt at their one year mark. But for Sisters, our halfway is 9 months. So we take a pregnancy picture! Haha I don't know why. Kind of weird! But I took mine this week:) I can honestly say that I've loved every single second of my mission thus far. Maybe I didn't in the moment......but looking back now, I'm so grateful for the moments that have brought me to change myself! Not just a temporary change, but a change for life:) 

 
Sister Magsayo cracks me up!!!!! She's from the Philippines and she only eats rice. Every. Single. Meal. I love rice so it's fine! But it's so funny! She carries a rice cooker with her to every area haha! She's an awesome missionary too! She's such a hard worker and has already taught me so much! 




This past week we've had a ton of success and have gotten 2 investigators on date for baptism!!! One is a boy named Cody and he's really scared of water. So we suggested to him to practice going underwater in the bathtub. But it just breaks my heart how scared he is of water! We've also been receiving a lot of referrals and we've been having a lot of lessons!

So I'm super excited to be an STL. [Sister Training Leader - Ed] :) I love all the sisters in our mission. I made these little gifts for them. I went to the gas station by our house and bought random but useful things and added a scripture to it haha it's been fun:) also our gas station sells $3 Chick-fil-a on Mondays!!! QUE GANGA!!!!! 

So I had an appointment in Salt Lake and guess what's in Salt Lake??? CHIPOTLE!!!! So I was able to go with Sister Checketts to my appointment and afterwards go to Chipotle. The bag that Chipotle gave us though, had a very inspirational story on it! I'll attach a picture of it. But I loved the message it shared about turning our weaknesses into strengths! (Ether 12:27) And making our imperfections into something beautiful! 

Our stake president shared a scripture with me the other day that I absolutely LOOOOVE. It's Alma 31:5

"And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just--yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them--therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God."

I think sometimes we get stuck on the 'or anything else'. But the word of God is better than ANYTHING else we can use. An example is a home or visiting teacher who drops off a plate of cookies. Don't get me wrong, I love thoughtful gifts! But it can sometimes be an 'anything else'. If we replace sharing the word of God with treats. Or in my ministry, I've seen that it's easy to rely on my own knowledge of the gospel and it's easy to just talk at them. But that can easily be an 'anything else'. I loved this message and my goal is to get rid of all of my "anything else's" and rely fully on the spirit and the word of God! 

Last night all 45 sisters in the Utah Ogden mission came together and had a training and sleepover at the mission home!!!! SO FUN!!!!!!! We got to watch "The Errand of Angels". It's a movie about sister missionaries and it's very accurate!

Errand of Angels (2008), Trailer

Errand of Angels - The True Story

We had an awesome training from Sister Hiers about our motivation. Whether that's motivation to come on a mission, be obedient, anything. The steps up the ladder of motivation are force, fear, reward and punishment, duty, faith, love and charity. I think this can apply to anything in life. I think when I came on my mission, I kind of felt like I was motivated by duty. I knew that I needed to go because I had prayed about it and had received an answer that I needed to be here. Then once I got out here, I wanted to go home. But I was motivated first by fear to stay out. Fear of what people would say if I came home early. Then it moved to reward and punishment. I wanted to stay out because I wanted to be changed for the better and I wanted my family to receive the blessings. Then it was faith. I was out here because I knew I had something I needed to do here. I was meant to be here. I don't think I'm perfectly following God because of love and charity yet. I'm definitely getting there! I love my Heavenly Father and my savior Jesus Christ. But that's what life is all about. It's all about climbing up that ladder until we can obey all of Gods commandments because we love Him. And using Christ's atonement because we love Him. 

I'm doing great and I'm loving every second of my time here:) 

Love, Sister Sarlls