Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Dear Everyone:

Sad news this week. Only part of the trio survived. Sister Dixon is leaving us :( However, Sister Jackman and I will rock Saco! It'll be great!

There's always good news with bad news though. One of our investigators, Abby, is getting baptized!

Abby is super awesome. She's 22 and started taking the lessons right before Sister Jackman and I got here. Her dad's best friend is a member of the ward here - Brother Farmer. One day, Brother Farmer went over to Abby's house and saw her reading some kind of book or something about God, and when he asked her about it she said she had recently become interested in religion. He said "Well you don't need any of that stuff! Just come to church with me!"

So she did. And the first time she went, it was a fast and testimony meeting. And she stood up and bore her testimony!

This girl is rock solid.

She's been to church basically every week since then, she comes to our Book of Mormon class on Tuesday nights, and she also brought her mom to a Relief Society cooking class we had last Saturday.

We're super stoked for her. The date is March 11th - which is really soon. But she is so prepared. It's people like Abby who, sometimes when things get hard, help me remember why I'm out here. And they help me remember how much the gospel really does bless lives. Even in just the short almost-2 months that I've known Abby, she's grown a lot. It's amazing to see!

One big reason that I'm pretty sure Abby has progressed so much is that she's awesome at reading her scriptures. She started the Book of Mormon from the beginning about a week and a half ago, and she's already in 2 Nephi! There's a huge difference between the people we're teaching who sincerely want to let Christ in their life, and those who are doing it more passively. Those who are sincere experience so much more change, so much more quickly!

It's interesting though, because this change and growth doesn't just come to those who are learning about Christ or the gospel for the first time. It applies to all of us. It reminds me of a series of videos on mormon.org, called 'Daily Bread'. There's 3 of them: Pattern, Experience, and Change.

Which is on purpose I'm sure, because first we need to establish a pattern of something, then we'll gain experience from that, and then the change will come over time.

The series is Elder D. Todd Christofferson, talking about why it's so vital that we take time to work on our spiritual side, our relationship with Christ every day. I know I've noticed on my mission the difference in my growth the times that I've really focused on my studies versus the times when I've gotten a little lax. There's a huge difference! The hard part is that we rarely notice the difference right away. Change is subtle. And we're constantly changing. The hard part is making sure we're changing for good!

So watch the videos. They're awesome.

Well, that's all for this week kids. Stay warm!

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg

P.S. Photo for the week - Sister Jackman, Sister Dixon and I at the temple last week! This was right before we went in, and right before the blizzard hit.

I'd walk through a blizzard to go to the temple any day.

Dear Everyone:

Super short e-mail this week. Life is good. We've been getting lots and lots of snow.

Like today.

First, the best thing ever happened - we went to the temple today!! I'll send a picture next week. But, then we had a bit of an adventure getting back to Saco. Because of the blizzard currently attacking the east coast (it's still snowing as I type this), the drive that only took us an hour and 20 minutes down took us about 4 and a half hours to get back.

But it was totally worth it. Because the temple is amazing.

Suggested reading for this week? Doctrine and Covenants Section 109. It was the dedicatory prayer for the Kirtland temple and it's amazing to read! And, if anyone doesn't really know much about temples, or you just want a reminder, watch this video all about temples and why they're so cool!

So that's the e-mail for this week. I love the temple. I'm so happy we were able to go today. You just feel so at peace in the temple. Even just pulling into the parking lot - it's like all my cares were gone, just for the couple hours we were there. It was absolutely worth the 4 hour car ride in a blizzard home. I never appreciated the temples when I was at home. Living in Utah, especially while I was at BYU, there were so many temples within an hour drive! And people here consider themselves lucky that the Boston temple is only an hour and a half away! Definitely makes me grateful and excited for all the opportunities I'll have to attend the temple when I get home!

Transfer calls are this weekend. I'll let you all know if the trio survives next week :)

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg

Zone Conference, blizzards, and big news!

Dear Everyone:

 

This week was full of snow, learning, and excitement!

We had a couple big snow storms this week. Wednesday it snowed all day long, really bad. So our cars were grounded. We had an appointment with a really solid couple though, who had come to church twice already, and we didn't want to cancel. So, we decided to walk! They live about 2 1/2 miles away, not too bad, and it was really fun on the way there. The walk back after the lesson however, was not quite as fun.

We were a little bit cold. However, we survived, and isn't walking a few miles in the snow what missionary work is all about??

We also had Zone Conference this week. So all the missionaries in Maine got together for a big meeting. It was really fun - the meeting was in Augusta, so I got to see a few people from the Augusta ward again, which was awesome!

The topic of zone conference this time was a talk called "The Fourth Missionary". It's by Lawrence E. Corbridge, who is a member of the Seventy. He gave the talk while he was serving as a mission president in Chile. (The talk isn't on lds.org... however he did give this talk in General Conference a few years ago, and it talks about a lot of the same kind of things.) "The Fourth Missionary" talks about how we can become the best missionary we can be - how we can make our mission something that impacts our life forever.

