The
pictures you sent this week were so awesome, thank you!! I loved seeing the
pictures of Dad and Grandma making cookies together, how sweet! Oh, I miss Grandma’s
cookies... And actually chocolate chips! We don't have those here! When we make
cookies or need chocolate chips, we just cut up a chocolate bar, haha!
Oh, I
hope you had the BEST birthday EVER! You are so loved and I guess it's a good
problem to have when too many people want to take you out for birthday meals!
How is
Grandpa Dennis doing? I want to hear more about him, I miss him! I'm so sorry
that he hasn't been getting my emails, that is my fault. I added him to my
contacts and thought that put him on my weekly email list, but I had to do an
extra step! Sorry, I fixed that today! Tell him I love him!
Oh man,
we gotta both get back on track! Let’s start doing our fitness log next week! I
expect a good report from both of us, at least 30 minutes of focused activity
every day! Sound alright? :)
That is
so dang cool you get to serve the missionaries for zone conference! I want to
help do that when I get back (and pretty much every activity that can get me
involved again haha!) And you get to have the missionaries over this week? Man,
they get the treat to go to the Ingalls house! Side note: ask to get a picture
with them! If they are elders, they probably don't send enough pictures home
and their mamas would appreciate someone giving them a little nudge or having
an extra picture to send home! I've actually taken the liberty of emailing
Elder Myers mom every once in a while with pictures of him because never sends
anything, barely even a letter! Send me the picture too, I want to see who is
serving in our ward!
Oh
yeah, I just wanted a little change and saw these cute little necklaces at
H&M for like 3 euro! All necklaces are still intact and good! I probably
will end up giving away a Minnesota necklace! Thankorending me those!
This
week was GOOD! Oh, I felt that joy of missionary work, I think your prayers
helped. Thank you :)
I
really appreciate the message you sent me. It’s nice to constantly tell myself
that it'll be okay, it’s not that bad and I can get through it, but I was
really grateful that you were just able to sympathize with me and agreed that
it can be hard. You are so caring, and it seems like you always know the right
thing to say! You are AWESOME!
In
reality, I'd had a really hard day last Monday, so the email was probably a bit
more dramatic than it probably should have been! I am happy and good, and I am
a good missionary! Not every circumstance allows me to see that clearly, but
Heavenly Father blessed me with an experience this week that showed me I am a
spiritually-guided, diligent-working missionary! I gotta tell you about it!
I think
it still started off with Sister Decker on Thursday night. Usually once every
week or two, we combine our companionship study and dinner time and have a
sleepover night! It was super fun, I mean fun as in we ate pizza and watched
The District! I hadn't watched it in a while, and it helped me remember some
things that are really important with teaching and caring about the people! It
put a little fire of motivation in me! I can’t explain exactly what, but I just
knew we could be doing better. Sister Decker and I had a good conversation
about it and made some good ideas!
This is
where the craziness comes in. We had exchanges Friday afternoon to Saturday
afternoon, and I stayed in Elmshorn with Sister Barker! She is AMAZING, I
totally love her! She is from Wisconsin, so we always have a good time making
some Midwest jokes or talking in super Midwest accents! But as we were
planning, I was just like, hm, I can do this the way I want because she really
just follows me around the area! We had lots planned (that’s the difference
between D and I, it’s not a bad thing, but I like to do lots of stuff and keep
busy and work, work, work and give it my all then pass out at night. She likes
to stop and think meaningfully, and straight up told me she can’t handle doing
so much. Kind of a bummer on both sides, but hey, I need to work on patience,
and she has something to learn too.)
