welp. life is full of surprises. :)

October 8, 2013

oh hey.

so. last week i wrote some good news about baltasar and some bad news about george. welp... surprise! now it's the opposite. :) haha. baltasar decided he doesn't want to learn after all, which is a bummer... but he's still really young and he's got a lot to figure out about life, so i'm sure he'll get there someday. plus, his great grandma, who is 94 years old (but thinks she's 91) stood up randomly in the middle of conference and said that she wants to be baptized! haha. she decided she wants to be a mormon like the rest of her family now. she has no idea really what it's all about... she can barely hear or see. but somehow we're going to try to teach her... president says as long as she can answer the interview questions, she can be baptized. :) so that should be interesting. we're just gonna get that whole family into heaven one at a time!

and george... man. i wasn't very hopeful when george randomly told us there was stuff happening at work and he would call when it was over. but guess what? he actually did. and although i feel really sad for him because he ended up losing his job, i know that's what needed to happen in his life right now because that's what has been taking him away from learning about the gospel. hopefully he'll be able to find a job elsewhere soon. so we taught him twice this week! the second lesson was on the plan of salvation... he told us he hasn't really thought much about life after death because it scares him. so when we showed him the plan of salvation outline... he said, "wow. that was really... moving." he was totally feeling the spirit and he didn't know how else to describe it. and he's finally been reading the book of mormon. and last but not least, he watched both sessions of general conference at bishop's house with us on sunday! he's really putting in the effort. :) and all he needs now is to recognize the holy ghost telling him that this is god's true church. it's often difficult to help people recognize their answers, when to me, they're clear as daylight! but he'll get it soon.

and speaking of conference... wasn't it FABULOUS?? :) i loved it. my favorite talks were elder soares's on meekness--that was totally an answer to my prayer--elder ballard's of course, elder uchtdorf's (i have half a mind to just print 50 copies of that talk and drop it off at the houses of our less actives).... well. i had a lot of favorites. i can't name them all. but suffice it to say that conference is the BEST and i can't believe it's passed already. luckily i get 60 some-odd more years of conference--and twice a year at that! :) i hope you all took good notes and got answers to your prayers. GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS. i have a testimony of that. and when your answer comes directly from his holy servants... there's nothing more powerful.

that's all i have time for today. everything else is going great, life is just fabulous. this might be the last week i have with sister brown! sad. (we are planning to write to president to make him think we are still having troubles and so we still need time to sort through them and learn from each other... :P ha. jk.)

anyway, sorry it's a short one. but i love you all and happy october!

love,

sister madsen

All Is Well In Zion :)

October 1, 2013 

hey hey.

so. i'm just gonna come out and say it. we had a pretty stinky week this week. but guess what? all is well in zion. :) why? because the lord is in control. and i have faith in him.

george left a message on our phone saying something came up at work and to please be patient while he figures it out--until then, he can't investigate the church anymore. he gave us no idea how long it would take... he just said to wait for his call. and christine... man. after our miracle with her last week, i thought she'd be good to go... but she, too, has stopped responding to our calls/texts--again. so i've been praying for a second round of miracles with her, but nothing's happened yet. even if nothing does, i'm comforted in the knowledge that she is not lost for good. i know she'll join the church eventually, and that will be a very happy day. :)

so that left us with... well, no investigators to teach. :P (we have a few others that are kind of wishy-washy here and there... nothing solid.) and it seemed like everything just kept falling through! our plans to go visit less actives, our back-up plans, even... we did a lot of running around and not much teaching. but for some odd reason, i still feel happy. :) i guess i'm getting better (a little late, i know :P) at looking at the bigger picture.... the grander scheme. for example: our stake president has really been making a push for the members to do missionary work by inviting people into their homes. not even to teach them the gospel--just to have them THERE, in a place where they feel the spirit and the love of god. that's the easiest piece of cake missionary work anyone can do! you don't even have to talk about the church! just have a party at your house and invite less actives or nonmembers. :) so that's been catching a little... our relief society president is really stepping up. and our ward mission leader. and once the MEMBERS are doing the work... heck, we won't HAVE any dead weeks. that may not happen in the next two months i have left... but like i said, in the grander scheme, it's going to be awesome! :)