Elder Corbridge described 4 kinds of missionaries: the first two are disobedient, not very good. The last two, the third and fourth missionaries, are both good missionaries who do a lot of good and get a lot done. However, the fourth missionary learns a lot more and gets a lot more out of his mission, even though there's only one real difference between the two. The difference? The fourth missionary gives his heart to the Lord.

Sounds like a small difference, but the results are huge! We spent a lot of time talking about what it really means to give your heart to the Lord, and essentially, what I got out of it, is that it comes down to your attitude.

In life we are constantly asked to do things. Things we enjoy, things we despise, we constantly have things to do. But, our attitude has a huge impact on what we learn from those things!

The third missionary doesn't really want to do a lot of things the mission involves, but he does them anyway. He doesn't really enjoy his mission, he mostly accomplishes things and works out of a sense of duty. Since he still works hard, he's still successful - to a degree. However, he doesn't learn as much as he would have if he had a desire to do those things a mission involves.

And that's the key. It applies to every aspect of life as well. If you take a class because it's required for your major and you hate every day of it, you're not going to learn very much. But, if you study because you want to learn and grow, you'll not only do better in the class, you'll learn and retain a lot more information! If you wake up everyday with the perspective that you 'have' to go to work, you'll dread your job. If you have the attitude that it's a privilege to go to work, you'll love your job!

That's the point of the fourth missionary. And that's how it applies to all of us. Elder Corbridge said it best in the fourth missionary talk, and he said it in his talk in general conference. He said: "The Lord’s way is not hard. Life is hard, not the gospel. “There is an opposition in all things,” everywhere, for everyone. Life is hard for all of us, but life is also simple. We have only two choices. We can either follow the Lord and be endowed with His power and have peace, light, strength, knowledge, confidence, love, and joy, or we can go some other way, any other way, whatever other way, and go it alone—without His support, without His power, without guidance, in darkness, turmoil, doubt, grief, and despair. And I ask, which way is easier? . . . Life is hard, but life is simple. Get on the path and never, ever give up. You never give up. You just keep on going. You don’t quit, and you will make it."

So that's the question for this week. What way have we chosen? I know I've been thinking about that a lot this week. What my attitude is. Am I choosing to be happy, or am I waiting for others to make me happy? Because there's no reason for me to not be happy, right now, today. If I'm not willing to let the Lord and the gospel change me, it's not going to change me. I have to let Him guide me, and that's how I'll grow. I like simple, so I think I'm gonna choose the Lord's way. That's the only way that really brings happiness, after all.

Speaking of happiness, here's where I'm revealing the big news from this week: we get to go to the temple!!

Previously, missionaries here in the New Hampshire Manchester mission were only allowed to go to the temple at the end of our mission, because the closest one is in Boston, which is outside our mission boundaries. However, President Stoker is the man, and he managed to get the rule changed so that now we get to go every 6 months! We've already found a ride to go, and so we're going next Tuesday! We have to change our P-day, so I'll e-mail next Tuesday instead of Monday, but it's totally worth it.

Well, that's all for this week. It's been pretty good. It's crazy - I get home in exactly 6 months from this week. Time has gone by so fast!! I can't even believe it!

I love you all!

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg

A baptism is a great way to end the week.

Dear Everyone:

 

Eliza got baptized this week! And then confirmed on Sunday! Woo!

 

It was wicked awesome. There were a lot of ward members who came out to support her and her friend Casey (who originally introduced Eliza to the church) also came up for it! I don't really know what to say about it really - everything went according to plan. We sang some hymns, a couple talks were given, and covenants were made. Oh, and refreshments were eaten afterwards, of course. This was a Mormon event.

It was so cool though. Eliza was almost literally glowing when she came out of the water. Not in a creepy way, but a filled-with-the-Spirit way. So great to see. And she's also going the Boston temple this coming Saturday to do baptisms there for the first time. She's so solid!

The only other exciting thing that occured this week was that I went on exchanges on Tuesday with none other than my trainer, Sister Buxton! She is now my Sister Training Leader (the Sister missionary who is called to kind of take care and give extra training/support to other Sisters), so she came and spent the day with me in Biddeford, while Sister Dixon and Sister Jackman went to Portland. It was a lot of fun. It was interesting how I was with Sister Buxton about 9 months ago and it felt like yesterday! We were able to go right into teaching together again with no problems. It was good to be with her again.

Life here is good. There's a lot going on in this area - which is both great, and overwhelming at the same time. There's so much potential we almost don't know where to start! None of us really know the area very well yet either - Sister Jackman and I have only been here for 3 weeks now and Sister Dixon had only been here for one transfer before that. So we're all kind of figuring out how this area works and to help it together. The trio is good, a lot of fun, but it takes a lot of patience at the same time. And patience is something that I haven't been blessed with a lot of. So that's definitely something to work on for this week. And probably the week after that as well.

So, the Mormon Message for this week is one that we showed during Eliza's baptism. While she was drying off we showed a couple videos and I really liked this one. It's all about the Book of Mormon - what's not to like? Go watch it and think about how cool it is that we have the Book of Mormon on earth today, and how much it can bless our lives if we let it!

 

Love you all!

 

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg