01 December 2025

 01 December 2025
Mooresville, IN

Hello Everyone! I hope you all are doing well; I have been good, but I've also been better. I'm trying to have the most positive outlook right now. 

TUESDAY: 

We did a lot of walking today, we walked about 9 miles! My legs were killing me. We had a lesson fall through, but it was okay because we had a great lesson with Brent! 

WEDNESDAY: We had interviews today with our mission President.  I was so excited! I asked some questions about our area and how we can be more productive, he talked about gifts that he sees in me. We did some birthday visits with a sister in our ward as well.  We met some cool sisters in the ward, then had a member meal.

THURSDAY: Thanksgiving!  It was a great day.  We had District Council and I shared the spiritual thought. I was able to call home and talk to my family. We went to Brent's for Thanksgiving dinner and  it was tasty.  We talked about one of my favorite movies at dinner Spaceballs.

FRIDAY: We did our weekly planning and got eggnog shakes from this place called "Steak and Shake". We had a lesson with someone who met with missionaries in the past and he seems super cool so we are going to keep meeting with him. We then went to visit an inactive member and he was cool too, we talked about Patriarchal Blessings. 

SATURDAY:  We received a severe weather warning on Friday, so we weren't able to do a whole lot. We visited a recent convert in a different ward whom Sister Green had baptized her first transfer. We then had dinner at our recent convert's house; it was so good!

SUNDAY: Our ward's meetings were canceled due to the weather, but we were able to attend the next ward meeting.  We had invited a person we contacted to church and while he initially didn't show much interest, he reached out to us on Sunday morning and asked for details so he could come to church. We gave him the information and he came! The Sacrament meeting was good, our second hour lesson was a little weird though! At the end of the lesson they asked for a volunteer to give the closing prayer and our friend volunteered!  I truly related to the talk that Elder Uchtdorf gave in the April 2025 General Conference titled "By This All Will Know That You Are My Disciples”  when he said:

"Many years ago...we invited a good friend, who was not a member of the Church, to join us in our Sunday worship service.... She accepted the invitation and joined us at the meetings of a nearby branch.

If you have ever brought a friend to church for the first time, you can probably relate to the way I felt that Sunday morning. I wanted everything to go perfectly....As the sacrament meeting began, I thought about my friend experiencing this for the first time, and I couldn’t help but notice things that made me cringe a little. The singing, for example, didn’t exactly sound like the Tabernacle Choir. Restless, noisy children could be heard during the sacrament. The speakers did their best, but they were not skilled at public speaking. I sat uncomfortably through the meeting, hoping that maybe Sunday School would be better.  It wasn’t.  All morning I worried about what our friend must think of this church we had taken her to.  Afterward, as we drove home, I turned to talk to our friend. I wanted to explain that this was just one small branch and it didn’t really represent the Church as a whole. But before I could say a word, she spoke up. “That was beautiful,” she said.  I was speechless.  She continued, “I’m so impressed with how people treat each other in your church. They all seem to come from different backgrounds, and yet it’s clear that they genuinely love each other. This is what I imagine Christ wanted His Church to be like.”  Well, I quickly repented of my judgmental attitude. I had wanted picture-perfect meetings to impress my friend. But what the members of this branch had achieved was a heart-perfect spirit of love, kindness, patience, and compassion."

After church we asked him what he thought and he said he liked it; he even said "I would love to be involved in your community"! It was a great experience and I hope it turns into a great teaching opportunity.

Spiritual Thought:

As I go into this holiday season I want to celebrate Christ everyday and carry that into the new year! We should talk of Christ everyday, not just around the Holidays!