Aloha!! For Realsies!

ALOHA EVERYBODY!!!

This week sure was an adventure! 

After receiving some final training from President, we left Honolulu for Laie on Wednesday! I got to meet my dear companion, Sister H from Japan. I am the only American living in our pad! Everyone else is Chinese/Japanese/etc! I love these sisters. I am already learning about Asian culture, and today I even picked up a single grain of rice with my chopsticks! They were so impressed hahaha. Thank you mom and dad, for introducing me to sushi and chopsticks :)

Serving in the Visitors' Center is a very different experience! As you probably know, we get to wear muumuus, we take visitors from the Polynesian Cultural Center by tram to Temple grounds, and we meet people from all over the world on a daily basis. This transfer, I have been called to serve as an Online Proselyting missionary, so I work on Mormon.org chat instead of a real area around here. It is very exciting! Apparently, I am the first missionary here to be trained while serving online instead of in a ward. I am not complaining because there is so much work to be done there. Also, this mission is seriously called the 40 pound mission because the people here are so loving and feed missionaries so much food! So I am avoiding that for a little bit ;) BUT just a heads up, you probably won't recognize me in 18 months! haha

Every morning we are blessed to wake up early and go running. My favorite spot to run to overlooks the ocean and you can feel the salty breeze. It is so cool to be able to have a Hawaiian vacation for 30 minutes every morning! We are very blessed to be here. Most importantly, however, we are blessed to be able to serve on Temple grounds every single day. The peace and Spirit here are so strong. I wish I could explain it better.

So one of the exhibits here is called God's Plan. It takes you through the lives of a simple, normal family from the ups and the downs, and pains and beauties of life. Most importantly, it teaches about the Temple, and because Heavenly Father loves us unconditionally, he has provided a way for us to be together as families for ETERNITY. I am so blessed that I get to see that every single day, and testify of its truthfulness to families that need these blessings. I am so grateful for you, my family. I KNOW that, no matter what, we can be together forever because of the blessings of the Temple. It is a powerful, true fact. As I look into the eyes of all the families that come into here to learn more about this gospel, I am filled with an overwhelming love for them that only reveals a sliver of the love our Father in Heaven has for us, His children. May we all pray to feel this love for those we come in contact with, so we might understand the love He has for us a little better.

This week hasn't been easy, but it has been so worth it. I love you all!! Keep being awesome!! 

Love Sister Willardson

Aloha :) June 9, 2014

Well Hello there, everyone!!

This week just FLEW by, I cannot believe it! This last week was so great. I cannot believe how much we are able to pack into 24 hours. It is a miracle honestly.

Speaking of miracles, I got my flight information!! I am leaving June 16th around 12. Starting this Wednesday I am doing special Visitors' Center training with a few other sisters. We will be going to Temple Square and everything!! I'm the only other sister that did not learn a new language. English all the way, baby!!

OH and thanks to Jacob Cooper, Tater Tot, Kelsie, Grandma, Sister Lamp and my mom for the letters/dear elders. It makes my day when I get mail!

So today since it is P Day we got to go to the temple and guess who else was there??? DAVID ARCHULETA. We just missed him, he came in right before we left but as we were leaving the temple worker said that he had just come in. HAHAHA random. In my past life I would have waited outside the temple doors for 2 hours to wait for him to come out. :D

I am so grateful for the opportunity I have had to be here and study at the MTC. It is not easy, but it is completely worth it. This past week was a little rocky for me and my wonderful companion, sister Christiansen. We were teaching three investigators (two were real, one was just our teacher). I'm just going to share one story, and I'd like to call it the Fortune Cookie Miracle haha. Gabby was the new investigator we took on this week, and our first meeting with her was crazy. She was suuuuper sweet, but very cold hearted and told us that she was not interested at all in the church, but she just wanted to learn about what we believed. She had many questions, but we were scared to answer them because we felt like she would kick us out if we shared our testimonies. I asked her to read a scripture from the Book of Mormon and she refused, and would not touch it. She would not read from any of our pamphlets either. At the end of the lesson, we were a little distraught. The next day we had an appointment to meet with her again and before the lesson, sister Christiansen and I prayed fervently that she would be touched by our message and her heart would be softened. That lesson, we taught about the Restoration of the gospel, Joseph Smith, and not only did she read from the scriptures, but she agreed to take a pamphlet! It was amazing. The third lesson we taught her, the spirit was so strong and we could tell that she was feeling it. We talked about the Plan of Salvation and we were reading through Doctrine and Covenants when she asked sister Christiansen why she had so many things hilighted in her scriptures. Sister C explained that it was because they all meant something to her. She read a random one about seeking truth and bewaring deception and Gabby started hysterically laughing. She said that the night before, she had eaten a fortune cookie that had said the exact same thing!!!!!!!!! I think that was a miracle. After that, Gabby was very open to what we were teaching and we could tell she wanted to hear more but we ran out of time. At the end of the lesson, we were finishing speaking about the plan of salvation when we said that we can all live with God again if we accept Christ and utilize His atonement, but in the end it is our choice. She said, "Who wouldn't want to live with God again?" Exactly. That was our last lesson with Gabby because she was being deployed with her husband later in the week. We took a picture with her and said our goodbyes. 

