Nov. 3, 2014 Littleton, New Hampshire

Adventures

Family!!!                               Nov. 3, 2014

Hey, hope the week treated you well!  I'm still pretty confused about how it all went down on my end, honestly.  It seems like it was the the longest and shortest week ever...  The highs and lows all over again!!  At least it didn't snow like it was supposed too!  Although, it has started to get super chilly.  It also has got real dark real fast now that we've turned the clocks back.  Winter is coming!

So, pretty much I don't even know where to start, so many adventures!  I guess I'll go by days...

Monday.  Definitely the least crazy day, which was much needed!  We broke down and bought way more candy than we needed for Halloween... Sister Maxwell's sweet tooth may be the death of me!  But, we were able to get everything done that we needed too, and it was just a good, relaxing day! :)  Little did I know what was in store for the rest of the week!

Tuesday.  ZONE CONFERENCE!!  Super amazing! :)  We went to the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial, which was great!  Sister Maxwell's first zone conference...and my last.  Bittersweet.  It was just what I felt I needed though.  President talked all about the Atonement, and how to help others, and ourselves try to understand it more.  However, I know that no matter how much I study it, I'll never be able to fully comprehend everything the Savior did for me.  I feel so blessed to have the knowledge that I do about Christ, and I know that I've learned so much more about the Atonement on my mission than I ever had before.  Something else awesome was that I got to see Sister Sumsion again!!  It has been great seeing her more often, and what a blessing being able to serve in the same mission!! :)  And to top it all off we got to see the movie, Meet the Mormons!! :)  I loved it so much, and I'm so glad that we were able to see it!  What a great missionary tool!  I'm so grateful for the technology we have to be able to spread the gospel to such a wide audience :)  It was a great conference, and I was pretty exhausted by the end of it (we had to wake up at 4:15 that morning..).  We exchanged companions right after and I headed back to Littleton with Sister Lassen.  It was quite a memorable exchange...

Wednesday. We did service at the senior center, which was wonderful.  I love the people there, and it is a great opportunity to get to know lots of people!  After, we headed back to our apartment and not two minutes later, we get a knock on the door.  It was the elders who serve with us in the Lyndon ward and they looked totally freaked out.  They asked us if we were alright and what was happening and stuff like that, and we had no clue what they were talking about.  So, what went down was that I totally spaced to tell our district leaders that we were in and safe the night before and I never turned the phone up, so it was on silent all night and day.  Around 10 am everyone started trying to get a hold of us to see if we were alright, but we had no clue.  We were missing people for a couple of hours!  The elders went all around Littleton trying to find us, and they were super relieved when they finally did.  Wow, I shouldn't be trusted with the phone, I really shouldn't!  It was quite the experience! :)  We did see some awesome miracles later though!!  We went to do some finding and while we were walking this car slows down and pulls over next to us and... Susan comes out to greet us!!  Several weeks ago Susan came up to us on Main street and introduced us to her family.  They had moved from Oregon and her best friend is a member of the church.  She is super nice, and she really wants us to come over!  Also...they just moved right into Littleton!! :)  It was great to reconnect with her!  We also had an incredible lesson with Stephen!  Stephen's been taught for more than a year and a half now and is doing well, but is struggling with the Word of Wisdom.  The spirit was very strong in the lesson,and we addressed some concerns that he had and testified of the importance of daily prayer and scripture study.  The little things help strengthen testimony so much!  We were all really touched, and I'm so grateful we had that experience with him!  On the way to exchange back, we totally got lost, and we had no clue what the address was to the place we needed to go.  Thankfully, we thought to look, and the maple farm was in the GPS, so we were able to find our way back..  And now I'm with Sister Maxwell again! :)  Exchanges.. I always learn so much from them :)

