Birthday stuff and Getting the Car Fixed

Hey!

How are you?!?! It sounds like you had an absolutely incredible trip. Those historical sites are so neat. :) Hope you took plenty of pictures! I am expecting an awesome slideshow when I get home of everything you did.

My week was INCREDIBLY full. It was a great week with lots of good things happening. I actually only included the fullest days- I was going to include everything, but it got to be too long. I guess that is what my journal is for! :)

Tuesday- My Birthday!!! Honestly, it wasn't that crazy of a day, but overall it was a pretty good one. I had a fun time reading all of your emails. :) Thank you so much for sending those. Sister Nalder took me out to eat for breakfast and it was really neat. She is such a sweet companion, and I am so grateful I got to spend my birthday with her. We had a great lesson with Ann where we were able to show how the Plan of Salvation as taught in the Book of Mormon were able to answer her questions. It was super cool. I LOVE it when we are able to do that. Seriously!! If people will just ask the questions, the Book of Mormon has the answers. But so many people just don't ask the questions.

That evening Sister Stahle surprised me by calling me with Lori Chapman to wish me happy birthday. It was the most incredible surprise EVER. I love them so much!!! I was pretty much speechless the entire time. It was amazing. Afterwards we went out the Dairy Queen with a recent convert. Apparently he's always trying to buy us ice cream cake, but today we didn't really have a way to say no to him... actually I'm never really able to say no to him... which is probably why I've gained so much this transfer... but Hey! We had the most hilariously awkward experience. With the whole language barrier, and then the fact that the ice cream cake didn't come pre-cut, was SUPER hard and they didn't have any plates we could eat it on. Oh! It was so awkward in so many ways, but it was lots of fun. I'll always remember that experience.

Wednesday- I got your package!! Thank you so much. :) I absolutely loved it. Although... I might end up eating the frosting before I actually make the cake. Haha- I LOVE butter pecan. Thank you so much.

We had an absolutely incredible district meeting this week. Seriously, we have the best district meetings ever. Everyone is so Spiritual, and willing to talk, and we have some incredible discussions. I love our district so much. Saturday we have transfer calls, and I am going to miss the people in our district SO much!

During the day we had to drive the car to Huntsville (about 50 miles away) to get the windshield replaced. It was a CRAZY drive up there!!! First of all, it was stunningly beautiful. Second of all, out of the blue it started absolutely pouring. Like POURING. I could not see ANYTHING. I felt like I was under a waterfall off and on for about an hour. The worst part was that I could see anything, I was on the freeway with no place to pull off, and NO ONE was slowing down!!! Seriously!!! Going 70 in a waterfall is NOT okay!! You can't see! Fortunately with a lot of prayer, we were able to get through the storm despite the lack of vision and crazy drivers.

Once we got there, we had quite a bit of confusion with the insurance. I let my companion take care of everything and I went into the waiting room. There was a lady there, and we started talking about families. It turned into an incredibly spiritual experience, as we talked about her family. I told her about the Proclamation to the World and we talked about how keeping Christ in the center of our families is so important. It was amazing- spiritual moments at the auto place. :) Life as a missionary!

That evening we had a ward pioneer day activity/party. It was SO much Fun!! It was amazing. I don't think I've ever had quite as much fun as I had at that activity. First we played jeopardy, and I'm pretty sure if I didn't win, I came pretty close to winning. After that we had the pie eating contest. I totally was NOT going to enter, especially when they brought them out and they were cream pies... but then Elder Arrington volunteered, and I couldn't let the Elders beat us out, and they needed another "adult" (I seriously don't know what definition of adult includes a missionary and a pie eating contest), so.... I kinda found myself sitting in a chair with a slice of pie in front of my face. Next thing I know, they are telling me that I can't use my hands, someone is handing me a hair tie and my face meets the gooiest plate I have ever met in my life. It was crazy!!! :D And a lot of fun. I was doing pretty well, until someone noticed and started cheering for me. Then I kinda froze. But then I looked over at Elder Arrington's plate, and I just had to beat him. Competitive much? Haha. I didn't end up winning, but now I can say I've been in a pie eating contest, and I held my own fairly well. It was SO much fun! They ended the evening with a very nice music video about the pioneers. The Spirit was super strong, and we had a great time.

Sunday- We had an absolutely incredible meeting. One of our recent converts gave his first talk. He bore such a simple, sweet testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and how it changes lives. One of the brothers translated for him. He is so sweet, and so humble. His testimony was just incredibly powerful.

Afterwards we went over to the a member families for dinner. They invited our recent convert over and we went so we could serve as translators. Haha- turns out he surprised us just a bit and he knows WAY more English than we thought. And they know quite a bit of Spanish. Between the two Sister Nalder didn't have to translate much, and we ended up spending more time with the mom.  Her son left for his mission a little over a month ago, and he just got to Honduras. I absolutely loved talking to her. She loves her son so much, and is so proud of him. I really wish I could send him a letter to tell him just how proud she is of him. :) It makes us feel really good being around her because we can almost see what it must be like for our families. I also love being around her because unlike most of the people I meet, she has spent quite a bit of time reading, and we can talk literature. Oh! I miss being able to talk deep with someone so much! Fortunately the Lord has given me a couple of ward members, and I am so grateful for that.

Also we had an incredible lesson with another investigator. She has a very simplistic understanding of life, so we have to use a variety of teaching methods and ask questions almost constantly, but it is a lot of fun. :D I kinda like coming up with all of these random analogies to help her learn.

Overall this week has been a pretty good week. I am so grateful for it.

I love you all! I hope you have a great week! Good luck getting back into the swing of things.

Love always,

Sister Pratt

~Steadfast in Christ

Interviews

Hey!

Thank you so much for your letters. I'm pretty excited to read them. I've been wanting to hear about the spiritual experiences you've been having lately, and now I get my chance.

This week was pretty good. I got to go on exchanges, and we had interviews with President. Sister McDougal is my STL, so I got to go with her. It was absolutely incredible. :) I loved just talking to her about everything. We fell right back into our old companionship- it was awesome. Well... except I didn't know anything about the area. It really was a tender mercy. I learned some things on that exchange that will certainly help me in the future. I am so grateful for the Lord helping me like that.

Apparently there were quite a few miracles that also happened in Cullman while I was gone. I'm grateful for that. The Lord really works miracles.

The interviews were great. As always, the hardest part of interviews are the two weeks before hand, and the week afterwards. Every time we have interviews come up, I spend the two weeks beforehand mentally thinking over EVERYTHING he could POSSIBLY ask me. It drives me crazy!!! But I learn a lot about myself, my area and my companion as I do it. Of course, he NEVER asks me ANY of the questions I've mentally answered, but that means that I get to spend the next week turning over exactly what he said, how I can improve and what I need to do. Haha- I'm willing to bet no other missionary spends this much energy over interviews... but I'm also thoroughly convinced that I think, or at least analyze about 3x as much as the average person.

Also that day we had a great district meeting. Four of us had birthdays in the month, so we celebrated with better than anything cake, and my companion bought me a shirt that says "Hogwarts Alumni." It was so sweet, and made my day. The cake itself was also pretty good.

The Lord blessed us with a surprise on Sunday. One of the eternigators brought a friend to church, and we met with her after church. She told us that she felt at home, and wants to look into joining the church. We set a baptismal date and she is REALLY excited to read the Book of Mormon. Once again, the Lord blessed us for doing something else completely unrelated. It seems to be one of the themes of my mission, but I guess it helps me recognize that it really is the Lord who does everything.

Overall its been a pretty good week. I'm glad to have lived it. I hope you all have a great week as well.

Love always,

Sister Pratt

~Steadfast in Christ

Tender Mercies

Hey!

How are you!??! I can't wait to hear all about Nauvoo. It sounds like Dad's worked hard to make a great vacation. Haha- just don't come back needing more rest than when you went out. ;)

I can't WAIT to see what Sabrina's done to the house. :) She's got a great eye for painting, and I love grey walls. I'm pretty sure I won't even recognize the house when I get home. :) Just promise me you won't move out of Woodland Hills. I miss that place so much. I love it to pieces.

Also, younger kids- Listen to Mom!! Seriously, she knows what she is talking about. The older I get, the more I appreciate people that know how to work hard. Those that have something to do every day and work hard at doing it have a million blessings that the lazy will never know. Working hard is one of the greatest blessings Mom or Dad could give you. :) And you have great parents.

So, this week's letter is going to be rather long. Sorry. :) This week has been a remarkable week in some rather unexpected ways.

In Elder Bednar's talk "The Tender Mercies of the Lord," he bears witness of a time when the Lord sent him a tender mercy. He said of this experience, "A loving Savior was sending me a most personal and timely message of comfort and reassurance through a hymn selected weeks previously. Some may count this experience as simply a nice coincidence, but I testify that the tender mercies of the Lord are real and that they do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence."

This past week has been a remarkable example of the Lord’s tender mercies. It hasn’t been the easiest week of my mission- far from it, but the Lord has certainly been evident throughout this week. I can testify with Elder Bednar that, “the Lord’s tender mercies do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence. Faithfulness, obedience, and humility invite tender mercies into our lives, and it is often the Lord’s timing that enables us to recognize and treasure these important blessings.”  This week there have been several tender mercies from the Lord that have become evident at the exact point in my life when I needed them. Below I recorded the sacred tender mercies of this past week.  