We
started seeing miracles right when we got together! We were unlocking our bikes
at the train station and were talking in English when suddenly this African
lady comes up to us and is like, "Woah, are you guys speaking
English?!" It was really cool and she was excited to meet a few fellow
English speakers! We basically invited her to Marcia's friend group (because
Marcia knows everyone) and got her contact! It was really really cool, and we
were literally just in the path of this beautiful daughter of God!!! WHOOP
WHOOP #salvationforall
Then,
we had approximately 7 minutes to plan our lesson for Pkay out together! We
basically came to the conclusion after reading a bunch of good scriptures that
we were going to focus on following the spirit and just trying to listen to and
address his concerns. Joseph is our rockin’ missionary, and he was our joint
teach! We met in the upstairs of a cafe in Innenstadt like normal, and it was
an AWESOME lesson! Like Mom, it was awesome. When we were on the train home
before this, Sister Barker was like "I was getting ready this morning, and
I just felt like I was going to share an experience today. I didn’t know what,
when or why, but I knew that it was going to help!" I was like, awesome!
I'll pray really hard! The lesson was just so spiritually led to what he
needed, and we found out a lot of things about him that can totally be helped
by the gospel. Joseph loves sharing his testimony too, and he really just
lights up the room!
Maybe I
was trying to follow the spirit too much, because during the first half of the
lesson, I kept seeing a girl behind Pkay that looked like she was about to cry.
I was praying she'd wait long enough until we were done so that I could talk to
her. Well, she got up to leave way before we were done, and I was like nooooo I
have to go talk to her! That is totally weird when you're feeling the spirit in
your lesson, and it’s that you need to talk to someone else. I was really not
going to do it, then I just suddenly excused myself for 30 seconds while they
were looking for a scripture. She was really grateful someone noticed, but
actually she was just reading a really sad book under the table! LOL! We had a
cute little 30 second discussion, but nothing crazy special came of it. I
returned to my seat still feeling better, because I knew I would have regretted
it had I not talked to her. Sister Barker thinks that the lady will always
remember the girls in skirts and name tags caring about her, and I hope she's
right!
So,
Sister Barker shared her experience and it was really powerful. Even Pkay said
so! He recognized that he felt the spirit, and that was a really cool moment to
experience! How to begin teaching (from PMG) fit in really well there, and I
bore my testimony with power! I felt it, and I knew they did too! I still
remember saying that I'm so happy to dedicate this 18 months to Jesus Christ,
and that meeting and teaching people like these two proves why I started in the
first place. By the end of the lesson, Pkay was more open to the idea of
baptism and making change. It was beautiful to see the Spirit enter his heart.
I LOVE sharing the gospel!! But these stories are just the start of it :)
When we
left, Joseph invited us over to Mercy's house- a lady we have been trying to
get in contact with for WEEKS! Since Joseph’s baptism! We were like, yes, of
course! We had promised another contact we would stop by, and even though I
figured she wouldn't be home, I wanted her to know that we keep our promises so
we went. She wasn't home, but I've been thinking of this family for weeks, so
I'm not giving up on them yet!
Mercy
and her two little girls are awesome! (I think I use that word a lot?!) We were
only able to spend a little bit of time there, but she expressed that she
really wanted to start meeting with us!! #GOLDEN! She said she'd come to church
on Sunday with the girls and we'd set up a time to meet during the week! I'm so
excited! The best part though was when Joseph was helping us get ready to
leave. He really wanted us to meet with her, and I just inquired if Mercy had
showed him interest. He responded, "If you see someone that is hungry, you
feed them. We see that Mercy is spiritually hungry, and we are feeding
her." What depth for a new convert!! He has just become so much, and I
know that Heavenly Father is SO proud of him! Wow!
The
next morning (we had a bit of fun in between, but no music videos were made!)
we planned on going to ward soccer, but nobody showed up except some members
that lived an hour away! I felt so bad, the person with the key didn’t come and
wasn’t reachable! We got home earlier than expected, changed plans and wrote
some notes for the members in Glueckstadt, where we were planning to go in the
afternoon! As we were writing the notes, the appointments that we had planned
there had fallen out. We decided that we were still going to go and give our
notes, hand out a bunch of flyers for the musical evening next Saturday and
just see what good we could do!
So, we
met a lady earlier that week in Glueckstadt. She didn’t know where her husband
was that passed away (she’s like 80) and we read Alma 40 together. The spirit
spoke to her heart, and she loved the words and wanted a Book of Mormon! Hopefully
we can run into her again.