I am so grateful for the chance we had to teach and learn from Gabby. She is an amazing woman, and I love her. My heart ached knowing that we didn't get to have more time with her. I've learned this last week that the most effective teaching occurs when we have love for those we are teaching. All the miracles we had with Gabby were not due to our abilities as teachers, but because we were able to listen to her and guide her to learning of and coming closer to Christ. The spirit is the teacher, we are just the loving guides. 

From teaching Gabby, I now know that I CAN be an effective servant of the Lord in helping bring people closer to Christ. I am confident in this because I am confident in His love for all of us. Everyone deserves to know that they have a loving Heavenly Father, and that this Gospel blesses families, and that it is true. We as missionaries cannot force them to the truth, but rather testify of what we know to be true, and guide them to finding out this truth for themselves. We all need to exercise faith, no matter where we are in our lives. I put my faith in the Lord as I wake up every morning and put His name on the missionary tag over my heart. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY.

Love you all!! 

Love Sister Willardson

Hello, Beautiful people!

This is my first email home from the MTC... I haven't been here for a week yet and it already feels like it has been a MONTH!! I don't even know what the date is, it is so crazy... The schedule here is like wake up at 6:30, go go eat go study go go eat study study eat study study go go go go. Hopefully that made sense.... hahaha

Real quick I want to thank Jacob and Kelsie for the special/wonderful packages and mom and Tater-Tot for the Dear Elder letters. It is the BEST to get mail, I love it!!!

Well despite the hectic schedules I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT HERE. I am so grateful for all of your prayers because I could feel them at the times that I was getting discouraged. Some experiences here are ups and downs, but mostly ups! My two teachers, Bro. Payne and Bro. Starkie are awesome. Bro. Payne looks exactly like Trevor Oberender, which has been pretty funny in class. He is also our "investigator," so I feel a special connection when I am teaching him! I am so excited to get to Hawaii and teach the people that I have already grown to LOVE. 

I love my companion Sister Christiansen! She is so sweet and we work very well together. I will talk more about that in a sec though, so hold your horses! So my district here is awesome!! They are all leaving next Wednesday for the DC south mission. I found out today that I haven't gotten my flight plans yet because they are keeping me an extra week for training specific to serving at the Visitor's Center. So I will be all alone and companionless :( BUUUT I heard through the grapevine that there is another sister here (I think from the Philippines) that is also going to the Hawaiian mission! But she is learning English so I'm hoping she will be finished soon enough so she can be my companion. IM SOOOOO EXCITEDDDD

Sister Christiansen and I are teaching two real investigators tomorrow, along with our "practice" investigator. The pressure is on!! Last week we were walking and our teacher came up to us and pointed at a lady reading the Book of Mormon on a bench and said "I want you to go talk to that woman and set up an appointment with her." UMM WHAAAT?? My comp and I were terrified but we said a quick, earnest prayer together and walked up to her and introduced ourselves. We ended up talking to her for a whole hour on that bench. Her name is K-min (It is actually longer but that is what she told us to call her bc we couldn't pronounce her name haha) and she is from Korea. She wanted to learn more about the church and she had just met with some missionaries here in the MTC so she was reading some scriptures that they assigned for her. She comes from a Buddhist background, and she had a lot of questions for us about faith and baptism. She was sooo sweet and agreed to meet with us again. One of the things she said to us as we were sitting there was "I know that if I can have faith in this book (the book of mormon), then I can believe anything that you say." WOA. I wish I had that kind of faith! 

That message has been residing with me for the past few days now. And it is crazy to think how right she was about her comment. The Book of Mormon is the KEYSTONE of our religion. This means that this church either stands or falls according the Book's truthfulness. I testify to you all that this book is TRUE. It is another testament of Christ and His characteristics. These characteristics, if we study and replicate, can make the difference between living just a happy life and a fully converted life. I want to live a converted life. I want to consecrate this next year and a half to my loving Heavenly Father and Savior because I owe them so much. Coming to the MTC, I was still hoping that serving a mission was what the Lord wanted me to do, and during my time here I have realized that I didn't need a slap in the face answer to know that I am doing what He wants. We are all called to be missionaries and share our knowledge of the restored gospel with those we meet. Looking at the MANY blessings I have had leading up to the mission and this past week, I know that the Lord has been looking out for me and helping me get to this point. That has been my answer. This experience at the MTC has been beautiful and wonderful and stressful and the best decision I ever made.  I know that there are people in Hawaii that are being prepared for this message. I am so stinking excited to meet them and help them find this happiness that I have taken for granted all my life. 

Also I think I have had chocolate milk for every meal (including breakfast) so far. Here's to praying I don't become lactose intolerant.... hehe

I love you all and I'm so grateful for the emails/letters of encouragement!! I am so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. Read the book of Mormon. Again and again. It will change your life every single time. 

I LOVE YOU! 

Love Sister Willardson 

PS we are trying to get the computers to send pictures but we are still trying to figure it out... we will keep trying!