Week 46

This week was pretty good :)  We are still trying to adjust to the new way of counting but it seems to be going well, even though it is slow moving.  This week we were able to get a return appointment with the Kibbie family who we haven't seen for a bit.  Their lives got super busy this last month and we haven't been able to get back in contact with them.  We stopped by yesterday to see how they were doing and we were able to get in contact with them!  They were willing to have us come over next Sunday to teach them more! :)  Such a great thing!

The Elders in our ward gave us a referral on Thursday and we got to meet the family on Saturday.  The Osterhouts moved into our area from the Tacoma area and they are not members.  We are super excited to go by this week and get to know them and help them get settled into their new house. 

This week we were also able to teach our investigator Barbara.  She is Catholic and interested in learning more about the gospel.  We taught her about the Restoration and she really was interested in learning more.  We asked her if she would like missionaries to come to her new house in Renton and she said she would really enjoy that.  She is moving up there in about 1 week so we are excited to refer her to the missionaries up there!  This week was great and I can't wait to see what this next week has to bring!

In other news, we moved apartments this week :) It's actually been really good!  We are living with the Sister Missionaries in the Graham Ward, Sister Margaritis and Sister Hansen, and they are super fun!  We are getting along great and I love it!  I will send a picture next week of the mobile home that we are living in :)

Love you all so much!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

*Keep on Smilin'*

Week 45

Hey!

This week was pretty good. Nothing too exciting happened this week, just normal missionary work.  We were able to teach a lot of less-active members this week which was actually really fun!  We actually have quite a bit of success working with less-actives and I really enjoy working with them.  We were able to do a lot of service this week too and I can now say that I have mowed an entire lawn with a push mower :)  

This week we also showed our investigator, Joyce, how to use familysearch.org :)  That was super fun!  It was cool to show her how to use it and to help her get started on her family history!  I have actually really enjoyed looking at familysearch.org on Mondays when I get a chance.

Other than that, nothing too exciting has happened.... Just loving the missionary work regardless :)  Time continues to fly by but every minute is worth what I am doing! :)

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Week 44... a Week of Miracles! :)

Hello from Graham, Washington!

This week was SO good! :)  We saw a lot of miracles as we did everything we could to find people and to teach them.  Here's a day-by-day breakdown (Sorry it's really long):

Monday: Nothing super exciting happened today.  We had P-day and then we were able to see one of the Less-actives in the ward.

Tuesday: We had a fantastic District Meeting and one of the goals that Sister Parry and I set for this week was to make sure our Area Book is up to date on everything.  We have a lot of Teaching Records that don't have addresses or phone numbers on them or the phone numbers that are on some of them are disconnected.  When we got home from District Meeting, we pulled out all of our Former Investigators that weren't up to date or were missing some type of contact information and called all of the phone numbers and left messages for the phones that did work.  Probably 30 minutes later, we received a call back from one of our Former Investigators named Dena.  We ended up talking to her for about 30 minutes or so and found out that she is going through a really rough time right now.  She is homeless and can't seem to get a job.  She didn't know what to do.  Her faith in God is weakening because she hasn't gotten any help with her situation.  We asked her if there was a time that we could meet with her at the church building and were able to set up an appointment with her for Friday during the day.  We also had a fantastic lesson during our dinner appointment with the Daines Family and got some really good feedback on how to teach the Restoration better.  Brother Daines told us that he would definitely trust us to teach any of his friends and family.  He is working with a coworker of his and said that he would have to arrange a time for his coworker to come over so that he could meet us.

