Monday, April 25, 2016

Love, Support and Testimonies

Dearest Mother,

Oh how I love getting your emails every week!! I was told again this week of some missionaries making the sacrifice of never once emailing their mothers or immediate families (with the families support) as a bigger sacrifice on their mission, and I am super grateful for these emails that I get. They are the highlight of my weeks:) So thank you for never forgetting to email me, even if it sometimes gets here right when I am on the computer already. ;)

This week has been full of situations that I have found myself in in which I am so thankful for the Spirit and the Lord watching over me every day to help me be in the right place at the right time to help the right people find their way closer to Christ.

For example, a few weeks ago, I told you about a new investigator we had that only speaks Spanish, but that his niece agreed to be a translator for us in our discussions. We met with them again yesterday, and we had a recently returned missionary who served in Chile come with us to help teach in Spanish, since the niece doesn't know the Spanish gospel words. This time though, her husband and his brother were also there sitting in on the lesson. All of them agreed to listen to the message we had about the Book of Mormon, and they all agreed to read and pray about it! The niece said that she hadn't done so already (we challenged her to last time) because she thought that we were like some of the other Christian denominations she has met with before, and thought we might have been giving her something that was a changed Bible. But when we explained to her what the Book of Mormon was, and its importance, and all three of us testified (plus our original Spanish investigator) of its truthfulness, in whatever language we could (Sister Danible and I in English, and everyone else in Spanish). It was one of the coolest things to be a part of because it really showed and testified to me the power of the Spirit because I knew that they didn't really understand what I was saying when I said it in English, but they could tell that I meant what I said, and even they said they could feel the Spirit as we taught them. I'm super excited to see where this goes!

Sorry this is a shorter email, next week will probably be its normal long length again. Oh, also, transfer calls are this Saturday, and transfers are next week. I don't think I or my companion are being transferred, but I wanted to let you know just in case.
Love you all!!

Thank you so much for all the Birthday wishes!!
-Sister Monica Walker


PS Mother's Day is coming up soon!!! Next week I will give you the details (if I'm not being transferred) or when and where I will be skyping home. (both in my time and in your time so there will be no confusion) Continue being the awesome people that I know you all are!! I get to talk to you soon:):):):)

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Happy 20th Birthday Sister Walker!

[We, Monica's family, are very grateful for the friends she has in Albany, Georgia who can send us photos in the middle of the week. We know she's receiving some TLC from the people there. We wish her a Happy 20th Birthday! You can send her an email at monica.walker@myldsmail.net.]





Monday, April 18, 2016

Love Being a Missionary

Dearest Mother,

I forgot for a moment that Thursday is also the day Jake is getting married, and for a minute I was honestly shocked that all of y'all would get together to celebrate my birthday. I had a moment where I felt super important and loved and missed, and I knew I was the favorite and the "glue" that holds our family together, and then you reminded me that it was Jake's wedding, and reality came crashing down... hahaha I super excited for them though! And they couldn't have picked a better day to be married! Especially since you all will be able to celebrate my birthday too because of it:) Eat some cake for me! I never did get an official wedding invitation though, so could you send me pictures of the wedding? Because I know that you will be taking some, even if you aren't the photographer or whatever.. That's just you:)

My companion and I were talking about this being the nethermost part of the vineyard yesterday too!! Maybe it was because we actually got to go to Gospel Doctrine yesterday and you and I probably had the same lesson, but I do think it is pretty awesome that our thoughts were running along the same lines. Must be true then! Granted it is true regardless of where I am. Great minds think alike right?
When I get home from my mission, for the month that I will be home, I do want to help as much as I can with the people there. I'm not sure how much I can do in a month, but I will be back that following summer and I will do stuff then too. So you can tell Brother Hawkins he can use me if he needs me when I get home. I really do like visiting people, and sharing with them the gospel makes it all the more valuable of time used:)

I think the last W is Work. Except then it doesn't flow with the other words, but it would fit in the point of personal revelation! Because you have to work for it, even if you are willing and worthy and wise enough, you have to put forth effort to receive more from Heavenly Father. He rewards our effort more than our intention, even though He still takes that into consideration.

