mission conference! (April 16th, 2013)

hey everbody!
we had some pretty exciting things happen this week! first off, we had a mission conference (or mission tour). it's where our visiting general authority comes and speaks to all the missionaries! unfortunately there's too many missions for all the apostles to visit... plus we just heard from elder ballard a few months ago. BUT-- the cool thing is that Elder Whiting of the seventy was still called to visit our mission under apostolic authority. :) and let me tell you, it was SO POWERFUL! it was like being in the MTC all over again--hundreds of missionaries in one room, all listening to a chosen servant of god. :) he taught us about learning to follow the spirit and about the doctrine of christ. i teach people the doctrine of christ every day--yet my eyes were STILL opened to more. i can't believe how perfect heavenly father is in EVERYTHING that he does. and THEN, our mission president chose a dozen or so people for elder whiting to interview... and guess who was lucky number one?? ME! holy smokes that was nerve wracking. ;) but it was no pressure, just a little 5 minute get-to-know-you and give you a little counsel. (he said something along the lines of how mission tours shouldn't just be a big meeting--he likes to actually talk with the missionaries he's there to work with. :) he was awesome.) he asked me how my mission was for me so far, what i've learned, if i'd seen success... it was a cool opportunity for me to recognize some things the lord would have me do, coming from the mouth of a general authority. :)
the other exciting event of the week was that i got to go on exchanges with my wonderful sister miller! seeing as she's a trainer sister, she got to come to my area with me for a day. oh my gosh i love her so much! i miss teaching with her, she is SO POWERFUL! the one lesson we had with a less-active... oh my goodness, the spirit was so strong. he even said it himself--that he could feel the spirit, i mean. it was a good opportunity for heavenly father to remind me how much more effective i could be if i always taught in unity with my companion. that came a lot more naturally with sister miller... of course, she's not really human, so that's expected. but i'm going to work on teaching in better unity with sister mulipola. (don't get me wrong--mine and my companion's relationship is great. :) we love each other tons. we're just not that great at teaching together... not one of our strengths. so it's gonna be my goal.) anyway... it was great to be reunited with my best friend for a day. :) well--she's best friends with everyone. ha.
sad news of the week though... sara doesn't want to get baptized anymore. :( she was the only solid investigator we were holding on to. so that's been difficult. we're praying and fasting for a miracle with her. and to find new people that have been prepared by the lord!
that's all i've got time for! i love you all! hope you're having a fantastic week!
love,
sister madsen

the weeks are just meshing together :) (April 9th)

hi everybody,

i keep trying to think of my week and cool things i want to write you about, and i feel like my brain is in a fog! the weeks and days all start to blend together and i can't remember what i've already written about. ha. i need to be better about keeping my journal up to date so i can use that as a reference.

conference was AWESOME! we got to watch all four sessions this time... usually we have to miss one session because the battalion needs sisters on shift. but we got to switch shifts... he he. :) we watched them at the institute on saturday and at my branch president's house on sunday, on soft couches just like home, and had yummy lunches in between. :) SPOILED. the talks were amazing, of course... they mean so much more out here on a mission. i loved the plug that elder anderson gave to missionary work. :) hopefully a lot more members will have heard it and will be willing to share the gospel with their friends so we can have people to teach! i also loved sister dalton's talk... just listening to her speak and watching her face glow with the spirit made me want to be just like her in every way.... especially so i can become a strong mother who raises strong daughters who KNOW they are children of god. however, if i am going to raise that kind of children, who don't care about the world, i have to stop caring about the world myself! that leads into my other favorite talk, which was about seeking acceptance from my heavenly father. SO GOOD. i know that talk was for me. i hope you all had an amazing conference experience... that you feltl like god was speaking directly to YOU and answering all of your questions.

sara came and watched conference with us. she is pretty much the one solid investigator we have right now. :) she's pretty golden. however, she's concerned about tithing. so we are teaching it to her tonight... pray that it goes well and that she will be able to understand WHY we have it--for blessings!!

besides sara, the work is pretty slow... we have a few other investigators who we're meeting with but aren't really progressing. however, we just added a new one last night, thanks to sister mulipola! her name is cynthia. sister mulipola talked to her a couple weeks ago at the booth on the college campus... we weren't sure anything would come of it, but she actually responded to our text last night and agreed to meet with us! she agreed to take the lessons, as well. so we'll see where it goes. :)

right now we're just trying to get our members to focus on making new friends. they all just hang out with each other, so they don't have anyone to share the gospel with! pray for our branch to be able to reach out and expand their circle of influence a little bit. 

i'm sending a picture of our easter lunch! we had a zone conference and the relief society who served us lunch made it really festive. :) i don't remember if i wrote much about easter... but it was wonderful! holidays that celebrate the life of the savior are so much more powerful when you're his representative. :) HE LIVES! and he has overcome the world... which means we can, too. ;)

i love you all SO MUCH. don't forget about this little missionary out here who is cheering you on!

love,

sister madsen

 

oh and p.s. we went bowling last p-day and LOOK WHO GOT A TURKEY! yours truly. :) hope you're proud of me, sister.

March 26 :)

hey all,

nothing too much to report on this week. we had a big miracle though... both of our golden investigators that we've found/been teaching are unfortunately not in our stake boundaries, so they have to be passed off to other missionaries so they can be baptized into the appropriate ward. :( its hard when the only solid people we have to teach don't belong to us. but i put my faith in heavenly father, the day that we passed david off, that he would provide prepared people for us to teach. well... coolest thing ever: that night we got a text from some other elders that said they have the most solid referral for us that we'd ever receive! :) i just smiled up at heaven and thanked heavenly father for blessing my faith. he's SO GOOD. we met her the next day, and she has since been to all three hours of church as well as family home evening, and we have another appointment with her tonight. her name is sarah... guess how she came in contact with the church? she requested a  missionary visit on mormon.org. :) SHE found it HERSELF. oh, and she's already read three chapters of the book of mormon. so she's pretty awesome. we're hoping to set her with a date for baptism tonight.

the other investigator we are the most hopeful about has made a pretty big turn around... she is pretty strong in her christian faith and the church she attends. the missionaries tried teaching her a year ago, but she just wasn't budging. however, since then, she has spent LOTS of time at the institute, and it has softened her up a TON. we've taught her a couple times, and SHE was the one who basically stated to us that she knew all she needed to do was read the book of mormon and pray about it... and that's how she'd find out if everything we teach, all these additions to the beliefs she already has, are true. :) super cool. i was really nervous to teach her at first, because she seemed like a touchy one... but now i feel like we're sincerely friends. she opened up a lot about things she's struggling with at home yesterday... and those aren't things she likes to share with people. so keep elisabeth in your prayers. this is going to be a great opportunity for her to see how the restored gospel can bless her life.

that's all for now! i love you all and i hope your life is peachy keen. oh, and SHARE THE GOSPEL WITH OTHERS. please and thanks. :)

love,

sister madsen

March 19th: TOMORROW is NINE MONTHS!

dear family,

tomorrow. is. nine. whole. months. holy. MOLY. that's. CRAZY.

we had some good experiences this week. this was the first week that i actually felt the booth at grossmont college did something for us... we got six phone numbers! third time's the charm i guess. :) they may not all follow through, but there's potential! it was so exciting. i'm grateful that heavenly father prepared people to talk to us while we were there so it didn't feel like a waste of time.

one of the boys i talked to was named david. he was walking past, with no intention of stopping, but i impulsively jumped up to talk to him, and immediately he stopped to listen. i started explaining about institute and asked if he wanted to come over and check it out after his class... he said yes. he seemed like kind of a shy, quiet kid, so i thought he might have agreed simply because he felt intimidated... but we walked out of our apointment an hour later at the institute and there he was, talking to the institute director! we helped him register for institute and then sat down and added him as an investigator right then! he was just so open and said yes to everything! it was crazy. he soaked up the attention like a sponge... i think he's looking for friends. so it's an awesome opportunity. heavenly father is SO GOOD! i know that impluse to talk to him came from the spirit, and i'm so grateful i paid attention! david came to church on sunday, AND linger longer afterward, AND fhe last night, and we haven't even taught him an actual lesson yet. ha. he's golden. he grew up roman catholic... so he has a basic belief in christ. i'm excited to see where he goes.

we had two other investigators at church on sunday too! so that was a relief... last week we had zero. sundays can be pretty discouraging when no one shows up to church. that is the single hardest thing to get investigators to do.

also i found something pretty cool during personal study yesterday. i was reading in jesus the christ where talmage talks about jesus walking on water during the storm to come save his apostles. at first, when the apostles saw him walking on water, they were really afraid, thinking he was some kind of ghost. then he calmed their fears by saying, "it is i." talmage goes in to the spiritual implications of the incident... he says something like, "too frequently we mistake the saving aid for a greater terror." and it just hit me how true that was. too often i think of my savior as someone i have to answer to... someone that will hold me accountable for the sins i committed and whether or not i've repented for them. i often have a guilty conscience because of my weaknesses. i subconsciously regard christ primarily as my judge, instead of my loving advocate and my friend. and i don't think he would have me see him that way... or any of us. so i want to work on seeing him as someone who is willing to help me with my weaknesses, instead of him being my motivation to overcome my weaknesses simply because he'll be displeased otherwise. (i don't know if that makes sense...)