Wednesday: We went and visited one of our Former Investigators, Melissa.  We hadn't seen her for about 2 months or so and thought we needed to stop in this week.  When we were there, I was getting ready to share a scripture from the Bible that I thought she needed to hear and she asked us, "Do you ever share anything from the Book of Mormon?"  We realized that we had only shared a little bit from the Book of Mormon when we had been over there and for some reason hadn't put a lot of emphasis on the Book of Mormon.  We had assumed (our mistake) that she had a copy of the Book of Mormon when we had gone over in the past because she has met with a few different sets of missionaries but she didn't have a copy!  I don't know what we were thinking but we were able to giver her a copy and she said that she was going to read it and pray about it! :)  We thought that she had a change of heart because she didn't seem that open when we had seen her in the past.  Also, Sister Parry was blessed with what I call the "spirit of discernment" on Wednesday.  We were looking at Sandra's teaching record, one of our Former Investigators, and this particular teaching record didn't have an address on it.  The more Sister Parry looked at the "address" box, the more she was able to make out that the previous Elders had written something in the box but now you could only see the indents of what their pen had written.  We were able to make out "blue house, chain link fence, on 37th, by Brother Sand."   We decided that we were going to check out all the blue houses down that road to see if we could find our investigator.

Thursday:  We went to go find Sandra.  We didn't find Sandra but we found Dave, Jessica, and their girls.  They haven't been to church for a long time. Jessica told us that her daughter was starting to ask them questions about God and who He is but it had been so long since being at church that they didn't want to tell her the wrong thing.  We were able to set up an appointment for Tuesday to go over and teach them!  We are so excited!

Friday: I'm pretty sure that I have told you about Scott and Tanya in past emails.  Scott is directly related to Joseph Smith and he knows a ton about the Church and Church History.  They are Lutheran but agree with everything that we have taught them when we have gone over.  We were able to have dinner with them on Friday and it went great!  We taught them the Restoration (which was a little weird teaching them about Scott's Great-great-great-great grandpa) but they for sure felt the Spirit.  We have another dinner appointment with them on the 21st but they said we can come over before then!  They definitely seemed more open this time around.  Now we just have to wait for the Lord's timing. We also were able to have a church tour with Dena on Friday.  That went really good I think.  We were able to get to know her and we invited her to read the Book of Mormon.  We need to call her and set up another time to meet with her.

Saturday: We contacted a referral that we had received on Friday and her name is Stacey.  We have a return appointment with her on Saturday and she seemed really open to learning more about the Gospel! :)  Can't wait to see what happens with her!

That's about it for the week!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Pictures:  Sister Johnson has tons of hats (we think she is part of the Red Hat Society) and Chloe, the Johnson's granddaughter, has been trying them on each time they come over to visit.  We had to take a picture with our hats on!

Week 43

Hey!

This week was actually a pretty good week! We were able to get a lot of things done this week and be able to teach quite a bit :) My favorite day was Monday because we were able to contact 2 of our referrals and have quite a bit of success with them! We haven't been able to get back in contact with them since but we are working really hard at doing so. On Saturday, we had a great lesson with our investigator Krista and we decided to help her understand what the Book of Mormon is and why we need to read it. We followed the thoughts from a voice blast that President Eaton sent out talking about how to help our investigators truly understand what the Book of Mormon is and why it can help them in their lives. I feel like she understood the Book of Mormon better this time around. She has read through the Book of Mormon 2 times but I think she realized how the Book of Mormon really does apply to her this time! We have another appointment with her on Tuesday so we are excited to see how she has applied the things that she has been reading about.

Yesterday, Sister Parry and I had to say goodbye to Elder and Sister Logan.... They finished their mission yesterday and left to head home to Illinois.  That was so hard!  I have really enjoyed getting to know them here in the Elk Plain ward and to experience their testimonies of the Gospel.  They will forever be my "Mom and Dad" that I had on my mission.  