So, we
were dropping off a note for a member, and her neighbor answered. Note that
this lady is Hispanic. So, we were talking to her and she was really cautious
and yeah. Well, Sister Barker happened to bring her Ukelele along because we
were thinking of bringing a bit of joy to members, and she’s like "Would
it be okay if we sang a song for you?!" The lady laughed and thought we
were kidding. Nobody in their right frame of mind would just start asking to
sing to a stranger! She agreed and Sister Barker’s like, "Okay cool! I’m
going to play ukelele and Sister Ingalls is going to sing in Spanish!" You
can imagine what look I gave her, WHAT?! I burst out laughing, I have NEVER
learned any Spanish whatsoever?!! I thought she was kidding, but then I
realized we were actually doing this when she pulled up the music to I am a
Child of God. I wasn't about to say no! I was actually thinking, oh cool, this
will be one of those super cool gift of tongues moment and the lady is going to
love it! HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA NOPE. I completely butchered the first half of
the song, and then burst out laughing. We barely got through one verse and it
was absolutely HORRIBLE. Oh, my goodness, I'm still laughing about it. This
lady was probably thinking all sorts of things! We redeemed ourselves with
singing it in German, but my catastrophic singing actually opened her up a bit
more! She grinned so big when we were talking about being children of God! She
even let us say a pray with her, it was so sweet! We laughed for a good 5
minutes after that one! Hopefully we see her again soon!
There
were many amazing things that happened, but the coolest one was on our way back
to the train. We didn't have a lot of extra time because we weren't super close
and needed to make this train in order to switch back with our companions in
Hamburg. We were walking at a good pace, when suddenly I got this huge
impression that I needed to give someone a Book of Mormon on the way to the
train station. With limited time, I knew that we immediately needed to pray. We
prayed right there on the street, asking God to put this person in our path and
that we'd have the courage to find them. We talked to everyone, I even ran into
an open apartment complex door! Nobody was interested. We didn't lose hope, and
I knew we were going to do it. It was a weird (but wonderful!) different sense
of surety, like Heavenly Father was giving it to me. Finally, just before the
train station was in sight, Sister Barker suddenly bolted across the street to
give a man a flyer for the musical night. I was like what the heck, you could
have gotten hit!! I guess she had angels round about her or something. We ended
up having an awesome conversation about religion and families, and then I
brought up the Book of Mormon. He took it gladly and said he would love to read
it. The guy was actually Italian, so we asked him if he wanted Italian. (I was
a little bummed, because I knew I needed to give out this German one) and then
he goes, "Oh no, that’s fine, my wife is German and my family all reads German,
I’m good!" I about jaw dropped. Sister Decker and I have been praying
specifically to be able to teach a German lady, and also a married couple with
children. I pray for this family, and hope that they will feel the desire to
hear the restored gospel.
So that
was my exchange! Awesome right?! We both just felt so good and that we'd given our
all. I wish I got to feel like that every day. We talked about it and she’s
like yeah, that can’t really happen every day, but it’s good to happen
sometimes! I just kinda nodding but I didn’t completely agree. I'm ready to
work and be tired at the end of the day and the end of my mission, but not
everyone feels that. What do you think, work to exhaustion at the end of the
mission and look back and have said you’ve given it all you've got, or space
things out and don’t do more than you can handle and create a lifetime of that
routine? Idk. I feel like I dedicated this time to Heavenly Father, might as
well give it all I've got. I want to show him that I'd do anything for
Him.
Well,
this email is CRAZY long, so I'm sorry but this will probably be the only big
email I send. Sigh. I know you love long emails, but 2 hours isn’t enough to do
it every week! I'm trying to email Conner (Ingalls) every week and keep him in
the loop. I love him, and he's been on my mind lately.
I love
you a million dedicated, hard-working companion exchanges! Our leaders are so
inspired, and I'm glad to receive further help through them!
Have a
wonderful week! Sister Macey Ingalls
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