General Conference

General Conference was super exciting.  A few years ago I was living in Tucson when the Gilbert, Arizona and Phoenix, Arizona temples were announced.  

Gilbert Arizona

Phoenix Arizona

I remember that everyone in our ward felt left out and a little bit annoyed at those Phoenix Valley Mormons for getting three temples in one metropolis.  One of our leaders pointed out that temples are built in areas where members attend the temple regularly.  What's neat is that it seems that in the last three years or so, members of the Church in Tucson *have* attended the temple regularly, and they have shown their willingness to consecrate their time, talents, and material means to Heavenly Father's work and glory.  As a Tucson convert, it means a lot to me that they will have their own House of God in which to worship.

It'll be interesting to see how President Monson's announcement changes the mission.  I know that watching conference in October 2011 gave me the push to submit my paperwork, and I was in the MTC by January.  This means that we could easily have some 19 year-old sisters here in the mission in February!  Being paired with some of these sisters will give me an extra chance to grow, since I know that I tend to get along a little bit easier with sisters closer to my own age.  People grow and mature a lot between the ages of 19 and 21.  I grew and matured a lot even after that.  (And yes, I recognize that I still have even more growing and maturing to do...)  But one of the things that I learned from my own endowment was just how good it can feel when people who are more experienced than you help you to grow and achieve your potential as a child of God.

Book of Mormon miracle

We saw a sweet miracle this last week from using the Book of Mormon in our ministry. This miracle helped one of our investigators, Emilia (name changed), get closer to God. 

Emilia is a 40 year-old Ecuadorian widow who lives with her gringo boyfriend Terrry (name changed). In our first lesson, we soft-invited her to be baptized and she volunteered to us that she couldn't because she was "living in sin." We have barely taught her the full Restoration, but we *did* give her a Book of Mormon and promise her that she would grow closer to Jesus Christ by reading it.

This last week, we weren't able to see her in person at all. Be we asked her, via text message, what she had learned and felt as she read. 

Her answer? "About the greatness of God, that when you pray, the Spirit of God gives you what you need. That God reveals Himself when you keep His commandments." 

On Saturday, she sent us a text message that shows that she is applying what she is learning: "It's important that I stop living with Tommy. I've lived with him for a year and I've realized that God doesn't want this kind of life for me. I know I put myself in this - it wasn't God - and that's why I want to leave this situation." Mind you, we hadn't met with her at all week! But she was reading the Book of Mormon (about a chapter every day), which invited the Spirit, and the Spirit can teach us all things. 

This story is one of the reasons why I don't nag people about commandments, but instead invite them to read the Book of Mormon and pray to Heavenly Father every day! It works!

Shout out to my district leader

My district leader did something pretty remarkable this past Tuesday at district meeting.  He had picked up on the fact that our district didn't exactly feel like the most unified district in the mission.  And then he did something about it.  He treated us like agents, and he showed faith in the converting power of the word of God.  

He did this by printing off eight copies of Elder Eyring's October 2008 General Conference talk. As we entered the chapel for district meeting, he gave each of us a copy and then gave us about ten minutes to read the talk silently as individuals.  Then the meeting started as usual, with a hymn, an opening prayer, and a spiritual thought, which he gave.  He shared a scripture from 4 Nephi that reminded us of the doctrine of unity.  During mission vision accountability, he said that he wanted to work on being a better representative of Jesus Christ by making sure that all of his words were uplifting and that he was never saying anything bad about another missionary.  He owned up to his own faults!  Doing so encouraged us to be honest with ourselves as well.  Finally, during the instruction time, he opened up the discussion to all of us by asking us to share what we learned, what we felt, and what we were going to do after reading the talk.  He allowed us to be taught by the Spirit.

I am so grateful that my district leader knew how to incorporate the doctrine of Christ into this aspect of his ministry.  He didn't guilt trip or yell at us to get us to change.  Rather, he trusted that if we really understood the doctrine of unity, we would be willing to stop doing things that were fomenting disunity, and start doing things that would build unity.

General Conference is just around the corner!

Just look at that word chart!  Listening to General Conference is a great way to know what we believe!