This week was pretty uneventful but hopefully we will have more exciting things to talk about next week.  Love you all!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Week 42

Hey Everyone! :)

This week was great! :)  We were able to get out and do a little bit of work on Wednesday and now we are pretty much back to how we were before Sister Parry got sick :)  We had a fantastic 5 days this week!  We were able to get in contact with a lot of our investigators and had some great lessons with some less-active members as well!  It's been super fun this week as well because we have been putting into practice the training that we received from district meeting this week!  We have really been focused on teaching the Restoration in 5 minutes, using the pamphlets that go with each lesson, and making our first visit a short visit but allowing them to feel the Spirit strongly as we do so.  I have really noticed the Spirit really strongly each time we teach.  I know that our investigators are feeling the Spirit and that I definitely feel the Spirit as we teach!  I always get butterflies in my stomach especially while we are talking about the First Vision.  I get a reconfirmation each time that what we teach as missionaries is true!  I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the Restored Gospel here on the earth and that it blesses our lives in ways that we can't even imagine!  I am so thankful for this opportunity to serve the Lord and to serve here in the Washington Federal Way mission!  I have been truly blessed as I have been serving and I hope that I have touched others in some way as I have done so.  This next week is going to be great!

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Week 41

Hey Everyone! :)

First thing is first.... transfers..... Sister Parry and I are STAYING another transfer in Graham :)  I am so excited :)

Nothing much went on this week.  Sister Parry is still sick.... has been for over 1 week.  Sunday afternoon we took her to the ER to see what was going on because she still had a horrible headache.  That was a long day... They thought it just had to do with the muscles on the back of her neck so hopefully we solved the problem :)

I was able to go out with Elder and Sister Logan on Saturday so that was a nice little change from being in the apartment all day long :)  We just went out and visited a couple less-active members and invited them to come to church.

Hopefully this week will continue to go well :)

Love,

Sister Megan Hills

Pictures...

Snow storm that cancelled church a week ago :)  Best thing ever!  I sure missed the snow :)

Week 40

This week was great (up until Sister Parry got sick)!  We had a lot of miracles happen this week!  So it started on Tuesday.  We were having a great day with finding that day and were able to find a couple good potential investigators :)  Then we were going to go visit a Less-active member and felt prompted to stop by and see Trish, one of our Potential Investigators.  We had actually found Trish a month prior to this stop.  When we tracted into her, she was busy and asked us to come back later that day.  When we went back, she wasn't home and her husband said that she wasn't interested. We tried throughout the month to get in contact with her but we weren't able to.  When we went and saw her last week, she was so excited that we had come back and was worried that her husband had scared us off.  She said that she was going to come to church on Sunday and that she wanted her kids to have religious influence in their lives.  Then when we didn't think that our day could get any better, we received a referral for a couple named Tyler and Amber.  When I saw what their address was, I recognized the place as a neighborhood that we had tracted in about 1 week ago.  I then remembered that there was a couple with a screaming little girl that we saw and were going to walk right past them because we didn't want to bug them.  Sister Parry and I opted to stop and talk with them anyway.  We gave them a mormon.org card and went on with our day.  When we were tracting, I looked to see which house they went in so we wouldn't knock on their door since we already talked to them.  When we went to go contact Tyler and Amber after receiving the referral, it ended up being that couple that we had talked with about 1 week prior! :)  Sister Parry and I were so excited!  Tyler and Amber had been on the beach in Federal Way and some Elders had started talking to them.  The Elders then sang a song and told Tyler and Amber that they would get in contact with the missionaries by their house.  And that ended up being Sister Parry and I! :)  And then I got an amazing letter from one of my buddies that totally made my day and really helped me a lot.  Tuesday was probably the best day out of the entire week! :)  

Thursday we had Zone Conference and that was super good too! :)  We talked about the role of the Holy Ghost in conversion and teaching with the Spirit.  I learned a lot about how to help our investigators.

Saturday night we got SNOW! :)  about 6 inches or so and it was grat!  I took some pictures but I will attach them in my email on Tuesday (forgot my camera) :)  Because of the snow, church ended up being cancelled.  That was so weird to me!  I don't think that has ever happened in my life time so that was definitely an interesting experience!  

Hope everyone is having a great day and week!  Talk to you on Tuesday!

Love,

Sister Megan Hills