1.       He filled me with peace- I don’t know why, but I have had a rather difficult time adjusting to Cullman. I miss Talladega so much, and Cullman has been downright awful to me. The people are hard, we don’t have any good investigators, I haven’t really made friends with any of the ward members, it is a ward- so I don’t really know very many of the ward members, we keep finding Spanish investigators, we’ve been doing nothing but biking, I hate contacting people, but that’s all we do, the heat is intense, and my legs are now a mix of red, yellow and blue from the mosquito bites (THEY KILL). It’s hard not to be at least a little bit miserable. And my companion doesn’t quite understand why I’m having a hard time.

Well, as I was praying, I started pouring out my heart, and I was filled with an incredible feeling of peace. It wasn’t that everything was fixed, or that everything was going to be alright. I just had peace and confidence. And that’s all I needed was the peace.

2.       He sent an Apostle- Okay, not really, but kinda. I do have to say, the Apostles have a knack for turning up randomly in the midst of some of my most difficult battles. I guess that is why they are apostles. Two of the hardest things on my mission have been feeling like I am completely alone, and feeling like no one understands or connects with me. It’s a pretty unsurprising feeling- every 6 weeks we go live with another stranger who is suddenly supposed to become your best friend, you don’t know a single person in the area, and you only get to talk to people you DO know by email once a week. And even then you’ve changed so much and are experiencing so much, it doesn’t feel quite like anyone knows you anymore. Its kinda a lonely job we have here.

Well, this week as I was feeling kinda lonely, and feeling like no one understood me. Its particularly difficult when you have these great studies and you can’t talk to ANYONE about them. Well, we were doing Mormon.org time, and I noticed a short snippet by Elder Christofferson about faith. I watched it, and then I watched the longer interview that it came from. As I watched, I felt an incredible connection with him- like someone understood the things I had been studying!! I mean, of course he understood it- He’s an Apostle, he probably understood it at 3 years old. But it was neat to have a confirmation about what I’d been studying and feel like someone understood it too.

3.       He gave me more knowledge-

Seriously- Studies exploded this week. I was on cloud nine for like a week. It was incredible!!

4.       He sent me another area-

Whoo... Cullman has been worked and worked and over worked. Its just a fact of life. Sometimes missionaries work areas to the ground. Well, twice this week we had the opportunity to get out of Cullman and into small towns. It was an absolute breath of relief. At one city, we talked to a woman who loved pigs for an hour. :) She was so sweet! Couldn't get a word in edgewise, but honestly really sweet. The next city, EVERYONE we talked to was so sweet. They invited us to sit down on their porch, talk a while, have a drink of water and they asked about what we were doing. It was AMAZING!!! Seriously!!! I haven't been treated even sort of kindly since I got to Cullman, and these people were SO sweet. Kindness truly is sweet balm to the soul. It was amazing 

5.       He filled me with peace, even when I didn’t really deserve it- Long story short, I had a rather difficult day. It was just one of those days that was just plain hard. When it came time to say my prayers, I didn’t really feel like praying. I was frustrated, and I just didn’t want to pray. Well, I prayed nonetheless, and as I opened my mouth, I was filled with the most beautiful feeling of peace. I knew that the Lord was with me- even though it was tough, and even though I wasn’t as deserving as I should have been, the Lord was with me, and He still cared about me. It was a touching reminder.

6.       He provided a way for me to increase in understanding- During Gospel Principles on Sunday we were talking about the Priesthood, and I started thinking about prophets. I started thinking about characteristics that identify a prophet. As I left class, a member of our ward came to me and said, "Hey! Here are the things I promised you last week." He handed me a talk by Hugh B. Brown called, "Profiles of a Prophet" both on CD and a paper copy. The talk itself was absolutely incredible, the fact that this member had remembered was amazing, and I got a new talk. J Only those who know me REALLY well would understand just how much of a tender mercy that was- and God knows me pretty well.

7.       He answered my prayers-Last night I said my prayers (shocker… ;) ), and I prayed to gain a further testimony that the Lord truly wants us to succeed. Not that I wanted a bunch of blessings or anything, I just wanted to increase my trust in the Lord. This morning when I went to do my scripture study, I got so excited about continuing my study about the Atonement (something I’ve been studying for the last 2 months) that I completely forgot about last night’s prayer. I went to read in the Book of Mormon, and I just kept getting frustrated, so I switched to the Atonement, and I was still getting frustrated, so I started just reading the Ensign. I was rather put out at this point- my beautiful morning had been ruined by scripture study- how ironic is that?!?!?! But as I started reading the Ensign, thought started coming to my mind. I was directed to a bit in the Doctrine and Covenants as I read the Ensign articles, and I suddenly remembered my prayer from the night before. The Lord answered my prayer. I had to go through some frustrations that didn’t make sense, but eventually, the Lord answered my prayer and helped me understand his love for us just a little bit better.