another miracle of the week was baltasar morrison. :) he is the 18 year old son of our recent convert family, the mendiolas. he's the only one in their family that didn't get baptized with them. in fact, he didn't even take the lessons--he didn't really want anything to do with the church. well, his family have been praying their hearts out for him, of course, and recently he had a run-in with the law... so heavenly father has been softening his heart. :) he agreed to meet with us on sunday! we couldn't believe our ears. so we went over and taught him... once we established that we weren't there "just to make him one of our followers," he warmed up to the idea of learning. he understands about free agency and that no one can make him do anything... he also understands that man has highly corrupted the doctrines of spirituality, and he doesn't know what to believe because of it. (this is everything he's been thinking about on his own, btw--not anything we explained to him.) so it will be SO COOL to explain that yes, man HAS corrupted the truth--BUT IT HAS BEEN RESTORED TO ITS FULLEST, PERFECT FORM, and he can KNOW it. :) :) :) (we didn't really have time to get to that part--his dad talks a lot. ha.) so we're excited. please pray for baltasar!

oh!! i also wanted to share something from a couple weeks ago that i totally forgot! (or maybe i did share it...? haha i dunno. you might be getting this twice.) when i went on exchanges with sister lehmitz, she shared this with me during study. it was EXACTLY what i needed at the time. and i just think it's a powerful concept. we've been talking/sharing a lot about god's love with people lately... in fact, sister brown and i both bore our testimonies about it on sunday. anyway, here it is:

bible dictionary under "fear": "...fear is spoken of as something unworthy of a child of God, something that “perfect love casteth out” (1 Jn. 4:18). The first effect of Adam’s sin was that he was afraid (Gen. 3:10). Sin destroys that feeling of confidence God’s child should feel in a loving Father and produces instead a feeling of shame and guilt. Ever since the Fall God has been teaching men not to fear, but with penitence to ask forgiveness in full confidence of receiving it."

i LOVE that. and i have been learning this lesson SO MUCH on my mission. i hope it gives you as much encouragement as it did for me. :)

i love you all SO MUCH! :) hope you are doing great. the gospel is true and its mind-blowing! KEEP LIVING IT. (and remember that to live it is to share it. :) )

love love love

sister madsen

christine at church and george with a date :)

hey fam,

hope you're all having an awesome week and a fabulous september. :) i'm missing the changing of leaves around here! i remember writing about that last year... don't worry mom, i still have the fake leaves you sent me, i'm going to break them out soon.

we had another great week this week! christine and george are progressing really well. george goes out of town for work a lot, though, so it's hard to keep him steady... but he was finally back in town yesterday and sister brown and another member (we were on splits) met with him last night. they said the lesson went really well and he accepted to work toward baptism at the end of november! :) you know, it's pretty crazy how sometimes, one companion's strengths are needed more than the other's. sister brown is more bold than i am, and she does even bolder things when i'm not around. ;) but i know that's how it was supposed to happen!

in the meantime, i had a great lesson with a less active family in our ward. i just want to say that often the people you least expect to change can really surprise you! this was the second lesson we had with them... the first lesson was pretty... difficult. there were 4 kids under the age of 5 who were pretty distracting... the chargers game was on, too. (don't worry, i only peeked at the screen twice. :P) so we weren't sure, when we walked away, how much they got out of it. but i was happily surprised when i returned last night and found out that both of the sisters had actually read in the book of mormon! our visit really did have an impact... and these girls, who are both single moms and who haven't been active for years, ACTED on what they felt. :) what a humbling experience!

christine came to church for the first time this sunday, too! she enjoyed it, and she really took something away from it... the very first talk was about searching for answers through the scriptures and the holy ghost! it was perfect for her. she also has a goal set for baptism. :) and after church she told us she had read 8 chapters of the book of mormon the night before! we are so excited for her. please pray for both george and christine, that they can continue to be strong and overcome any obstacles placed in their path to receiving the gospel.

we did a really unique finding activity yesterday... he he. :) we took our ward mission leader's puppy to the dog park! (we didn't really think about asking permission... we realized after we got in the car with her that our fleet coordinator might not approve of a canine in a mission car. oops.) poor abby actually hated the park... haha. she's not a social dog AT ALL. she loves humans, though. :) anyway, we got to have some great conversations with the people there... they're all really friendly with each other, and were even friendly with us--because we had a dog with us, of course. :) but now that we know the ropes a little better we'll probably try it again and see if we can turn the conversations into added investigators! (oh, and in case you were wondering, EVERYONE in san diego has a dog. it's NUTS.)

last but not least, I went on an exchange with a sister at the battalion named sister lehmitz this week. she has only been out about 3 months... and i can't even tell you how great she is. she has the PUREST heart of any missionary i've ever met. she serves strictly out of love for her savior and the people she teaches. she is the kindest, sweetest, humblest sister i've ever served around, and we had some powerful lessons that day. and it made me want to be a lot more like her. i love how heavenly father places other people in our lives at just the right time to motivate us to be better and change our weaknesses into strengths.

that's all for today! keep up the good work in your own lives and in the lives of others! i love you!

love,

sister madsen

i'm really getting bad at this... :P sorry!

hey all,

so... i'm struggling to write good emails lately! haha. i feel like i've been out for so long that it's just normal life to me now and so... writing about normal life doesn't seem as exciting. :P i'm trying to think of good things from the week to write about...

first of all, i got to go through the temple with LILY last week! :D it was soooo cool. we got to the temple and changed, and then when we walked to the staircase that leads up to the session, there were a couple people from the black mountain branch that were there waiting for her to finish initiatories. so we waited with them. when she walked out with nicole, her escort, there was a group of 5 or 6 of us there to greet her in her white dress... ah! she looked unbelievable... glowing from the inside out. she had kind of an apprehensive look on her face at first--not in a "what am i doing here?" kind of way, but just in a soaking-it-all-in kind of way... and then she turned to nicole and whispered, "am i allowed to hug them?" :) she's so cute. nicole nodded and lily came straight over to me and gave me a HUGE hug!! oh my goodness... how special that was. and then we went to the session and to the celestial room... i wondered what was going through her head, of course--being a missionary you're ALWAYS worried about how your investigator/convert is receiving new information :P--but she was just smiling like nobody's business and saying, "that was amazing." :) ah! this will always be one of the most special memories of my entire mission. i am SO GRATEFUL for LILY!! she is one of heavenly father's choicest daughters. i can't believe it's been a year since she was baptized! and now she's the ward mission co-chair. oh--and engaged to be sealed for time and all eternity. :) :) THAT is what missionary work is all about! (take note, family... i WILL be heading back for her wedding in april... so in case you want to plan a vacation in advance or somethin... ;) )

let's see, let's see... other good things that happened this week... most other things pale in comparison to that. :P george went out of town, so we didn't get to teach him this week... and christine had jaw surgery, so we didn't get to teach her either... we will tonight though. the mormon battalion is doing good, just way slow now... when school starts it goes dead for a couple of weeks. :P but then fall breaks/holiday season it picks back up a little. oh! i had a really cool conversation with a kid from germany who is agnostic... i could tell by his reactions during the tour that he kind of thought the whole "believing in god" thing was a joke. he was cool enough, though, that i could be pretty blunt-but-still-friendly. :) i looked him straight in the eye, and i promised him that god would TRULY manifest himself to him if he sincerely prayed and asked. the spirit was definitely in my words, because his little smirk fell off his face... he knew and felt that i meant what i said, and he humbly nodded. i challenged him to pray that night, and he said that he would. i don't know if he ever did, but i know that was a solid seed planted.

one more sweet story: i went on splits with sarah mendiola, my recent convert, on saturday. we were just doing some contacting and went to a former investigator's house... we were halfway up his walkway when all the sudden his neighbor was waving excitedly at us. that's really abnormal for random strangers to be excited to see missionaries. usually they run in their house, shut all the screens, lock all the doors, close all the blinds, board up the windows, and hibernate for 42 hours until they're sure we're gone. :P so i wasn't surprised when sarah suddenly shouts, "christie??" and runs over and gives this lady a huge hug. turns out she was her co worker... they live 2 miles away from each other and never knew it. i also doubt that christie knew that sarah is now a mormon. ;) so we get talking, and guess what?? just the DAY before, there were two sister missionaries that were in the doctor's office where christie works... they had a long conversation with her and told her to come visit them at the mormon battalion, which she agreed to. (yes, they were sisters i work with!) isn't that crazy?? first at her work, and then a day later at her home! and this was sarah's first time on splits! NOT A COINCIDENCE. heavenly father has PERFECT placement. :) this also happens to be a hard time in christie's life... she's going through a divorce. so it's even more obvious that heavenly father is trying to reach her... hopefully she'll pick up on these signs!! she and sarah are going to plan a day to come visit us and we'll go from there. :)

okay. i think that's sufficient. :) THE GOSPEL IS TRUE! i refuse to believe i only have 11 weeks left to share it. :( it's too good to stop!!

