Week 73 {Part 1 and 2}

Hey Everyone!

This week was pretty good :)  We had a couple really good lessons with Shakita and her family!  Last Monday, we taught them the Plan of Salvation and the Spirit was SO strong!  It was awesome!  They seemed to really understand what was being taught.  They still haven't come to church yet which is a little bit frustrating but we are trying.

Women's Conference was awesome!  I loved that it was all about covenants and being prepared to enter the Temple.  I learned so much and can't wait for the talks to come out in print :)

I am SO excited for tomorrow!  We are having a specialized training on scripture study!  It is going to be awesome!  We are apparently going to talk about everything from the Bible Dictionary to symbolism in the scriptures :)  I am going to learn so much and I can't wait!  We also are going to get a sneak preview of Meet the Mormons

Week 73...{Part 2}

Oops!  Pushed some buttons on the keyboard and my message sent before I was done.

Like I was saying, we get to watch Meet the Mormons which is going to be great!  It's a new movie that the Church put out and it sounds really good :)  if you go to meetthemormons.com, you can watch a trailer for the new movie :)  I would really encourage you to all go see it :)  I will let you know next week how it was :)

That's about it for the week though.  I am so excited for General Conference and the chance that we have to hear from President Monson. :)  Who are you going to invite to watch it? :)  Hope this email finds everyone well!

Picture:  We found this postcard at Wal-mart last week and thought it was awesome!  It's totally how we both thought Washington was :)  Hope you enjoy!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Week 72

Hey Everyone!

This week was pretty good :) It was nice because we had back to back appointments Wednesday-Friday so it was actually a pretty fun week! It's been cool this week, especially on those days when we didn't have a lot of appointments to receive promptings from the Spirit and to follow them! Saturday was one of our slower days so we set aside a lot of time to do some contacting. When we have been contacting, we have been doing a TON of walking!  From Friday-Saturday, we walked 10.5 miles :)  It was awesome but now I am so sore!  On Saturday, we were over by a less-active's home so we went to see how she was doing. We talked with her for a minute and then left because it wasn't a good time for them. Well, next to her house is a park and there were a couple families there. We walked back to our car and Sister Evans-Bottoms was debating whether to go talk to them or not. I told her that it must have been a prompting from the Holy Ghost so we should. We went over and started to talk with them. We found out that one family were members and the other family was not. We were able to talk to them for a little bit and share how the Gospel blesses families. It was really cool to see how acting on a prompting from the Spirit really helps the work move forward :)

Something that Sister Evans-Bottoms and I talked about after that experience is how the promptings that we receive from the Spirit seem to not be as strong as they have before. We talked about why that could be and what we could do to change it. We decided that we are going to study Chapter 4 of Preach My Gospel this week personally and as a companionship. I can't wait to study that chapter and be able to recognize those promptings even better.

We also were able to have a good lesson with Shakita and her family!  We talked with them about prayer and it ended up being a good lesson.  We have a lesson with them tonight so we are going to hopefully commit her to be baptized :)  Can't wait to see how it goes :)  We also had a really good lesson with our investigator Stephanie.  I don't remember if I have talked about Stephanie and Ryan or not but they are awesome!  We watched "The Hope of God's Light" with her and it was awesome!  The Spirit was so strong and it was fun to teach her :)

I have also set a goal to work as hard as I can in the last 5 weeks and make them count! I am going to talk to everyone that I see and invite investigators to make changes in their lives. I am also going to prioritize my time so that I am spending my time in a way that I can bring as many people as I can to the Gospel and closer to the Savior. I am so thankful for the opportunity that I have to serve here in the Federal Way Mission and to make my 18 months count!

Picture:  So we were driving to an appointment and saw this house!  It's huge!!!  Then we saw it was for sale so we grabbed a paper to see how much it was going to cost and realized it's not a house.... It's a 4-plex!!!  It was so big and it totally looks like a huge house since it's painted all the same color.  Crazy things you see in Federal Way :)

Hope everyone has a great week!  Keep up the good work and remember Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ LOVE you!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Week 71...Transfer Calls!

Hey Everyone!

Transfer calls!!!!  I am staying with Sister Evans-Bottoms here in Lakota Creek!  I will finish my mission up here (weird!) and I am so excited to be staying here!  This transfer is going to be amazing!  We have a lot of awesome people we are starting to teach and things seem to be going great!  We had an awesome church tour with Shakita and her family on Wednesday!  They thought it was really cool what we do at church so now all they have to do is come and experience it first hand :)

I hope everyone's week goes well and that you all can feel the love of the Savior!

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Week 70

Hey!

This week was awesome! :)  It was a busy week but it was so good :)  We will start with Wednesday...