anyway. i'm out of time for now. but i love you all and i hope you had a happy saint patricks day! i'll have you know i made sure to wear my green skirt for the occassion... i had to be festive somehow. ha.

love love love,

sister madsen

 

hi all! it's me!

hey everyone!

i hear the weather up there is getting better! :) that's good.

i feel like things in santee are taking an interesting turn... we had an awesome jump start because we were new and we were able to use that as an excuse to get to know everyone and meet all the investigators that the elders were working with. but now that they see that we actually do our job by committing them to change... they kind of shy away from us. i feel like it's similar to getting a new manager at work. when the new manager comes in, all the employees have to shift the way they've worked in the past... and those that don't keep up just get let go, and new people are hired in their place. well... i feel like it's time to let go of a lot of people and just find new ones. so it's still coming slow. but we have 4 with a date for baptism right now (one that we have to pass off to other elders) so that's great... they haven't had anyone with a date for a while. we are being cautiously optimistic. :)

we saw a really cool miracle last night! we had just made a really big mistake by flip flopping plans of who we were going to visit and instead we missed BOTH of them. so i was feeling pretty put out. and i felt bad for not following the plans we had made the night before... heavenly father can't help us if we dont stick to the plan he helped us make! anyway. we prayed for help and forgiveness and moved on with our list of former investigators to visit... we showed up at one door, and surprise surprise, she didn't live there anymore. the man that answered informed me that we had the wrong place, and was on his way to shut the door, but i just kept talking and tried to engage him in conversation. he ended up being really nice. as we kept talking, he was gesturing to someone on his couch, so we peeked our heads in and it was his wife with their week-old baby! SO cute. :) that gave us a great opportunity to fawn over their cute family... and all by himself, without us even asking, he said, "you girls should come back sometime and teach us more about what you believe. i don't really know much about mormons." !! i couldn't believe my ears. so we are going back to see the tomorrow night. heavenly father made up for our stupid mistake instantly. just goes to show he's in charge. yet again.

so... i don't know how many people actually read this anymore. but i know there's quite a few of you going through some hard times... and if any one of you happen to read it, i will feel better. i just want to tell you that i love you and that i pray for you and think of you often. there is NOTHING--i repeat, NOTHING--that the savior cannot fix, heal, or help you out of. please... i plead with you with all of my heart, please turn to him. i have watched as the savior's light and love has totally reshaped the lives of people in san diego... and some of them have pretty ugly, sad lives, too. i KNOW it can do the same for you. i KNOW it. and even if what you're going through isn't heart wrenching--maybe it's just more of questioning what you believe--he can help with that, too. he will show you that he's there. he will. he has promised that he will. pray sincerely, and he will. 1 nephi 21:16 "Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me."

i trust that he will take care of you. it's hard for me to leave that trust in his hands because i love you all so much and i just want to solve all of your worries myself! but he can do it way better than i ever could.

thank you for your love and support. please remember there's a missionary out here that's cheering you on!

love,

sister madsen

MARCHing on to victory... :)

howdy. hi. hello. hola.

i just got back from the temple. :) we're allowed to do a session every 90 days, but i hadn't gone in much longer than that. so it was very much needed! i love the temple. it was also my companion's very first time going through! so that was super exciting for her. i love watching people's faces the first time they come through the san diego temple... they're always struck with awe. ;)

events of the week:

we did our very first booth at grossmont college across the street from the institute this week. they'd like us to do one weekly. it was kind of a cool experience, watching people's different expressions/reactions when they saw us there with our huge poster of jesus christ... you can definitely tell those students who are completely opposed to us--they take one glance and then walk as far on the opposite side of the walkway as possible. then there's those that approach willingly and ask us questions out of curiosity. but i think the most fascinating are the students who kind of watch from a distance... and sometimes they start to approach, but then they hesitate. so they walk away, and then a few minutes later we see them again over on the other side of the courtyard, trying to not make it look like they're interested. it's so obvious that the spirit is trying to work on them!! :) haha. hopefully those students will work up the courage to approach us one day. we're not allowed to approach people ourselves, unfortuantely. just be there to ask questions and offer to teach them more if they're interested. we had a total of four people talk to us, and only 3 of the 4 engaged in substantial conversation. hopefully it'll become a useful tool for finding... we'll see.

