Transfer 12: Week 5; North 3

Hello!

This will most likely be my last post... I leave on My P-day next week.

This week has been super crazy. There are so many things that have to be done because this mission is not like any other in the world. We have to split up our area book and give our beloved investigators to the other sisters in the mission. Sister Au-yeung is already on top of the people I sent to her and some of the people who met with the missionaries before stopped meeting with them and now she is teaching them with her trainee... my crazy cat man friend and the Philippine man obsessed with finding the secret to happiness. Our investigator in Kenya hasn't been picking up recently because his phone died, so hopefully he doesn’t get lost. Sister Platt and Aranda have some interesting troubles with our investigator from Nairobi... so hopefully everything is going well.

We've met some amazing members during the Christmas lights. One lady I met was an amazing member missionary... she was a convert of a couple of years and wanted all of her friends to know more about the gospel. The funniest thing was that I never invited her; she just stopped me because I was a missionary. I love miracles like that, people who are so prepared that they would refer with anyone... I was just in the right place at the right time. I shouldn't have been there, but I was in the right place to get a miracle. I also love hearing people's conversion stories, whether it be because of a missionary or because of a scripture... the spirit comes so strongly. I think that one of the general authorities stated that when you speak by the spirit then miracles come out of your mouths. Miracles are interesting beasties to have. Following God's will and not yours is always interesting. I talked to this one older man who was a farmer and I remember thinking that we were wasting our time talking to him because he loved talking, but then he thought of a bunch of farm hands who needed the gospel. I never would have guessed. Just to prove that my judgments were incorrect I met another old man who was just getting active in the church again, but was telling us how he adopted one of his daughters and then we found out about his son who was so excited to be a missionary that he is already following the white handbook and studying his scriptures... it'll be fun to see where his son gets sent when he turns in his mission papers in two years.

We've also met some amazing guests as well... not any that were interested in learning more about the church, but some really neat people who were sincerely interested in learning more for themselves. I hope that the skiers get the snow that they want so badly. I'll pray for them to get some more.

Good to hear from you all and the Christmas tree is so covered with ornaments that I can hardly see the tree itself.
Sister Pielstick

Transfer 12: Week 4: North 3

Welcome to Temple Square!

We did the math... if you see how many people came here last year for the lights and divide it by the number of days that the lights are on we get about 30,000 people each night to see the lights. This explains why we are all so tired at the end of the night... (which are even more tired because we stay out one hour later almost every day... much to the chagrin of returned missionaries from other places, "sisters isn't it time for you to go home now?") It's good to be able to talk to more people though... There are so many from places all over the world, not just Utah. If you think about all these people who are here, every one of them have problems and stories and a life behind their frozen exteriors.

I've met some amazing people, some of who should not be alive. I met an old friend the other night and he was telling me a bunch of his old mission stories about being hit by vehicles and attacked by muggers and the like... it was fun. I'm glad that my stories are not dangerous, merely interesting people and funny awkwardness and being guided by the spirit. Knowing that God can and will talk to you is a great blessing. It's not just about getting a yes or no answer to a question that you have carefully formulated in your mind... it's also about knowing things about the people you meet without asking, or ask but they are incapable to telling you, or being able to turn to a scripture that helps them with a problem that you didn't realize that they have. Then there's recognizing the potential of people that in no way look prepared to hear about God, much less Jesus Christ or the restoration of his gospel. And the most miraculous one is that people understand my French and feel the spirit when I talk to them over the phone or on Temple Square. That definitely makes me interested to see how much God really wants His children to hear his gospel... One man I talked to, I am certain that he wasn't able to understand much of what I was saying but he wanted to get in contact with the missionaries to understand what he was feeling. I've come to recognize many different ways to receive answers to my prayers.

Just this week I was teaching an investigator in Africa (not in French) and we were talking about the nature of God... when my Bible opened to a scripture about Baptism (Romans 6:4)... one that I rarely, if ever, use. And one that was not even marked in the scriptures that I was using... the wording was weird so I didn't want to share it, but he apparently brings his Bible with him everywhere so he opened it up and read the scripture. It wasn't the King James Version that I was using, but when he read the verse I understood why God had brought it into my mind, because the wording in his version was exactly what he needed to hear and resolved his concern with what we were teaching about the purpose of Jesus Christ in God's plan. It was amazing. God is so aware of each and every one of us, no matter whom we are or where we live.

Life is traveling on wings of lightening... but I thought that I would add the link to the neat Bible Videos that were shown at the Christmas devotional because I love the depiction of the angels in them... a new and different version that seems more real than other depictions that I've seen before... I've been thinking a lot about angels recently, just how amazing it is to have the scriptures declared to you by a heavenly being from God. Angels are so different in different denominations of Christianity, some believe that they are an entity entirely different than humans, some that they are glorified humans, some depict them with wings, others with halos, some with merely white garb, others with colorful. I'm just fascinated by them.

Have a wonderful day!
Sister Pielstick

Link address: http://lds.org/bible-videos?lang=eng