Wednesday:  We had a lesson with Shakita and Jarvin and their family :)  So cool!  That morning we were talking about what we wanted to teach them and we had determined that we wanted to read the Book of Mormon with them.  As we were trying to decide what to read with them, I asked Sister Evans-Bottoms, "How about Alma 32 and talk about faith?"  She then asked me "Why do you think we need to read Alma 32 with them?"  I just told her that I didn't know.  We talked about it a little bit more and decided that we needed to read that with them.  Skip to that night.  We go to their house and start the lesson.  Before we started reading, I told Shakita and Jarvin that they were in charge of how quickly we read this chapter.  If they had questions or comments, we could stop reading and talk about it for a minute.  Que reading... Sister Evans-Bottoms and I together read probably 5 verses out of the entire chapter, Shakita and her family read most of the verses.  Then we started talking about how to apply it in their life and it was SO cool to see them learn by faith and figure out how to apply Alma 32 to their lives.  They would ask us a question and before we could even answer it, they were already working on a solution to their questions.  It was SO COOL!  Can't wait for Wednesday to give them a church tour and help them feel the Spirit more!

Thursday:  We taught Inga on Thursday... quickest lesson I have ever had!  We taught her about the Book of Mormon so we read the Introduction with her but she pretty much took control of the lesson and had concluded by the end that she needed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it.  Also, every Thursday morning, we do Weekly Planning, which is where we plan for the upcoming week and for our investigators (pretty self-explanatory, right?)  So after we get done planning, we get a text from Sister Eaton explaining that Sister Evans-Bottoms' less-active sister, Tamara, was going to be attending our ward on Sunday!  What the Heck!  Both of us were shocked because Sister Evans-Bottoms hasn't seen her for 11 years and it's very rare for President Eaton to allow us to see family members while we are serving.  It was even crazier because we were allowed to teach Tamara and her kids for one hour.

Friday:  We taught Courtney another one of her new member lessons and that was great!  Then we went over to Brother Jarstad's house to have him look at Sister Evans-Bottoms knee.  Brother Jarstad is an eye surgeon but is willing to help with any medical needs we might have.  While we were over there, we talked with them about a time for dinner on Sunday (they signed up to feed us Sunday) and explained about Tamara coming to see Sister Evans-Bottoms.  And what did they Jarstad's say... "Oh you should invite Tamara to come to dinner!"  We were shocked and then we were even more shocked once we asked for permission and that permission was granted for Tamara to come to dinner!  It was SO crazy!

Saturday:  We stopped at Dumas Bay to see if there were lots of people down at the beach to contact but it was high tide there so there wasn't   very many people but we took the opportunity to take pictures :)  There was a paddle boat floating out in the water too :)

Sunday:  Tamara showed up to our ward and it was such an awesome day! :)  I can't really explain in words how cool it was to be the "third wheel" and just watch Tamara and Sister Evans-Bottoms interact.  Tamara's kids were awesome too and super cute!  It was an honor to be present for that!

So with all of that, this week should be a breeze!  Nothing is supposed to be crazy busy or stressful this week which is great!

Megan's answer to a question I asked her last week:

By the end of tonight, I should be through Alma 22 to be on schedule so I am doing pretty well :)  I am a little bit behind but not by much :)

And there's one random picture that doesn't apply to anything I have been talking about but I ate a YELLOW watermelon on Friday :)  It was super good and tastes just like a normal watermelon!

Hope everyone has a great week!  Love you all!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Week 69.... September already???!!

Hey Everyone!

This email is going to be kind of short because I am pressed for time :)  We went to Mount Rainier this morning and only have 1 1/2 hours to finish emailing and shopping :) This week was really good :)  It started a week ago this past Saturday with President Eaton calling us.... UH OH!  He just wanted to talk with us about our contacting because we weren't getting a very good average (not like it's about the numbers but...).  We keep track of how many people we talk to throughout the week and then average that total at the end of the week and ours hasn't been very good lately.  President invited us to set goals to talk to more people this week and we did it!  It was cool to see how I had changed just from trying to contact more people. 

We also had a couple awesome lessons with a family that we met, Shakita and Harvin, and their 6 kids!  They are super fun to teach because they have lots of questions and seem to understand and like everything we teach :)  We have another lesson with them tomorrow night so we will see what happens. :)

We also had a miracle happen this week!  I think it was a blessing that came because we were striving to talk with more people!  So we have an older couple, the Foleys, in our ward serving as Full-time missionaries in the stake.  They live in the Dolloff Lake ward but they pretty much do everything in our ward.  So sister Foley called us and told us that she had someone who was ready to take the missionary lessons! :)  It was awesome to talk with her about Inga and to meet with her yesterday!  Inga is amazing!  She enjoys learning all about the different religions but she really loves everything that the church is about.  We taught her the Restoration yesterday and all she kept saying about the First Vision was "WOW!"  She also committed to be baptized on September 27th!!!!  We are so excited! :)

Mount Rainier was AWESOME!  We just drove up to Paradise and hung out there for a couple hours but it was super cool!  Mount Rainier was covered by clouds so we didn't get to see it from the base of the mountain but it was still super pretty!  There were some amazing sights to see and it was a nice stress-free activity compared to this last week. :)  Dad, we definitely have to go hiking at Mount Rainier when we come back up here after I get home :)

Hope everyone's week went well!  Glad it's a new week..... Having a little bit of a cold is not fun on a mission but I am on the mend now, thank goodness!  Hope everyone has a great week!  Love you all!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills