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

2 Investigators :)

hey'all.

i finally have investigators to write about this week! haha. i always feel bad when i don't have investigators to write about... this area is just really, really slow. but i promise it's not because sister brown and i are slacker missionaries! ;) heavenly father finally blessed us for our diligence this week. it was actually a really cool story... and it just goes to show how important it is to always be worthy of the spirit!!

so wednesday was a pretty interesting day... we read our schedule wrong and missed our morning temple shift--we thought we were on the night shift. so basically we ended up having a full day in our area and 6 plan-less hours. :( when that happens, it can be difficult for me to keep a good attitude. in addition to that, sister brown wasn't feeling very well, and it's always harder to get things done when you're companion's distracted by her bodily complaints. but i decided to work hard anyway, and do my best to listen to heavenly father and figure out what he wanted us to do with our time that was completely up in the air. because of that, i kept the spirit with me, and we ended up having a pretty good night... and when we went home and planned for the next day, we were still in tune with the spirit.

we were in the middle of setting back-up plans for the next day when i felt unsure about a name we had chosen. it wasn't a huge prompting or anything, i almost just ignored it and moved on, but then i thought, "it's better safe than sorry, and it's just a back up plan..." so we chose a different name. well. turns out that appointment cancelled, so we ended up visiting our back up plans after all. it was like 8:10 pm, 20 minutes before we were supposed to head home, and i kinda just felt done with the day. but when we stopped at this woman's house (a less active who lives with her non-member family) something awesome happened. her husband let us in right away, something we weren't expecting. and then as we were talking to her, this woman's granddaughter appeared. she started asking us questions, and then explained that she was just in saint george at her friend's sister's farewell. that was the first time she had ever been to a mormon church... her friend was less-active for a long time and had recently decided she wants to get back into it. we asked her if she wanted to join us for the lesson, and she said "sure." :) and at the end, when we asked her if she wanted to learn more, she said yes. :) :) yay! it was SO OBVIOUS that heavenly father had been preparing this girl to meet us. it is not a coincidence that we came to her house and this random time in her life where her good friend decides to be active again. and just to think... if i hadn't kept a good attitude the day before, if i hadn't listened to that TINY little prompting... we never would have found her! you'd never guess that the actions of one day lead into the next, but they DO. every choice we make affects our opportunities in the future. HEAVENLY FATHER IS SO GOOD. :) :) and we are excited to keep teaching kim, we really hope it goes somewhere promising. :)

the other investigator that we picked up is a guy named rick that the ASL elders ran into. :) he's not deaf though--they just knocked on his house looking for a deaf person and he was there instead, and he said we could come back. :) he's pretty skeptical, but very nice and willing to listen. i just hope he'll listen long enough for the spirit to get the chance to work on him. yay for the chance to REALLY teach again!! i love teaching. it's my favorite part.

it's such a privilege to be a part of this work. when i sit here to write about my week, i go back through my planner to remember the experiences i want to tell you about... and just hit me how many people, members and nonmembers alike, that i have the opportunity to love and influence. and i'm eternally grateful. i dunno... especially when time is running out, you really appreciate each experience more than the last. (i hit my 4-months-left mark this week.... gah.)

my motto of the last couple weeks, in order to more fully utilize my time as the lord's servant, has been "don't listen to satan." it can be easy to think about the last year of my mission and wonder if i did everything i was supposed to... and it can be easy to entertain those discouraging thoughts. but i read a quote from elder holland that really stood out to me: "god doesn't care nearly as much about where you have been as where you are going." so every time i start to live in the past, i make myself stop and focus on the present. and it's amazing how much of a difference it makes. :) i would encourage you all to do the same.

other fun things: we went to the zoo last week! :) san diego has the coolest zoo ever. much better than the hoogle zoo. we had a blast, and our recent convert family came with us, so it was great. i'll attach pictures.

elder ballard is coming to speak to us tomorrow! he's here every summer. :) we're pretty spoiled. i'll have to tell you all about it next week!

i love you soooo much! and the gospel is the best thing EVER! :)

love

sister madsen

another soul brought unto Christ!! :)

hi everyone!

welp. we... baptized our only investigator on saturday. ha. :) donna is the sweetest, most innocent, child-like old lady i've ever met. really. she melts my heart. i wish you could have been there to listen to her testimony after her baptism. in her timid little voice, with her eyes on the ground and her daughter sarah at her shoulder, she simply thanked the man who baptized her and said, "i feel better now. name of jesus christ amen." OH MY GOODNESS I LOVE HER SO MUCH! the service went great (she was triple dipped cause of her toes... haha poor thing). afterwards we all went over to her house for enchiladas, and many of the ward members came to support, for which i was very grateful. donna and her humble family have taught me SO MUCH, and i'm so grateful for the chance to be part of their lives.

and now... haha we have ZERO investigators. no one to teach. :) so yesterday, guess what we did? we spent 4 straight hours on the street just contacting people. and going to previous contact's houses. and it surprisingly went really well. usually full-days are not my favorite... but everything went sooo smoothly yesterday, we both knew we were being led by the spirit the whole time, and now we have 4 potential investigators. :) it was such a good day.

we also went to a less active's house who hadn't been to church in years... usually those kind of people arent all that friendly to missionaries cause they don't like the attention from the church. but as soon as this man opened the door, he said, "hi sisters!" and came out to talk to us. we talked to him for like an hour. he has an incredible life story... just had some rough life experiences and hard trials that got him down and he slowly stopped coming from there. but i couldn't believe how excited he was to see us. the lesson that i learned from this visit was this: HEAVENLY FATHER IS SO AWARE OF HIS CHILDREN. last fall, this man was in the hospital for pancreatic cancer. and he survived. shortly after that he drove to the church building on a weekday and looked for a sign or something that told him what time the ward meets but couldn't see anything... she he kind of chickened out, but has been thinking about things every since then. and then we show up at his door. also, this man's records had been lost for a while, so no one knew anything about him... and we happened to find them right at this turning point in his life.   .....? i repeat... heavenly father is SO AWARE.

I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!! :D :D :D :D

now to get the area moving. :) it may be snail's pace right now, but even snails can gain momentum... ;)

i love you! hope you've had a fabulous week!

love

sister madsen

p.s. i'm sending pictures of some fun things: pictures from beautiful balboa park, which we visited last week, and these two cute little member girls who wore their missionary tags from primary when we came over for dinner the other night :)

"and the rocket's red glare..."

oh, hello. :)

sounds like you all had a great 4th! mine was good too! :) i can't believe that last year for the fourth i was watching the stadium fireworks from the MTC... gah!! so weird! this year for the fourth sister brown and i went to our ward's picnic... don't worry. we were DEFINITELY dressed in red, white and blue. :) (that's my favorite part. but i forgot to take pictures! darn...) and then we worked the night shift at the battalion, where we had ANOTHER barbeque (hehe--so spoiled), AND, after closing, guess what we got to do?? we got to crawl on the roof of the battalion--yes, all of us in pioneer dresses--and watch the fireworks on the beach! :) :) (haha... i promise i'm a real missionary and that i don't just do fun things all the time... :P)

this will probably sound a little cheesy. but it's crazy how you come to appreciate events in the world's history the more you understand the gospel. i mean, the revolutionary war is prophesied in the book of mormon!! so awesome. god is in everything. and WE LIVE in the promised land!! how cool is that?? i'm so grateful for a free country where the gospel has been RESTORED, and i'm humbled that i'm blessed enough to be a part of it.

well. the only two investigators we've been teaching regularly both told us to go away this week. (donna's the only one left and she's getting baptized on saturday--i forget that she's even our investigator because she's been set for baptism since we got here and she's practically a member already.) so... yeah. that kinda stinks. :( so we're just in the process of finding again... meeting with a lot of members and encouraging them--well, committing them ;)--to invite their friends! we have a lot of great members who seem willing to help so hopefully we'll see some growth here soon. peter doramus, for example, who is only TWELVE, and who is reading the book of mormon all by himself and is now in mosiah, walked over to his neighbor's house with us the other day to give him a book of mormon! :) "shall the youth of zion falter...? NO!" sooo cool. kids like that make me feel like there's hope in the world afterall. :)

a similar little miracle happened on sunday... magnus, one of the mendiolas who got baptized a couple weeks back, passed the sacrament! (he's also 12.) this young little boy, who had no previous knowledge of the gospel, now holds the power of god. it gave me chills to watch him. :) such a neat experience. i'm so grateful to be a part of this work! even in the times when it seems like there's not much happening.

also it was sister brown's birthday on sunday! she is SO SPOILED. :) our ward mission leader fed us dinner that night... they asked sister brown what she wanted and she said cafe rio. ha. so they made us homemade cafe rio!!! man, it was SO GOOD!! :) (the best thing about going two by two is that when your companion gets spoiled, you get spoiled too. :) ) AND they made this huge white cake with raspberry filling. mmmm.... (and here i am complaining about the need to lose weight... ha.)

lesson of the week:  2 nephi 9:29: to be carnally minded is death, and to be SPIRITUALLY MINDED is life eternal. i've realized, a few times now, that even on a mission, when you're about the lord's work 24/7, it doesnt come naturally to be constantly spiritually minded--its something we have to work toward. and unlike what i thought before my mission, i still won't have perfected it by the time i go home--turns out a mission isn't like some poof of fairy dust that magically makes you who you want to be. :P but it sure does get you closer, so long as you're willing to work at it. :)

think that's it for now! I LOVE YOU!! hope you have a great week!

sister madsen