Transfer 6: Week 5: South Two

Hello!

This is Sister Pielstick for her weekly report on the happenings on Temple Square. First off, there is a rapidly rising number of people on the Square as everyone comes around for General Conference. We're met just about every Australian that has come here (mainly because Sister Farmer's unabiding love and adoration for anything down under attracts them like flies to vinegar), as well as a good portion of the Portuguese people who love coming to Temple Square for conference year after year after year... (maybe some of Sister Bruno's charm rubbed off on me, we're meeting a lot of people). But it is exciting because everything is ready for a smashing conference! There are a lot of people coming for trainings and such because it's the annual conference... and there's a new version of our favorite Joseph Smith movie made just for people not familiar with the history... Everything is going on well and amazingly. (and the link goes to the online version of the film)

Teaching people is going on well as well... one of our friends is actually going to get baptized soon (we hope!). He actually called us to ask how he could get baptized, so it's not the biggest surprise that could happen while we were here. He's even looking into applying at BYU to get a better spot in his job. Our other investigators are doing well and are excited to read or listen to General Conference... listening to the prophet and seeing if it is true for himself. I'm really excited to see how they work and grow and find out for themselves that God loves them and wants to bring them home. Sister Farmer and I are so excited for everyone!

Temple Square is amazing, so many prepared and wonderful people here to learn a little more about what we believe. Even if people are just looking around they too can feel the pervading peace and comfort that we can feel when we're in a place so close to God's House here on earth. Especially a place where so many gave up so much to work on the Temple.

Love you all and wish you the best... and if you're not planning on watching conference you're going to be missing out! Living revelation by living prophets from a living God, you'd better check it out!

Sister Pielstick

Transfer 6: week 4: South 2

อาดัม ตก^ข​เพื่อ​มนุษย์​จะ​เป็น​อยู่; และ​มนุษย์​เป็นอยู่, เพื่อ​พวก​เขา​จะ​มีปีติ.

Thai for "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." (Aka I don't speak Thai and I wanted to start off with a fun statement despite the lack of Thai sisters here on Temple Square.)

I love being a missionary here! You get to meet golden investigators from all over the world.... our most recent miracle group was a group of Thai students coming over to work and study English for 4 months. They were so prepared to learn more about the church. They felt the spirit and asked the most amazing questions and the best part is that they are here in the US for a short while, because the missionaries sometimes take months to reach them in Thailand. But they were amazing, they worked together to read some scriptures from the Book of Mormon and all of them wanted to have a copy of their very own and to meet with missionaries to tell them more about how temples allow people to be together with their families. We've also been teaching a lot of engineers from all over the US, but they don't seem to think that a God could exist, they're a tougher crowd than all of the Neuroscientists that we had two weeks ago, which I thought wasn't possible.

We also have been preparing like crazy for General Conference... even the guests who visit here can notice the building anticipation that is hanging on to every budding flower on every brown branch and green bud here. (The tulips have escaped from their dirt shells and decided to show their colors, which I am happy that I got the chance to see it) The church has as well, they've made a new version of the Joseph Smith movie especially for those who have never heard of Joseph Smith before. They use the same scenes, but they have Lucy Mack Smith narrating the whole movie explaining the background so that no one is confused about what is going on... which is nice I think. Sister Farmer and I are in charge of starting and stopping the movie and it is wonderful to see everyone have the chance to feel the love of God while they watch it. The restoration of the gospel is a miracle, isn't it? Centuries of nothing from

Heavenly Father and then a miraculous vision and everything is restored to it's fullness and everyone is welcome to learn more. I am grateful to be born at this time.

Nothing much else to report, except that I am excited to hear what everyone liked about General Conference and what specific questions you think will be answered for you this coming April (no worries, I'm not planning on pretending to be engaged this April Fool’s day, promise)

Have a wonderful Easter time, and remember that the Savior died for us because he wanted us all to have a chance to return and live with our Heavenly Father.

Sister Pielstick

Transfer 6: Week 3; South 2

Aloha!