i love you all (that is, if there's even multiple people reading this. ha.)! :)

love love love

sister madsen

p.s. san diego has these crazy weird spider seasons... we found this one walking back to our car the other night. they're everywhere! yuck. :P (you should see sister brown freak out... haha. i thought i was bad.)

miracles still happen :)

hey howdy hey,

we got transfer calls this morning. sister brown and i are staying together in mira mesa! no big changes. :) we are excited to be together still. she is seriously my best friend! we've gone through so much together (including a DEAD area) and our relationship is so strong because of it.

we had SUCH a great week this week! :) we finally saw some changes in the area... we had two investigators at church after having 6 weeks in a row of zeroes! that was a miracle and a half. :) we are especially excited about 2 of our 4 new investigators that we added this week! they seem solid-- the first is george, the second is christine. we met george during our blitz a couple weeks back. he was a former investigator, and odds are when you show up at a former investigator's door, they don't really want you back. but for some reason unbeknownst to us, george said we could come back! but just to give him a call first. he wasn't really willing to talk right then though, so we didn't know how sincere he was being... but when we called him, he set up an appointment, and kept it. :) during that appointment, we found out that he has a long history of involvement in different christian religions, and lately there had been a couple things happening with the churches he had been attending that made him second-guess if he should be there... and then we showed up at his door! he said he took that as a sign from god that it was time to move on and try something different, and hence, he wanted to listen to what we had to offer. :) SO FASCINATING how people are prepared at different times! the last time missionaries taught him, he didn't want it... and now, through a series of events, god has prepared his heart and placed missionaries in his path again. :) george is so, so, so nice. he is filipeno, very soft-spoken, in his late 40's and never married. he's also a navy seal doctor, so that's pretty awesome. :)

christine is also amazing. she has been renting a room from one of our members for quite a while, and she too, has slowly been prepared. she is an excellent cook--went to culinary school and everything--so she's fed us dinner twice before, but we still didn't have the opportunity to really teach her/ask her if she wanted to learn. however, now that we look back on it, we know that was because christine is one of those people who needed to build a relationship with us first before she would listen/trust us. finally we went back this sunday to visit, and we just straight out told her how much we loved her and that we felt prompted that we needed to give her the lessons. for some reason, we were so nervous! it's interesting--we talk to random strangers on the street everyday and ask them if they want to learn, but we felt so much more nervous asking someone who was already our friend! i think it's because we fear rejection more so from people who REALLY have potential. and christine really has potential. "this house is different," she said. "i've been to plenty of other homes where people claim to be christian, and this house just has a sense of peace... and i really think it must be your religion." :) ah! we're so excited.

fun things:

1. we had a ward luau this week that was a HUGE turnout! :) lots of less-actives and nonmembers. and great food. :)

2. we went pedaling around coronado island last week for p-day! it was so beautiful, and SO FUN! i'm sending pictures. :) YES, this is where i LIVE!! :D

3. i'm going through the temple tonight with LILY! my convert from a year ago!! :D aaahhhh!!! so proud of her. and so honored that i get to go and be a part of her endowment. what a special thing!

TWO MORE TRANSFERS. that's 12 weeks! for some reason, 12 weeks sounds like a lot less than 3 months. i dropped sister mendez (one of my lovely battalion sisters) off at the airport today to fly home... and it totally weirded me out to be there! GAH! don't make me leave!!! i SWEAR sister madsen will be my name for life!

i love you MUCHO. mucho mucho. :)

love,

sister madsen

good things happening :)

hey everyone!

sorry i've been a slacker at writing posts these past couple weeks. here i am!

we saw some good things this week! we have been struggling to find new people to teach. it has been a trying time for us. i mean, every missionary goes through dry spells, but it's always harder in the moment than it seens like from an outsider's perspective. plus, i feel like they don't normally last as long as ours has. but anyway. last sunday we got TWO referrals from a member that JUST moved into our ward. she's an awesome member missionary. we visited both of them this week and now we are teaching them. not so sure how solid they are at the moment, but we have hope. and then on wednesday we did a blitz with our zone! i have never participated in a blitz before, but it was pretty cool... it's where all the missionaries in your whole zone go to a specific area and contact like crazy. so they all came to our area! we have a few potentials from that which we hope to start working with too. one set of elders contacted a girl who just moved here from indiana... and one of the first things she told them was that she was looking for a church to join! :) pretty awesome. she received the restoration lesson well and will probably be passed off to the YSA branch soon. miracles are everywhere!

