Joyful Rude Awakenings

Dear Familia & Friends,

Yeeha can you feel the heat?!? And I mean from a general authority Elder Clark from the general 70. Alright folks, this was the BEST Zone conference I have EVER had in my LIFE. Along with my delightful trio Sister Hanna & Beck, how sincerely honored & grateful I REALLY am for them.

This Zone conference was mind blowing in every way possible & I felt like I had a good beating to my pride.  Talk about learning humility & ripping out the natural women in me. I had prayed to learn more about faith this week & boy did I ever. Where do I even start, be prepared to get uncomfortable ladies & gentlemen because I am going to be blunt & share what Elder Clark shared. We all need to step it up!  It was a breath of fresh perspective.  I really needed this & I am thrilled to apply it. I am thrilled to be a Real disciple of Christ from yesterday & this day forward. I have never changed SO MUCH & SO GREATLY & SO QUICKLY in my life!!!!!!!! It is as simple as deciding now & being done with our stupidity. Put God FIRST! If you are not then get your act together now. You know of your imperfections so be done with them just STOP IT & get to work. And I'm not talking about the world's work, God's work.

Ok let me rewind before I get testifying, wow I am invigorated & energized, I feel great right now!!! So earlier last week I decided to count down specifically how many weeks & days I had left, I had never gone down to the days but I really wanted to know how much time I have left.. The motives at first were totally trunkie, but then happily the spirit inspired me to decide what habits I wanted ingrained in my life & how in 116 days I could become closer to Christ (that started on Saturday the 7th) it's now 112. I have 17 weeks left, I decided for the next 9 weeks to study for each week the Christlike attributes in Preach My Gospel to try to obtain it. The last 8 weeks of my mission I was thinking it would be fun to get advice or something I could study & work on from each of the
siblings for the last 8, so on Sunday August 10th your first Amy in choosing a topic for me or one thing you think would be valuable to work on for a week :) and then April you'll be the week after that & so forth, so get your thinking caps on kiddos. Mom & Dad you two will be the last because I thought it would be cool to work on it together since you'll be here. Greatly appreciated!

On Saturday night I was having a rough night & my companions were just what I needed. I got ready for bed quickly after planning & I was just sad. I went to bed early & tried to hold it all in when sweet Sister Hanna came & held me just told me to let it all out. I bawled & bawled & bawled like a baby. Sister Beck came in & we all cuddled on my bed & talked. I was over stressed with all my weaknesses & I didn't know how to meet the demands of a mission. Sister Beck had the great insight of why us girls only serve for 18 months, it's because we are perfectionist & give our whole hearts, we couldn't do it for 2 years because it would destroy us. Well not that we couldn't just that we might lose our minds. I love my fellow sisters & their insights! But it has been really cool to realize more after Elder Clark that we can do this more then this amount of time we are allotted. We are to be missionaries for life! We are effecting Eternity not just here & now.

So I decided to study the Christlike attributes for these next 9 weeks in order, I started with faith on Saturday & will study for the week & switch on Sunday for the next one. I have also wanted to improve my prayers because I have felt that they have lacked sincerity. It was powerful yesterday because Sister Cusick spoke on prayer & President Cusick spoke on faith. I love them! Life changed. Sister Cusick read from the "Adjusting to missionary life," stress manual & from Preach My Gospel. In it it says to try to give a prayer of Thanks. Instead of
asking for things just a straight prayer of thanks. She is such an example because she not only spoke about it but she tried it for herself & she spoke on how nice it is because it requires more thought on how to rephrase things & refrain for asking for her children to be blessed & thanking instead. I realized wow it requires more trust in God that He is hearing what your heart is desiring as you thank Him for things. And this morning another light bulb clicked for me when I
realized WOAH trust= faith so when we say a prayer of thanksgiving that is acting on faith that He will give you the blessings you thank Him for because you are Trusting in Him that it will happen. I tried this prayer last night & this morning & wow what a difference, example: instead of saying, "please bless that we will be able to meet with the Oakey's friends we just met at FHE again," I switched it to "Thank Thee for the opportunity we will have to meet with the Oakey's friends again, thank thee that they will learn more about thine gospel." Same for blessings for the family I thanked God for helping Dad heal from his shingles rather then asking that they will please go away. It's an automatic trust in the prayer that God knows what you are asking for & giving Him thanks for. :) isn't that epic! I feel prayer automatically becomes that more sincere & wow requires more action on the part of the prayer giver!