Thursday. So, getting back into the routine of things was harder than I thought I'd be after two busy days.  I was super tired and not as motivated.  We had two good lessons with members, but the rest of the day fell through.  We decided to go to Lisbon, which is kind of the sketchy town in our area.  We were contacting on Main St. and this man was walking towards us, so we were all like, alright, lets talk to him!  But he stopped dead in his tracks looking across the street then ran over and started banging on this persons door.  We thought it was kind of weird so we looked, and there was totally a fire on someones front porch!  We ran across the road too, but no one was coming to the door so the guy asked us if we had a phone and to call the fire department over.  So, yep I had my first experience calling 911!  It was pretty crazy!  The guy in the house finally came out after awhile coughing pretty bad probably because of the smoke.  Then, other people came with buckets of water and were able to get it out.  Wow, that was pretty unexpected.  It was really good that guy saw it before it got too bad!!  The fire was right next to their fuel line!  Scary..  The police and firemen came and everything and we just kind of left.  Another adventure!  And not the only one of the day at that.  We had a semi-lesson with a potential that we found out has a pretty bad mental illness.  It was a super scattered discussion and the general feeling after as we talked about how it went was confusion.  After that we looked at our phone and saw a text from a member about needing to be at her mothers house "right NOW" for dinner because she invited a non-member over for us to teach.  Um...what?  She had texted that two hours before.  We called the member and there had been a big miscommunication and overall, I just felt so bad.  After that I had by biggest low point of the week for sure.  The stress and business of the week hit me all at once.  Never fun!  But, I made it through the rest of the night, and I'm so glad that I had Sister Maxwell there to kinda calm me down! :)  She is great.  It was quite the day!

Friday.  Halloween! We did weekly planning, went to funeral homes to try to sign ourselves up on the clergy list... we thought it would be a fun way to spend the holiday :)  Then, we went to the ward Halloween party!!!  So, usually they have missionaries come in at 5 pm on Halloween, but our bishop really wanted us there, so he had us talk to our mission president who said that if there were non-members there we could go.  The party turned out awesome!!  There were a lot of less-active and non-members there, and we got to meet lots of new people! :)  I love this ward so much, they are awesome!!  We had a great Halloween!

Saturday. We had some good lessons, and did some finding, but the highlight of the day was the baptism of a boy in the ward.  It was pretty awesome!!  Quite the miracle he was baptized with the water in the font being as low as it was!  They didn't start filling it until an hour before so the water didn't even reach his dad's knees!  They had to try four times until he finally went all the way under :)  A memorable baptism!  On the way back, the member who drove us told us about an awesome missionary experience that she had!  She told her friend about her new calling working in the Primary and about how she decided to go back to church, and her friend was super interested, so she said she'd set up a time for us to come over have dinner with her and her friend so we could teach her.  Miracle! :)  So great to see members have awesome experiences like that!  Also, Whitney got her mission call!!  Finally! She goes into the MTC the same day I leave, called to serve in California!  I'm super excited for her!  She'll be a great missionary, she has helped us soooo much! :)

Sunday. These members are amazing!  Their desire to share the gospel is producing miracles as they've invited their friends to learn about the gospel and been examples!  So cool! Two members invited their friends to church, and they both came!  Also, it was Sister Mann's last time at church, and she bore a powerful testimony about sharing the gospel!  After, we went to a potential's house who works with one of the members, and he let us in and we had a lesson with his whole family!  He is super nice and has always wondered what his boss's religion was all about so he was happy to learn.  He also wanted his children to learn as well.  The spirit was so strong as we testified about how the gospel has blessed our families, and he said he wanted to invite us over for dinner soon along with his boss!! :)  Another great miracle!  I've gained such a strong testimony of working with members!!  It is definitely the most effective way to share the gospel! :) :)

Overall, this week has been a total adventure.  Well, a mission in general is an adventure! Sometimes I feel like I'm going through a bunch of rapids, but I definitely know how important it is to just stay in the boat and keep hanging in there no matter what!  Reminded me of Elder Ballard's talk in October conference!  What a blessing to be able to have so many experiences, I've learned so much! 

Have a wonderful week!! Love you!

Hold on!
Sister Bergeson :)