week 10

Hello all!

This week we had MLT (Mission Leadership Training), in which several zones get together for a good chunk of a day and learn from President, Sister Wadsworth, the Assistants, and our zone leaders. We met at the Helena Stake Center and it was awesome to see my old MTC friends and missionaries that I came out with again! A joyous reunion. :) It makes me excited for real mission reunions!

One of the things that President Wadsworth spoke on was keeping the Sabbath Day holy. I didn't realize how much people break the Sabbath until I became a missionary. Satan tempts us to not keep the Sabbath holy by getting us to watch football, go hunting (which is SUPER popular here), go to the store, travel, go to the lake (like how we always mention back in AZ. Haha), etc and it's the fact that us humans often justify these things that gets us. We need to keep ALL of the commandments to the best of our ability. Keeping the Sabbath day holy doesn't mean just keeping 3 hours of it holy by going to church, but the entire day. Dedicate it to the Lord because it is His day. He even has given us help as to what to do on the Sabbath. Spend wholesome time with family, do service, watch church and Christ related movies, index, do family history, magnify your callings, read your scriptures/ other materials in the gospel library (there's tons), write it your journal (because you all know you're slacking. Haha), and anything that focuses you on Christ. He had prepared a way for us to keep the Sabbath day holy. So we have no reason not to. 

The next day, our whole zone met at our stake presidents house in Bozeman for lunch and he even brought an investigator from Livingston. So sister meek and I got to know her and taught her some stuff while we were there but she didn't end up being interested though. President also shared a message with us too. He said we are taught to ask Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How all throughout our lives. Within the gospel, we are given many of those answers but what we really need to ask ourselves is, "Who do I was to become? And what for?" Soak that in. 

This week, we had several investigators come to church, which was nice! We had a lot of drop-in lessons too. We learned that when we meet people, we should teach them right then and there because lots of them won't accept return appointments. That's something we learned from our zone leaders and it works a lot better!

Hunting season and the fact that it gets darker earlier has really put a damper on the work. Hunting season is huge for everyone up here. They stock up on meat for the winter. Bow season ended and rifle season started, so people are gone every weekend and some people are gone for weeks at a time! So they sometimes say "contact me in December and we'll see. I still may be hunting even past that."....but that would be next transfer! It's crazy and slows down people's progression a lot because we can't meet with them. But we still try our best to catch them! 

Love,

Sister Ney :)

me and some of the sisters at MLT I came out with! (And a random elder)

( not for weak stomachs.)This is the evidence that hunting season has begun... Carcass hanging! 

week 9

Hello everyone!

Thank you for the birthday wishes!!!! They really made my day. :) It feels so weird to not be a teenager at all anymore. Plain ole' 20. I'm officially an adult...weird. The members that we live with made me apple pie for my birthday and sister meek made me a huge breakfast of homemade waffles and butter syrup. Sooooo good! The elders in my district called me and sang happy birthday too. It was so nice!

This week was good! We put 3 people on date. This transfer, Sister Meek and I are gonna work long and hard against Satan because he always ruins everything! Once we put someone on date, he makes them sick, gives them a busier schedule, and puts every obstacle in their way to keep them from getting baptized. It's ridiculous. So we are going to try to combat him harder than ever before to make sure these investigators don't lose that perspective!! Onward Christian soldiers!!!

Some members brought us to charity dinner at a Methodist church one evening and it was interested because Sister Meek and I felt held back because we can't proselyte in or near other churches.  The food was good though!

We were asked to speak in the primary yesterday and the kids were so cute! They were super blunt though. They asked us questions like, "What did you think when you called to Montana?" (My response- "I thought it would be cold." And I'm right.) "what did you think when you were called to be companions?" Etc. They had no mercy. Haha.

We also did some service this week. Our president has asked us to do 10 hours of service a week. So whenever we see someone who could use some help, we jump out of the truck and head over to them. We helped paint a house, clean a family's house, and so on. No one will help us rake their leaves though! That's the one thing I'm dying to do because I've never done it before but it's near impossible to get the chance to do it. So I plan on putting some rakes in the back of the truck one day and just straight up bring them to someone's yard and start doing it. No joke. It's on my mission bucket list now. 

Yesterday, we spoke in sacrament in Livingston about trials. There was a returned missionary from South Africa who spoke too. He was so funny and you could tell he is adored by the ward.

I spoke on why we have trials and I studied a few reasons:

-To turn our hearts to God, help us remember Him, and to help us be like Him

      - In this part, I talked about the Refiners Fire and how we are the metal that is being shaped into someone beautiful and we don't know it at the time. All we feel is the pressure and banging but the Refiner or blacksmith is very skilled and it helping us achieve our full potential. Like how Job, in the Old Testament, said, "But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10). Even though EVERYTHING was taken from him, he kept the eternal perspective and trusted the Lord. (Look up the Refiners Fire Mormon Message. It is SO good.)

-To prepare us for future trials and for people who are going to have/ are having similar trials as us

-So that we can receive blessings 

I have actually come to love speaking in sacrament because I learn so much as I prepare my talk. And I bear a special mantle as a missionary where people look at me differently and know that I am speaking as a representative of Christ. 

Remember, even Jesus Christ, the only perfect person to live upon the earth, had trials and wanted the cup removed from Him. But He kept the eternal perspective and knew it was Gods will that would be done.