So speaking of action! Faith= Action. President Cusick gave an excellent talk on the different types of faith described in the scriptures & he talked about the difference of little faith in Luke 12:28 & Much faith in Mosiah 27:14 & Exceeding faith in 2 Nephi 3:24& then about UNshakeable faith in Jacob 4:6. We need unshaken faith which was epic because in 1 Nephi 17 towards the end it talks about God shaking Lamen & Lemual...

"54 And it came to pass that I stretched forth my hand unto my brethren, and they did not wither before me; but the Lord did shake them, even according to the word which he had spoken.

55 And now, they said: We know of a surety that the Lord is with thee, for we know that it is the power of the Lord that has shaken us. And they fell down before me, and were about to worship me, but I would not suffer them, saying: I am thy brother, yea, even thy younger brother; wherefore, worship the Lord thy God, and honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee."
(1 Nephi 17:54-55)

Ha ha so perfect because I definitely got shaken this zone conference it was a good slap to the face or how Sister Beck says a "humble hug from God because He would never slap us." Tee hee very sweet saying coming from Sister Beck because she is my spit fire miss sass afrass I love her spunkyness. Ha ha side note Sister Beck is a pinapple, Sister Hanna is a star fruit & I am a kiwi.

Alright back to being Shaken by the Word of God! Elder Clark did not hold back on us missionaries. I was amazed with how balanced he was in just the right amount of boldness & fun & humor. He was great! Besides the fact that I was silently crying at times it was great for me. It is always very painful to face everything you are not doing that you know you need to be doing & it's even more painful when you can't run away from the truth & you are forced to buck up as a missionary & learn how to Step it Up for crying out loud!!!

Ok, there is so much to write so brilliant idea, I will take a zillion photos of my notes from the zone conference and send it your way & then ya'll can read them at your fancy but on the conditions that you promise to change. That you will work on putting God first in your life. Oh & I will send the notes on President & Sister Cusick's talks & Elder & Sister Clark's.

One of my favorite parts was he talked about if we have family members we want to accept the gospel then we need to see strangers as our family members as our dad's or moms or sisters or brothers or etc who ever it is that needs to accept this gospel. If we want those we love to accept it we need to that much more diligently work. I didn't even get to write down everything, yeeha!

He also had us write down a list of people we had wished we shared the gospel with before our mission. I am going to write my testimony in some Books of Mormon to send your way for those individuals.

Anywho I don't even know where to go SO much amazing things that I learned & the 5 things I am going to change= 1. Courage 2. Obedience 3. Have Fun 4. Don't Idle time, use every minute wisely (I can sleep when I am dead, heck Elder Clark is Elderly & he told us he gets up at 4:30 in the morning to work out because he doesn't want to do the St. George shuffle) 5. Plan & make Goals.

Elder Clark says if we want to be successful in life to study Preach My Gospel chapter 8, I use to think that chapter was super boring, my eyes were opened in my studies this morning. People if you are not you need to study pmg & the Book of Mormon EVERY single day. No wonder why your life might be stressful go to the right source of strengths & power EVERY day. Oh & the bible is good to :)

Ok I love ya'll & you better be inviting the missionaries to your parties to introduce to people & please your friends will not call them on their own, have dinner with your friends & the missionaries even if the first couple of meetings are focused on the gospel it is preparing them & they greatly need it. Hebrews 11 by faith all things are possible. Step it up everyone :) oh especially in our church
callings, God come first!

Love you with all my heart,

Sister Bush