That is so awesome that the youth are singing to the people in the Retirement Homes. I have gone to visit a lot of members in those kinds of places, and it is so sad when I hear that we have been their only visitors for a long time, or we are the ones who come the most consistently, even over their own family that live in the same city just a few blocks down the road. They definitely love having people come visit them, even if it is just to sing songs to them. It doesn't even matter if we can sing well, as long as we try, they always love it. (So do the workers, I have had many refer to us as the angel singers) Super cute!

It is interesting for me to find people to teach who are your age Mom. I try to imagine what it would have been like if you hadn't known the gospel yet, and what it would have been like to teach you, and it has been pretty cool, first because I honestly don't know what you would be like if you didn't have the gospel in your life, and second, it really helps me to better relate to these people that we teach when I am reminded of you every time I teach them.

I really do love being a missionary! I have been so blessed to love all the people that I have met and I know I will continue to love people that I haven't even met yet. Yesterday was awesome as well, even though it was Sunday, and many people use that day as a literal day of rest and don't do anything, there were 4 members that were willing to come with us to visit some people, and some of them even drove with us an hour away to go give a blessing to a less active that will be going in for foot surgery this week! #Hisday That was a blessing in and of itself, because they hadn't seen this lady for a long time, and they were all good friends with her, but because they just expected her to come back by herself, hadn't seen her in a long while. Member relationships are important, and even if for whatever reason, friends aren't willing or interested in hearing about something important to your life (aka the church and the gospel) thats ok. BE A FRIEND FIRST. And then worry about the rest later. I talked a little about this in Relief Society yesterday, and really if someone says no to an invitation, its not the end of the world, just make sure you let them know that it is ok, that you still want to be friends, but if they ever do want to hear more, or they are ever curious, to let you know and that you would love to share. Christ's gospel is a gospel of love, not of forcefulness or condemnation. We are to love people to the church, not anything else.

Don't forget! 3 days 24 minutes and counting!! Also tell Jake congrats:)
Love you lots!!
Sister Monica Walker


PS I didn't really realize until my mission how close Mother's Day is to my Birthday.. I get to skype you in 3 weeks!!! Crazy right? Also it means that Dad has to find somebody new to speak on Mother's Day as I spoke the last two years on Mother's Day. Maybe it's just because he knows how much I love my mom:):)

Monday, April 11, 2016

Spanish

Dearest Madre,

Como esta? No hablo mucho Español, pero tangamos dos investigators de Mexico, y misionarios de español no vivan aquí. Mi compañero y yo vamos a leer El Libro de Mormon para aprender Español. Dios es Padre Celestial, El Niño es Jesucristo. Los profetas guían me. 

Yep. I'm not even sure I said that right, but there it is. My companion and I decided yesterday that we were going to read together the entire Book of Mormon in Spanish before one of us gets transferred, because as of yesterday, we have two Spanish investigators!! But due to the fact that there are no Spanish missionaries in the area, we get to teach them! It is going to be an adventure. We already taught them the Restoration, and luckily we had a Spanish book of Mormon in the car that we could give to them so they have it in a language they can read. We are super excited to teach them more about the Gospel. Fun story though, we found him through one of the dozen media referrals we received weekly, that take forever to contact due to the vastness of our area (probably two or so hours from the longest points), and it turns out that he moved here about a year ago from Mexico, where he was learning about the gospel from missionaries there. He had been taught for about a year before he came here, and his family is still being taught there in Mexico. I'm super excited to be able to help him. His niece (who is the other investigator) knows Spanish, and English is her first language, so she is acting as translator for us, when we can't figure out how to say it in Spanish, because we don't know Spanish, but she said she is willing to learn as well!! Super awesome! the only downside is that it is an hour away from where we live, so its a long drive, but the Lord willing it will all work out:)