we had a fireside just for missionaries on sunday! it was cool. a member of the 70, robert c. gay, came to speak to us. he told us so many crazy stories about missionary work... he's served in like 5 different missions around the world. did you know missionary work got started in spain because the missionaries there did something illegal and then won the court case? they were called street boards. haha. :) he basically was explaining how this work is a revelatory work, and that there's no "silver bullet." boy is that true! sometimes i wish there was, but then other times i realize how fulfilling it is to receive specific revelation for someone, and then watch it work! revelation is the coolest thing ever.

i think the best news of the week, though, came from sister miller who informed me about a member of my last area who i worked with for a while... he was baptized last year, but never really gained his own testimony. (there were other people involved that had a big influence on his decision to be baptized.) so he didn't come around for a long time after his baptism. well... we started working with him again in like, october, i think. but we still had a lot of difficulty helping him grasp true conversion. WELL, sister miller told me on sunday that he passed the sacrament for the first time and then he got up in sacrament and actually bore his testimony! he explained how he had had such a hard heart... he'd always viewed god as someone just "above" him that he had to pay tribute to... and he even got a little teary-eyed as he explained that for the first time, as he passed the sacrament, he felt that god was not just above him, but WITH him. :) :) :) it was SO COOL! i cannot even explain to you... i wish you knew him like i do, cause that would make the story mean so much more. suffice it to say that NOTHING could ruin my day after that. :) it was wonderful.

santee is still coming along, slowly but surely. we have a lot of investigators who are just on the brink of progression... we're just trying to figure ways to push them over the edge. ;) it's kinda funny though, i feel like my teaching is getting in the way lately... i think i've gotten too confident in my ability to explain and teach, because i go too far to that extreme. it doesn't matter AT ALL if someone can repeat the restoration backwards and forwards if they don't have a clue why it matters for THEM, personally. so i've got to do a little less teaching and a little more loving.

that's all for this week! happy march! i love you!

sister madsen

week 2 in santee

why hello. :)

this'll be just a short one, but just to recap: week 2 in santee went really well! we had a lot more lessons than expected, and we added 3 new investigators. :) our teaching pool is now up to 6 (all of varying degrees of commitment, but there's potential). we're feeling pretty good about it! but there's still a lot of work to do.

our branch members are simply amazing. they're so loving and willing to help us out with whatever we need. i already feel so loved and accepted there, like i've already got a handful of new best friends. i'm extremely grateful for that. i still have a lot of trust to gain, but i think we're off to a good start. :)

one of my favorite investigators is one that the elders added just a couple weeks ago. his name is russell. he has a pretty rough background... he has a ton of health problems. he has a really skinny, deformed body, and i think that because of this, the only place he felt like he could really fit in is with the druggie/drinker crowd. it's super sad. but he's a really humble, sweet kid, and he's willing to read the book of mormon and pray and ask if it's true. he prayed outloud with us for the first time in his entire life this week. can i just tell you how humbling being a missionary is?? you see so many people from all walks of life who have no idea that there's a god out there who loves them and can stop their suffering.

we also had a really great experience that turned into a really awful experience... one of the worst experiences i've had on my mission, in fact. we met with two children (YSA age) of a less-active mother. the kids aren't members, but they've had missionaries come around their whole lives, so they know a lot about the church. during the lesson the spirit was super strong and the daughter even cried... i thought it went really well and that they were excited to finally learn the full truth so that they could be with their families forever. well... we went back for the return appointment and neither of them were home... instead, their mom answered the door and talked to us for a full 30 minutes about why she didn't want us coming back to her house. i won't go into details, but suffice it to say that i felt AWFUL. and so confused. i was sure that i felt the spirit in that lesson.... and that they were excited about finally getting into the gospel for themselves. i dunno. anyway... it was pretty rough. just one of those things that we have to turn over to the lord... it's in his hands now, so i just have to have faith that he'll fix the situation. (it's just a sickening feeling to think that i might have done something so wrong that they've turned away from the gospel forever.)

i'm learning a lot about faith again... a lot of mornings i wake up and i'm pretty scared to face the day. it's different now that i'm the senior companion. but immediately i pray for help to turn my fear to faith, and i start feeling better... and the day always turns out alright. :) i don't know why it's so easy for us humans to forget that he's in charge and that he'll take care of everything so long as we do our best. :)

for those of you who may be reading this that are struggling lately... i just want you to know that i love you. and that we are promised that "one day we shall rest from our afflictions." look forward to that day, and as our savior says, "look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not." (D&C 6:36) believe that he has power to overcome anything and everything. he is the almighty, the all-knowing, the true redeemer and peace-giver. please open your heart to him.

i love the gospel. and i love the lord. and i'm in good hands... the mormon battalion's, the santee branch's, and my savior's. :)

try not to freeze to death before i get home!

love,

sister madsen