Week ending November 12, 2013

Jenn was running short on time so she sent us the letter she sent to her mission president.

 

Hello Family and friends! This week has been great! Due to the holiday I am emailing on Tuesday! I don't have much time so I am sending what I sent my mission president! I hope you all had a great week and I would love to hear from you!

President Choi,

This week has been crazy full of ups and downs! Luckily the downs were not really in missionary work but just other circumstances. I still did not feel good at ALL this week but thankfully I was able to go to the Doctor today. (PS that is why Sister Mullins and I are emailing this evening. We had to go to my dr. appointment around our normal lunch time so we switched emailing to dinner since I had to go.) I hopefully found out what is going on but only time will tell. The doctor gave me some meds and I should see a big improvement in my stomach pains in the next few days. With that being said I will be honest that missionary work was hard this week. Stairs KILLED! But I know that our Heavenly Father blessed me because each and every time Sister Mullins and I entered into a lesson the pain would go away and I would be okay… until the lesson ended and then whoosh the pain was back! I am so glad that he helped the pain subside when teaching so that I could be sure to feel the spirit! That was a really neat miracle for me to see.

In other news this week was crazy for a few various reasons. An interesting part of the week that might bring you a good laugh… I was peed on by a dog. Yup that was a great highlight to my day ;) In all reality though it gave me something really good to laugh at. I also accidently deleted all of my photos from my mission which I was devastated about but the Lord is so good. He blessed me with a few computer genesis living in the ward I am serving it. They were able to restore 100 of my 400 lost photos. So much better than nothing!!! So those were the challenging things… now on to the great things. Zone conference was wonderful!!! I loved hearing about our goal for baptisms in 2014 being 1200 souls in seattle Washington!!! I loved it even more that as missionaries we made goals that took us to 1600 souls to be prepared and baptized. I also love that my zone made a goal of 300 baptisms for 2014 and we bumped it up one baptism so that it could be 301 or “I am a child of God”. There is so much work to do and I know that it will be a hard, exhausting, and rewarding year. I am really ready to give it my all! Sister Mullins and I have a baptism for a 9 yr. old girl this week and we are ecstatic about it! I can’t wait to see who else the Lord is preparing for me to meet and help learn and grow in the gospel.

I am admittedly sad that choir is no longer happening, I am not a trained singer and it was great to learn from Sister Choi. I also know that choir has truly touched my missionary work. Today in fact Sister Mullins and I had an opportunity to put our singing to use. I was supposed to have an appointment at 1:50 today and for some reason they didn’t take me back until 2:30 so to still feel productive we sang hymns because there was 4 other people in the waiting room. It may seem crazy that we sang in a waiting room but when we finally went back one of the woman waiting thanked us. It was then that I realized “what better place to sing then somewhere where people don’t feel good and are looking for ways to feel better” Hello best medicine out there… the Gospel! So that was really fun. I am glad that I can take what I have learned from Choir and apply it to my missionary work!

This morning I was studying 3 Nephi 17. I love this chapter soooooo much! I don’t think there is a single verse where I didn’t find something important. Verse 4 in particular struck me by surprise though. It says (concerning the lost tribes of Israel): “They are not lost to the father, for he knoweth whither he hath taken them.” I could not help but think of the scriptures shared in Zone conference in Alma 26! We must go and teach the people of Seattle everywhere! Their streets, hills, homes, temples, EVERYWHERE! The lord is preparing the people and waiting for us to do our part to find them! I am trying to do my part to find the people that are waiting and I know this week will be even better than this last week! Thanks for everything you and Sister Choi do! I will miss seeing you both on Mondays but that is okay! Onward to Zion! Sing, Sing, Sing. TO ZION!

Sister Franzen

P.s. sister mullins and I won our car inspection and look at our reward!!!

Oh ya! Golden Plates :) Hope you are all doing great! I love you and will write more this next week!!!

P.s. keep the Philippines in your prayers! I know some missionaries there/from there! Luckily all missionaries are safe and accounted for but others are not so lucky!