Off to New York to serve the Lord.....: First Zone Conference!

Hello Everyone,

This week I went to my first Zone Conference and it was amazing. I'm not kidding my mission president is an amazing teacher! It was great to be with other missionaries for the day. It comforts me to know that its not just me and Sister Zwick taking on New York by ourselves. It feels like that sometimes when we don't see other missionaries. My mission president went to an all mission President conference in D.C. and they were all asked to train us all on the same thing. I'm pretty sure that my mission president taught it the best over all other presidents. We talked about fufilling our purpose in the gathering of Israel. He talked about the Abrahamic covenant and how part of our covenant is to preach the gospel to the world. It was a great feeling to know that I'm fulfilling that covenant that I made to preach the gospel! Zone Conference is AMAZING! I learned so much and afterwards you feel so pumped to get out there and start teaching people. Me and Sister Zwick got really motivated to find more investigators and start teaching more lessons. I really love going to Zone Conferences and I can't wait for the next one.

Before I came on my mission all my buddies would tell me that a mission is filled with a lot of up's and down's. You can't really experience it or come to know what its like until you go on a mission. This week we went to go check on an investigator we hadn't seen in awhile. The first time we met her we knew we were led their by the spirit. She was so cute and so much fun to talk to and she was so eager to learn. She instantly became one of our favorite people. So we went to her house and we saw her about to walk out of her house and she saw us and said, "not today girls" and slammed the door in our faces. I was crushed! I didn't believe that she really had done that, we were her friend. It was really hard to let that go. That agency really stinks sometimes..haha Its hard because we knew we were led to her by the spirit. As a missionary you get to in some sense feel how our Heavenly Father feels when these people turn us away. I barley know these people and I'm so sad to see them do that, imagine how our Heavenly Father feels. Imagine how he feels when people turn his gospel away everyday. I don't know how he does it. I feel as if he is right there with us when we get sad about someone slamming the door in our face.

We got Mike a part member investigator to come to church again. That was exciting! We couldn't on the other hand get our investigator who has a baptism date to church. I think one of our biggest struggle is getting investigators to church. Church is so important and when they go they can feel the spirit and they progress so much faster, but when they don't come you can never move forward. Its so hard to get them to church. So any RM's if you have any great suggestions let me know!

This Saturday was AMAZING! We had back to back lessons all day long! It was seriously heaven! It was the best day ever! Teaching is the best part of the mission, but sadly that's not what we do all the time. When we don't get help from members we end up having to track or find people on our own and its not always that fun! (haha) It was so great to teach all day! I think our new goal is to try and get enough lessons so we can make everyday like that! :)

This week we met with this guy who probably isn't invested in getting baptized. He is non-denominational, so basically he believes in everything as long as it goes a long with the bible. It was so hard to teach him because he just wanted to learn out of the Bible. When he first wanted to meet with us he asked if we wouldn't bring the Book of Mormon. I laughed because there would really be no point at all in meeting with him if we didn't bring the B.O.M. It was just funny, but don't worry you best believe we brought the Book of Mormon. I was a little nervous about meeting with him because I don't know the bible very well. The lesson was civil and learning was on both ends. The whole time we were teaching he asked us where we got our information from and we would pull out the bible and show him, but he would say "no that's not what that scripture means." He looked at the bible to much in a literal way. Later on in the lesson he told us he believed that the Body, Soul and Spirit were three different things and then we asked him, "where does it say that?" and he says, "well I don't know" It was so funny! These people. At the end of the lesson he refused to read out of the book of mormon. He had a book that talked about the Book of Mormon and he said by reading that, that was all he needed to know. Oh man it was hard to meet with him, but he was nice and we did pretty well at knowing our stuff. I was very proud of myself. In those situations you just need to bear your testimony.

It was another great week! I still have bed bugs in my apartment, but we got to the point were sick of dealing with it. We just want to do missionary work. Who knows what will happen, I do know that no one is going to want to be my companion next transfer. haha I miss and love you all!

Sister Stacey

P.S. Letters are very much appreciated! I love hearing from people!

Pic 1and 2: We offered to talk a Less actives dog on a walk. Poor dog never gets out of the apartment. The dog was so happy!