8.       I didn’t have to give a talk- Enough said. Bishop asked me to fill in incase a youth speaker didn’t show up. During the week I worked on it, but I honestly wasn’t getting any revelation and as I was walking up to the chapel I found myself praying that I wouldn’t have to give it. I didn’t. Whoot! Relief!

9.       He reminded me not to stuff a turkey through its beak- I was praying, and I started talking about an area where my faith was struggling, then the line from Elder Holland’s talk, “Lord I Believe,”  popped into my head about how starting with our doubts is like stuffing a turkey through the beak. So, I rewound my prayer, and started talking about the things that I did know. As I did that, I felt tremendous power surround me. My question wasn’t answered right then, but my faith was strengthened so it supported me through my questions. God not only wants us to have faith, but he also shows us how to get the faith we need. Don’t stuff a turkey through the beak!

10. He gave us progressing investigators- On Sunday we had two people that didn't seem to have much potential actually so quite a bit of interest. It was amazing. I was so grateful for it. I'll have to tell you more about it next week because time is running short on me. But t his week has been very full with the small reminders that God knows and cares about me. As much as we strive to be steadfast in Christ, He is always steadfast in us.

May you all have a blessed week!

I love you tons!

Love always,

Sister Pratt

~Steadfast in Christ

4th of July in Cullman

Hey!

How has this week been? Sounds like you all were able to have fun of the 4th of July. :) I'm jealous of all those that got to go to the Stadium of Fire. It sounds like it was a complete blast. 

I honestly have no idea what to say in regards to Bishop DeHart. It sounds like he had a beautiful funeral. I'm so grateful for that. I am so grateful for all he did for us as youth, and I am SO incredibly grateful that he was my bishop growing up. Haha- I'll never forget when we all went backpacking and he had us all gut the fish. It was Truly a unique girl's camp experience. It was incredible. Easily the best one I had. Between BYC, girls camp, interviews, I learned a lot from him. I'm grateful he had a spirit filled funeral. That would only be fitting. 

Well, this week has been a pretty incredible week. We had a wonderful 4th of July. We made a bunch of cards with Book of Mormon scriptures talking about how America was a blessed land (1 Nephi 2:20, Ether 2:12) or a Bible verse about how Christ makes us free (Galatians 5:1), or a verse of a patriotic hymn. We handed them out to people, and talked to SO MANY people. Oh boy! I was exhausted at the end of the day. We made 32 invites (typically our goal is 10 a day), and talked to EVERYONE about the Book of Mormon. It was crazy. We weren't able to make as many new investigators as I would have liked, but it was neat to spend all day testifying of Christ. 

One of the neat opportunities that I've had on my mission has been to study the words of the living prophets. Dad already knows a bit about it, I've been asking him for talks to listen to. Every morning as I get ready I play a talk on my DVD player. It is a great way to strengthen me from the start. I've also noticed that it allows me to focus my thoughts rather than letting them ramble, which sometimes leads to negative or self-defeating thoughts. As I've done this, it has really strengthened me. One of the talks in particular, I would like to invite you all to listen to is President Utchdorf's talk "You Matter to Him" https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2011/10/you-matter-to-him?lang=eng. It has really helped me out, especially when I've been struggling with issues relating to self-image. Maybe listen to it once or twice, or when you notice self-defeating thoughts creeping into your head. I know the words of the living prophets are there to help us and give us aide in times of need. And I hope you are able to feel the truthfulness of his message.

Sorry, I don't have much time to write about what has happened this week. Honestly, I want so badly to communicate so many things about what I am learning and how I've drawn so much closer to the Savior these past few months. The miracles are on the margin, as one missionary used to say. But honestly, the greatest miracles are the ones happening within me. I wish I could tell all of Alabama, but right now they don't seem interested in listening. So I tell you. Until they are ready to listen, or I'm ready for them to listen. 

Anyways, I love you all! I'll close out with a couple of pictures. One is us trying on goofy sunglasses, another one is of us at the fire works, another one is the fireworks, and one is us with Mario (a recent convert) feeding the ducks (la patos). 

Hope you have a great week,

Love always,

Sister Pratt

~Steadfast in Christ