Sister Madeline Brown: Week 28 - Papillion

Hello everyone. I jinxed it in my last email. There were real tornados in Lincoln this week. Scary stuff.

We had transfers and I stayed in Cottonwood, my new companion is Sister Nelson (no relation to President Nelson, bummer) shes from Arizona and she's so fun to be with! She had been serving in the YSA ward for 8 months before coming here, this is her first family ward she is serving in and she said its wayyyy different. I've learned a lot from her already and I'm stoked for this transfer.

We had transfer day and another lesson with Chloe, she made us beef & broccoli and Asian sweet soup for dessert, which is basically a really thin sweet almond syrup, almond-flavored gelatin cubes and crushed almonds sprinkled on top. It's soooooo different but soooooo good

We walked around a LOT this week. The weather was really nice, so we just went out and walked everywhere. We had so many cool miracles and talked to a lot of amazing people (most of them spoke Spanish. My Spanish is getting better though and I was able to communicate with them pretty well. We do free English classes for anyone who wants to come, so I gave out a lot of cards for that, hopefully, people show up hahaha.

I love being a missionary!

One of my studies this week that I really enjoyed was from Ether 2-6. The story of the Brother of Jared building the barges to go to the promised land. I had always focused on the first part of that story, him praying and working to receive answers to his prayers (because we must work to receive answers) but this time I focused more on chapter 6 and their actual journey to the promised land. It's such an amazing. and overlooked the miracle that the wind always blew toward the promised land though they had no control over any of it. Sometimes that's how we feel, like we have no control over anything. Like the whole world is against us and weighing on our shoulders, but there are always those small things that we do have control over. We have control over our own actions and our own conversion. We have control over our own thoughts and prayers and the way we treat others. These people on these barges didn't sit and complain that the journey was long, or that the boat smelled, or that they were sick of each other. They didn't just give up and ask God "why me??? why do I have to do this??" Instead, they chose to be positive. They chose to sing and praise and uplift each other even with all that seemed against them, and the wind never ceased to blow towards the promised land.

The promised land for us is the celestial kingdom, right? Eternity with our families and loved ones and with our Heavenly Father. A lot of our journey is going to be filled with pain, and suffering, and trial. How we choose to act and what we choose to do in those times of trial will determine where the wind will blow and where we will end up. The only way for us to get to our promised land is for us to give up the things we can't control to God, and focus on what we can control in our own lives, striving for good continually and enduring to the end with faith. As long as we are doing that, the "wind" will never cease to blow us toward the promised land.

Ulysses! We met him outside his apartment while walking and taught him the whole restoration!

Florence, NE

This weird smoker we saw while walking

Pretty blossoms

Dinner with Elders and Chloe

We live in the apartment above the Spanish Hermanas now so we hang out at night and work out together in the morning. They are so fun. Hermana Hansen and Hermana Jorgensen