Week 32 - Get OUT and Serve

Hello Family&Friends. :) 

Sister Boyd, Elders Johnson and Shields

This has been an incredible week. I feel so blessed and very very happy this week. :) I have been so

Cute Sister Watts :)

blessed to have been given an amazing companion. I love Sister Golba-Ingles with everything that I am, she is so special. :) She is a convert to the church and is the only member in her family. Her choice to serve a mission is an incredible act of faith and trust in the Lord. She has a powerful story and a deep conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She just graduated in 2014 and has the perfect greeny fire that I love. I have learned so much from her in the last 5 days and I can't even wait to continue to serve with her. I feel very privileged to be her companion. :)

Michelle

We did a lot of really great things this week, and we had some pretty awesome miracles that I am so excited about. :) We have been trying a lot lately to be more service oriented. There is a whole lot of potential in our area and we know that there are people who live here that need the gospel, but we haven't been able to find them out knocking on doors. So we are trying a different approach. :) We are trying to serve a bunch and are trying to get more involved in the community. We have started helping out at Food Pantries, Paper Pantries, and community events. It has been so much fun, and we feel very blessed to be around so many incredible people. We have met some of the most selfless, Christlike, and giving people these past few weeks. We have also been super blessed to have many many moments where we get to talk about who we are as missionaries, what our purpose is and in he process we get to testify about the Gospel. We have had some very special conversations with some special people. :) Heavenly Father has totally been blessings us in every way as we have been diligently trying to be OUT.  

Last week when we were at the Community Yard Sale we met so many people who were genuinely interested and excited about who we were and what we had to say. We met this very sweet man who was Muslim. He sat down next to me and we talked for a solid hour and a half. He was so intrigued by the message that we were sharing and we has just soaking in everything we had to say, it was so cool. :) He agreed with a lot of the truths that we testified of. It was pretty powerful to see the spirit testifying to him of truth. We sent him home with a Conference edition of the Ensign, a Book of Mormon, a picture of the Temple, and a Restoration Pamphlet. (It was kind of convenient to have every thing we owned sitting on a table in front of us) :)  Person after person was just so excited to take these special documents and videos. We have found a lot of this same excitement in almost every activity we have helped with. It has been so much fun. :) If you have any fun and creative ideas or things that we could do out here just let us know. :) 

We have been really trying to get all of our investigators rooted in the Book of Mormon. It has been amazing to see that as we have brought them back to the basic and simple doctrines of the Gospel, they have been progressing so much more than they have in the past. We are working really hard and are seeing blessings all along the way. 

The scarecrow :)

We had a pretty hilarious experience this week. :) We were outside the church sitting on the grass weekly planning when we got a pretty frantic phone call from Elder Johnson (our Zone Leader) They were inside the church and said "Can you sisters come inside please? There is a lady that needs help and I feel like Sister Watts is the perfect one to handle the situation." Haha. :) So we ran inside and sitting on the couch was the cutest, sweetest and most adorable old lady. She was bundled from head to toe in her winter clothing, has no teeth, and looked like she had almost everything she owned in her little walker. Her name was R**** and she basically just needed to be loved. :) She lives about a half a mile away from the church and had walked to the church in hopes of finding someone that could help her. She told us that she really wanted to enter a scarecrow contest but because of he disabilities she wasn't able to do it on

The finished Scarecrow

her own. :) We told her that we would absolutely love to help her with anything she needed. So Saturday morning we went over to her home and made her scarecrow for her and then went and set it up at the contest for her. :) Now keep in mind. Saturday was the coldest day in October in the history of Chicago. The entire time we were helping her we were completely and totally frozen. But it was beyond hilarious. :)

She ended up coming to parts of general conference and she loved it. Speaking of which, we totally loved General Conference. :) We just had a blast of a weekend. All of the missionaries in the area came to the chapel to watch conference. It was perfect and just so much fun. :) I feel like here were some common threads in this conference that were just powerful and so awesome. That absolute truth completely exists. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is true always forever and no matter what. Despite every test, challenges, and accusation the truth of the Gospel is real. The coolest thing about that is that you don't have to take my word, or your leaders word, or even the apostles and prophets word for it. You can ask GOD if it is true and he WILL answer you. No matter what. He is our Heavenly Father and he loves us more than we can ever comprehend, so he will absolutely answer your prayers. After you have gained that knowledge we can be a light and an example to everyone around us. We have the divine ability to make a difference. As we stand up boldly for the truth and the testimony that we have already gained we can totally and completely change the lives and hearts of those around us. The gospel is the coolest. I loved every minute of conference. :) 

We have a fun week coming up! I can't wait. :) We are getting a special preview of the new documentary "Meet the Mormons" that is coming out on October 10th. It is basically a documentary of 6 members of the church. It follows their lives and shows a little bit about what it's like to be mormon. I can't even wait for it. It looks SO good and it sounds like it is going to be incredible. We will be watching it before District Meeting on Wednesday. :) We can't see it in the theaters, but I absolutely encourage you all to go and see it. Date night? Family Home Evening? Anything. Go. :) Take your families and friends and love it. :) Then. After we watch the movie, and go to district meeting we will go and drop our car off at the auto body shop because we have to get something's fixed on it. We are dropping it off on Wednesday and we won't get it back until Monday, which means...BIKES. :) We get to go on bikes this week. Holy, I am so excited! My whole mission I have been in a car, so I can't even wait to be on a bike for a week. It's kind of funny. We have been praying like crazy to find people who are ready to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so Heavenly Father answers that prayer by taking away our car so that we can meet people. :) We got the bikes yesterday from some members in the Spanish branch and they are absolutely adorable. This is going to be such a tender mercy and an adventure. Every single time we talk about it we just laugh. We are too excited. :) We have lots of appointments, so we are going to be busy busy busy. It's going to be fun. We have a Blood Drive coming up and some cool service opportunities I am way excited about. :) 

I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love being a missionary.  I love my life. :) 

AND I LOVE YOU. 

-Sister Watts 

Huge Hat