Bro. Hawkins (from my home ward), me, Sister Danible
There is a great work to be done here, and I am so excited to see it come to fruition! Sister Danible and I are working hard to be the best missionaries we can be, and while it is true that we still have our ups and downs, we are still going strong. We had interviews with our Mission President and his wife last Friday, and it was really fun seeing them again! I loved what Sister Cottle talked to us about though, and I thought I would share some of my thoughts on it with y'all. First, a few months ago, she committed all of us to choose happiness every day. That is a lot harder than I thought it would be. But I did my best to do so. Last Friday, she checked up on us, to see how we did in choosing happiness, and then committed each of us on top of that to choose gratitude everyday. For me, the way that I am going to implement that into my life, is that any time I am feeling sad, depressed, angry, tempted, or whatever, I will begin a list of things that I am thankful for in my life. And I will continue listing until I can be happy again, and the moment of weakness is gone. I tried that over the weekend, when I was feeling particularly stressed, and I was amazing how quickly I was able to get around it, and to focus enough to get through it. The feeling of true gratitude that we can have in our lives, is akin to the feeling of happiness and love. I am so thankful for this opportunity to serve a mission and help those around me! I am thankful for my family who supports me from so many states away, and for all my friends who do so all around the world. I know that this is God's true gospel restored once again on the Earth, and that it will never again be taken from us! I know that through the gospel, and temple ordinances, that families can be sealed together forever, and I hold on to that hope and that knowledge as I go through life. I love my Savior! I know He lives! Not just as a spirit, but as a corporeal being with a perfect body of flesh and bone!

Thank you for all of everything that y'all do for me and all the missionaries in the world! Remember each one of them is a beloved child of someone else. Treat the missionaries in your own areas as you hope people around the world are treating your children, siblings, friends, etc. Love them, help them. This is your work too:)

Mucho Amor!

Hermana Walker

P.S. 9 days 23 hours and 54 mins until I have lived 20 years:)

Sunday, April 10, 2016

General Conference Weekend

Dear Mother:)

It is interesting that I am away from so much at home and home life. There are so many things that I forget that I used to do when I was home, and a year hasn't even passed! It is crazy to me to think that at this time next year I will be in school, and continuing my education, when I still have a long time to go on my mission. There are some awesome memories being made though here:)

For example, last Monday it rained super hard pretty much all day long (which it does every other day it seems like), and so Tuesday in the earlier evening, so before it got dark, Sister Danible and I and a recent convert who was in the car with us were driving down this road to find a potential we wanted to see. The GPS took us down this dirt road, and it came to this curve with a mud puddle in the middle of it. We looked at it for a while, but because we really wanted to see this potential, we decided to try to see if our car would make it (not the smartest thing ever), and our car got stuck. We realized pretty fast it was stuck, so we didn't try super hard to get out, because we didn't want it to sink even more. We rolled the windows down to see how far up on the car it was, and it was pretty far up. We didn't dare open our doors for fear of mud getting to the inside of the car. Plus it smelled nasty and we really didn't want to have to smell that until we could get it cleaned. But since we needed to go see what the address was where we were, and to see if there was anyone who could help us, we climbed out of the window of the car (after taking off our shoes so they wouldn't get muddy), well Sister Danible and I did, the member just stayed in the car, and ran barefoot across lots of rocks to a trailer park to ask for help. Long story short, the people in the trailer park couldn't help us as far as getting it out, but they did offer up their homes for us to stay in until a friend could come tow us out. We took pictures of it, because it was funny, and an adventure, and when the member who was towing us out came to get us, he made us get back in the mud so he could take pictures too.. And then he posted them on Facebook.. So those pictures are out there somewhere too.. Super fun:)





The car is ok, minus a few unnecessary pieces (something about a splash guard? The Firestone guy said we didn't need it on the car), one of which fell off in the mud, and the other which got bent when we went through the car wash, and it got super bent and scratched the pavement until we were able to get to a Firestone to have them remove it. *hides the whole way there because it was super loud and embarrassing* We turned the music up loud so we didn't hear it scratching the ground, and laughed the whole way out of the parking lot where we had inspected it and seen it bent in half.. Possibly the best part. Everyone's attention was on us. We are ok too:)

Conference was wonderful! We worked it out so that we were able to go to some members homes with some of the recent converts, and it perhaps was one of the best conference experiences I have ever had. After conference at each members home, we went around and told each other something that we had learned, something that struck us, or a talk in general that we really liked. It was really cool to see the different things that people had pointed out, and what struck different people. One of the members afterwards came up to us and thanks us for asking them to have us over for conference and dinner because it was a wonderful spiritual experience for him that he hopes to be able to one day repeat. He said it brought a great spirit into his home:)

Love you all!! If you didn't get an opportunity to watch conference then I really recommend you do so:) It was awesome for sure!


-Sister Monica Walker
My mailman from my last area
Kalani was a recent convert who I LOVE!
Not a pro player, don't even know which string is which, but we were helping some lady move and she said I could take a picture with it, so I did:)
We celebrated Sister Danible's birthday shortly after transfers:) It was super fun!