Love,

Sister Ney

P.s. My companion pulled a joke on me and made my iPad auto correct to random stuff. So when I type in 

"Love"- it turns into "you seem kind"

"Ok"---"la la boom de a "

"Hey"---"what up homie"

and while I was writing this email, I got frustrated and told her that my auto correct was being dumb and showed her what it was doing and she busted up laughing. And I still can't figure out how to fix it. 😑

Birthday pie

stayin warm while biking

week 8

Hello, people of home! 
 
Transfer news: I'm STAYING here in Livingston, Big Timber, and 
Gardiner! (so send whatever you want now in the mail😊 ) We actually 
get to see the fruit of our labors! That is, if we keep getting people 
to progress. It's been really hard having people keep commitments and 
even appointments! In a single day, most or all of the appointments 
have fallen through. This is a common occurrence and it's really 
frustrating. We have a message that will change your life!!!! 
We went to Gardiner this week and went finding. We had to go into 
Yellowstone to find this one lady but she wasn't home... We didn't 
have much luck finding there but I love that town. It's so neat. There 
are just deer and elk hanging out in the middle of town and in 
people's yards. You can get super close to them and they won't flinch. 
We also stayed in Big Timber overnight one night this week. We are 
working closely with out branch mission leader there and he's so 
willing to help out. 
This is random but here's an answer to my prayers: I have been wanting 
a member to serve us breakfast for dinner so bad. Low and behold, a 
family fed us breakfast for dinner this week! 👍 YES! Hahaha...It's 
the little things. Another guy who we didn't even know gave us $20 for 
dinner and that fed us like kings. God always provides :) 
The wind here in Livingston has gotten SO bad and people say it's even 
worse in the winter. At church, it seriously sounded like there was a 
tornado outside. It is SO loud. It shakes the car constantly too and I 
always look like Cousin It with my hair. Hahah. I keep telling sister 
meek that I'm just gonna shave it off. 
Spiritual thought: In sacrament, a brother in our ward said, "If you 
turn your life over to the Lord, He can make more out of you than you 
can make out of yourself." How TRUE! As a missionary, we did, quite 
literally, turn our lives over to the Lord but there are still things 
from the natural-man side of me that I keep hold of. I'm trying to let 
that go as well so that the Lord can change me as much as He possibly 
can. My thoughts, my words, my actions, my knowledge, and my cares. 
Everything. Don't get me wrong. It is a process in every sense of the 
word but I know that as we do so, the Lord will help us reach our 
divine potential and lift us up to places we never could have imagined 
before. 
 
Sister Ney 

Random elk in town

 North entrance to Yellowstone

 my district

week 7

Hello all!

This week. What even happened this week? It's hard to even remember what happened in a single day, let alone a whole week. It's a blur. 

Um. General conference!!! First of all, it snowed yesterday morning so that was terrifying. At least wait until my birthday next week and then it can snow! Speaking of which (haha. Side note....), my birthday is transfer day. So Don't send me anything by mail until I know whether I'm I'm staying or not (if anyone even plans on sending me anything. Haha) back to General conference: we watched it in member families homes. it was great! Not only did we get to hear the word of God but we also had a reason to sit down for a few hours!  I liked Devin G. Durrants talk about how we should "ponderize" a scripture a week. I'm going to try to do that too! What better time and place than on a mission? :P

I also liked how Elder Bednar gave a little tribute to the deceased apostles. It was so touching! Such a crazy time.

This week we had another experience where Sister Meek and I felt like we should be in a different town that day. So we had to reschedule all of our lessons in Livingston and we headed to Gardiner. It is such a cool town and it's just north of Yellowstone. It turns out, someone has been praying for help for 2 weeks and we realized by the end of the day-we were prompted to go out to Gardiner for them! We almost didn't even drop by their house because we had an appointment to go to but we felt like we should go. We hopped out of our truck, ran to their house, talked to them and set up a return date, and sprinted back to the truck because we were late....as always. The spirit just tells us to talk to certain people that are out in our path and everyone is so talkative here! Haha. By the way- on the way back, we saw THE largest herds of deer and elk I've ever seen before in my life. I thought it was cattle (because there's so much up here) but no. Deer and elk. We are lucky we haven't hit any yet while driving to and fro. 

We also got to spend some time with a senior missionary couple this week. They inspected our housing and truck. They told us to put some blankets and a supply of food and water in our truck for the winter because people get caught in snow storms and one woman froze to death....sister Meek really believes that we will end up getting stranded because this is the second time someone has told us this and it's a sign that it's going to happen. Well I hope not because we both know nothing about cars and I am hearing from farmers that it will be a mild winter. So I hope farmers are accurate predictors of the weather! Ha. On a lighter note, the senior missionaries took us to lunch and a member that was in the restaurant too paid for our food! How nice! 

Another neat experience was that we were trying to find this less active member twice and we went to the wrong apartment building both times. But we found a man who was wanting to meet with missionaries and HE asked US for a Book of Mormon and to meet with him! That hardly ever happens! So we were meant to get lost both times so that we could find him! Moral of the story: The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

Anyhoo- I would love to hear about everyone's favorite conference talk and why they like it! lauren.ney@myldsmail.net

Love,

Sister Ney ❤️