i think the coolest miracle this week, though, was our visit from elder haynie (not sure how you spell his name) from the 70. we had stake conference this weekend and he came to speak. he gave an incredible talk on temples, and preparing to be in the house of the lord. but also, the entire adult session was on missionary work, and then, after the general session, we had a meeting... it consisted of every bishop, ward mission leader, ward missionary, and full time missionary in the stake, as well as our mission president, president clayton, and the stake president. and oh my word. it was a POWERFUL meeting. elder haynie talked about the shift in paradigm that needs to be happening around here. he shared a quote from elder bednar that said something about the keys to missionary work in a given area residing with the stake president, NOT the mission president. (confusing, i know. but it made sense the way he said it.) anyway, the idea is that missionary work belongs to the members of the area, and the full time missionaries are here to assist THEM in THEIR work. it was really motivating for everyone present, and right away we saw a change in our bishop--he asked us to come over to his house the day after and teach his family how they can be doing missionary work. while we were there, his family came up with 7 names (and they were planning on thinking of more) of nonmembers that they can invite to their home. :) it's been pretty hard for the past two transfers to get members to do missionary work, so that was a huge blessing, and i know that a lot of miracles will come from it soon.

and our ward mission leader came back from vacation after being gone for a month! haha. we felt pretty leaderless for a while. it's hard to coordinate without a coordinator. just goes to show that the church really is true and that god has a perfect system of organization. without his system, his children are wanderers. he speaks through his leaders to get to his other leaders to get to us and his children. :) i love being a member of god's perfect church.

i've also had a change of heart this week. of course, i keep having to have a re-change of heart--this concept is nothing new. i swear this a lesson i've already learned 46 times on my mission. (sometimes i wonder how many more times i'll have to learn it.) but it was a lesson on faith, positive thinking, trusting heavenly father, praying sincerely, diligence, believing in myself, and THINKING accordingly--all rolled into one. :) the biggest part of it, though, was remembering that first and foremost, heavenly father LOVES me. and is PROUD of me. i have the hardest time letting myself really believe that. i'm sure grateful for the atonement and the power it has to change us, piece by painful piece. i'm also grateful for my companion and the lessons i've learned with her that i haven't been able to learn with ANYONE else--i KNOW god gave her to me for that purpose.

think that's all for now! hope you're all having a dandy end-of-summer! (wait--what?? it's the end of summer?? i swear it just started...)

I LOVE YOU!!

sister madsen

August 6, 2013 (Catching up on the blog!)

hey everyone!

this'll be a short one, we went to the temple for p-day today so we're short on time! it was so good to be there, i love the spirit at the temple, and i love the chance to be reminded of my covenants and how powerful they are. we did initiatories, too! in fact, we were doing them on behalf of our recent converts' ancestors! :) sarah did their genealogy and then did their baptisms, and then she handed them over to us. how cool is that? it was pretty special.

other great things of the week:

1. sister burden (my trainer) came back to san diego to visit! she TOTALLY surprised me, it was so fun to see her! (picture of her, me, and sister miller attached.)

2. our investigators kim and brandon, who live together, decided to up and get married at the end of the month! :) we haven't even addressed their situation yet, nor talked to them about baptism... but we think it's probably heavenly father preparing them. :) they are sincerely seeking, we think... at least kim is. so we have great hopes for them.

3. one of my investigators from my old area got baptized! her name is becca, and she is INCREDIBLE. power house convert. kind of like lily. :) she used to be an atheist! but god played a huge role in her life recently because he needs her in his church. :) she found the truth! and through her less active boyfriend who got back on track and baptized her! :) yay! the church is true!

lastly, i just want to re-emphasize how much i love all of you. hearing of the recent death of friend makes me realize how grateful i am for the gospel of jesus christ, who has POWER over death, and we WILL live eternally with those we love. thank you for your love and support, please continue doing what you do best and give that love to all those who are in need of it. :)

i love you! with all my heart!

love

sister madsen