Recovering from Hurricane Isaac

Our mission president pulled all missionaries out of New Orleans on Sunday 26 August.  We drove up with the Chalmette sisters to the Baton Rouge mission home, where we hunkered down with 20 elders (who all slept upstairs in bunk beds), a senior couple (who got to stay in the General Authority room), and President and Sister Wall.  At first, it seemed like a bit of a HurriCation; Monday was our preparation day, and the weather was still pretty nice, so we played basketball with forty missionaries in the gym of the Baton Rouge Stake Center.  On Tuesday, the sixty or so missionaries from the New Orleans, Thibideaux, and Baton Rouge zones all met up in the stake center for a six-hour ad hoc conference.  We went to 90-minute seminars on how to study, how to plan, how to seek and understand the Holy Ghost, and how to better teach with pamphlets.  Actually, we only got to go to three out of four, because Isaac moved a little bit faster out of New Orleans (toward Baton Rouge) than we expected.  

Wednesday we spent in the mission home, and then on Thursday and Friday we went out to the neighborhoods around Baton Rouge and helped out there.  On Saturday, we went to La Place to start cleaning up there.  Our apartment in Metairie still didn't have power, so we spent the night at the Chalmette Sisters' apartment.  We went to an hour of church on Sunday and then headed back to La Place.  Some time Sunday afternoon, the power was turned back on in our Metairie apartment, so we got to sleep in Metairie for the first time in over a week.

We gave up our preparation day to work in La Place.  Levees have been built all around New Orleans to keep Lake Pontchartrain from overflowing.  But La Place had never been in the flood zone before, so La Place didn't have a levee.  All that water had to go somewhere.  So Lake Pontchartrain flooded 2000 houses in La Place with 1-3 feet of water.  It's still pretty warm down here, and with no air conditioning, the mold just took root and multiplied.  We have been removing furniture, other belongings, carpet, wood flooring, sheet rock, doors, cabinets, and appliances out of houses and piling them up at the curb.  The piles are often taller than I am.  

Here's an update from the Newsroom: http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/mormon-helping-hands-clean-up-from-hurricane-isaac

You can see my current (and some former) zone leaders and some of the missionaries that I've worked with in the video.  I look pretty frazzled and frumpy about 22 seconds into the clip.  I'm standing behind President Wall as he gets interviewed.  You can also see Sister Itohara (to the right of me) and Sister Hartshorn (to the right of Sister Itohara).  At about 0:53 you can see how disgusting the carpet is when it's rolled up and moldy.  Elder Zach Dustin is the one who testifies at the end.  He was my zone leader when I first got transferred to Chalmette, and he's been my zone leader for the last twelve weeks.  He's one of the missionaries that's going to be featured in Bob Woodruff's news special. 

I thought West Bank was in Gaza...

This last week, we had our quarterly Zone Conference.  Right before it started, President Wall talked to me in the hallway and he asked my opinion for which of several scenarios make the most sense.  Here's the deal: 

• I speak nearly fluent Spanish and have been training Sister Kylie Marks (greenie) here in Metairie (Area A).
• Sister Spencer has been speaking Spanish for three months and is training Sister Walker (greenie) in Baton Rouge (Area B).  
• On September 12, Sister Marks and Sister Walker will be companions and will finish training each other.  I will get a new greenie.  And so will Sister Spencer.  There will be a total of three areas in which Spanish-speaking hermanas will work.  

That means that a third area (Area C) will be opened up for Spanish sisters.  And that means that two sisters are going to be "double-transferred" into the new area (which happens to be West Bank, in New Orleans).  President Wall has a few different ways to do it.  He could:

1. Double-transfer Sister Marks and Sister Walker into West Bank.  But they've only been speaking Spanish since June 2012, and they've only been missionaries in Louisiana since August 2012.
2. Double-transfer Sister Spencer and her new greenie.  But Sister Spencer has only been speaking Spanish since June 2012 or so, and she's never been double-transferred into a new area.  Moreover, she has only ever served in Baton Rouge.
3. Double-transfer my new greenie and me.  I've been speaking Spanish since 1999.  I've served in the New Orleans vicinity since March 2012.  I've been double-transferred once before, and so I kind of know what to do.    

I agreed with him that Option 3 made the most sense.  And so in three weeks, I may be leaving Metairie for West Bank!

Until then, here is my mailing address:

Hermana Ryan Palmer

2300 Edenborn Ave #2-136

Metairie, LA 70001

Grace

Last Monday, I felt so lost. Today feels very different. I can't say that I really understand what it was that we did differently, other than that I have started to rely a bit more on Sister Marks to help with making and executing plans. Last week was a week of tender mercies and miracles. Everything just came together so well, and I know that it came together because Heavenly Father wanted it to. 

We wanted to make sure that Terry knew that we loved HIM, not his numbers, so on Wednesday we brought Claudia to his apartment for a lesson that was preceded by our cleaning up his apartment a little bit and just talking with him. Then we used Claudia to help him realize what a blessing the gift of the Holy Ghost would be in his life. We were also able to learn that the real reason why he did not come to church on Sunday 5 August.

 At the end of the lesson, Claudia committed Terry to come to church on Sunday. She was more than a little manipulative ("So, Terry, are you going to come to church on Sunday and be confirmed, or are you going to break our hearts?"), but her style of manipulation is utterly without guile. Terry laughed and said that he would be there. We brought Claudia to his apartment again on Friday afternoon and read 3 Nephi 17:5-9 with him, which was the perfect length of a story. We used the Daughter of Jairus picture from the Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet to segue into some inspired questions that helped Terry relate the story to his own life. It was great. There was a perfect balance of member testimony, Book of Mormon testimony, and picture testimony, all adapted to Terry's individual needs.

Mahala is golden!!

I think that I have finally met my first "golden" investigator.

She lives directly above a twelve year-old boy that the Spanish elders are teaching.  She saw his copy of El Libro de Mormon and asked him if he could give her one.  

He, in turn, told the elders that he had a friend named Mahala who wanted an English Book of Mormon.  

The elders assumed that Mahala was a middle school classmate, but we missionaries don't exactly turn down opportunities to give copies of the Book of Mormon to eager readers.  And so they gave him a Book of Mormon.  Young Junior immediately ran upstairs to give the book to Mahala, and the elders found out that she's twenty years old, not twelve.  Since she speaks English and lives in our English area (Metairie), the elders gave her to us!

In our first lesson, she told us that her brother has recently started going to church.  He's in the Air Force, and I guess on Sundays, you can either workout or go to church.  He didn't want to work out, so he decided to go to church.  And then he liked it.  We assumed that he was just going to a non-denominational Air Force church, but we learned yesterday that he has been attending The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and that he is preparing for baptism in two weeks.  

Mind you, he is meeting with missionaries in Germany.  

And Mahala is meeting with missionaries in Louisiana.  

But within the space of a few weeks, two siblings independently started investigating the Church, attending Church, and preparing for baptism on a specific date.

She doesn't smoke or drink, and she's trying to convince her boyfriend to smoke and drink less than he does right now.  Her boyfriend is a native Spanish speaker, so whenever we give her a pamphlet in English we give her the same pamphlet in Spanish so that he can read it when he gets home from work.  

On Saturday night, she and her boyfriend read from the Book of Mormon together.

She came to church on Sunday.

She and her brother, who are still not actually members of the Church, are "tag-teaming" (in her own words!) their parents to help their parents go to "Mormon church" this coming Sunday.  

There is no such thing as coincidence.

We would love for y'all to keep Mahala and her families in your prayers! 

Road Trip to Baton Rouge

Today I get to meet with the mission president's wife and three other sister missionaries to talk about ways that we as trainers and as traveling sisters can positively affect the mission culture.  Because President and Sister Wall live in Baton Rouge, and my companion and I live in Metairie (which is 67 miles away), the office elders came to our apartment yesterday evening to pick us up and drive us to Baton Rouge.

While on the interstate, on the way to Metairie, they ran out of gas.

Since there were four elders in the car, two of them walked from the car to a gas station, where they bought a gallon of water.  They poured the water out, and then bought a gallon of gas at the pump.  Then they walked back to the car and made a newspaper funnel to pour the gas from the water jug into the car's gas tank.

Oh, and they got this on video.

I guess there's a reason why our mission's Emergency Plan asks that we keep our car's gas tank always at least half-full.