This week has gone by crazy fast and I adore young men's groups. One of my best friends in the mission (Sister Terry from Oxford England) is in charge of the youth programs and she got my help this week for a couple of programs. My favorite was a group of young men from Utah. It was wet and rainy, but they were so well behaved. We started with the Temple in the south visitor's center where we talked about how excited they were to all go on missions (one of them turns in his papers the exact same time as Dagan) Then, of course we told my favorite missionary story about the Tabernacle (did you know that the missionary calls were given in that building for ages... imagine going to general conference and listening to the prophet calling your name in the middle of his address so that you can pack up, leave your family, and serve in a strange land for 2-5 years at a time... crazy) We ended up with about 50 youth in the Christus for a short testimony then escaped with our young men before the other random youth groups got their wits and followed us for the rest of the night. My favorite bit was that all of our young men thought of one way to help others come closer to Jesus Christ, even though I lead them in Ye Elders of Israel to the tune of Redeemer of Israel... it's only been 2 years since I've heard that song, and they were all following me, so I had no idea that it was the wrong tune until Sister Terry mentioned it in the end. The moral of this story is that the Atonement and the Spirit can work wonders with well meaning missionaries.

Our investigators are now with the missionaries... which is a happy and sad thing-happy that they are learning more and sad that we are not there teaching them every day. Oh well, God will trust us with more souls to teach and invite. My favorite is still our North Carolina boy who met the missionaries faster than anyone else I know and loves learning about the church, even though he doesn't like Mormons for the most part... but he feels the spirit give him peace when he reads the Book of Mormon, so he knows that something has to be right. All of them are so much fun, even when things get hard they try their hardest to learn more about Jesus Christ. (One of our new investigators is from Honduras and he's an engineer, he's a really busy guy this week though. )

Hope that this finds all of you well. Remember that God loves everyone, and that the Atonement covers everything, especially little mistakes like the ones that I am prone to making.

Love you.

Sister Pielstick

Transfer 6: week 2: South 2

Hello friends and family!

"Welcome to Temple Square. As missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we'd love to share more about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ with you or anyone that you know that might appreciate this message. Please see a missionary after this presentation to find out how we can help you with your missionary work."

I know it needs a bit of tweaking, but we're changing a lot of things for this General Conference and missionary work. Being an announcing coordinator is exciting and interesting, we get to figure out how best to talk to the many member missionaries that come to see us during General Conference time. Hopefully the changes don't make everything worse, but the AP's are really helpful with that. When the changes are approved I'll let you know more about it, but it is a blessing to serve the mission in a non-leadership capacity. Leadership still scares me a bit, but my companion keeps reassuring me that I have not, in fact, completely ruined her as my first junior companion guinea pig.

Teaching the gospel is awesome. Too bad you only have 18 months to do it as a missionary, where the tag on your chest means that you're there to teach them more about the gospel. Helping others find out more is really amazing, we have two investigators that I am really excited for... one who is trying to figure out how to go to church this Sunday and another who is in Texas and texted her best friend's mother to ask how she could meet with the missionaries after she failed to chase them down yesterday. It was so exciting. Another has had a really bad week, so hopefully we can help her feel God's love for her while things get really tough.

I'm having fun with youth conferences; yup, that's right youth conferences. I can't wait for the summer when there are going to be loads of them every weekend. We get to take them around Temple Square and they then get to have a tour of the Conference Center and get cooking classes from the chefs in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. (I wish that we could sit in on that sometime, but maybe another time) It's fun to see how much the youth look up to missionaries, how much they all want to be missionaries and bring others closer to Jesus Christ. We talked to one boy who's thinking about going to church because his best friend is Mormon and invited him a lot.

Best wishes to everyone.

Sister Pielstick

Transfer 6; Week 1; South 2

Transfer day!

Notice anything different? I certainly don't. Everything from my assignment to my roommates is exactly the same and I am more than a little shell shocked, but now I'll figure things will go pretty smoothly. Especially since I get to work with logistics for General Conference, which I was hoping to be able to do before the end of my mission... but now I see it as a gift for my half way mark of my mission.

This last week had some amazing people that we got to talk to... a really awesome young neuroscientist who didn't believe in organized religion, but said that if he did he'd join this one because he can still believe in Alien life forms. (He did actually say that, it was a lengthy and odd, yet awesome conversation) I seem to attract the atheists on Temple Square, because we've talked to many flavors this week, from the jaded Jew to the secure scientist. Conversations with them make me glad that I found out about God, because if I didn't believe in him the world would be a very confusing and downright dreary place. But it's interesting to remember that God loves every single one of them even though they don't really believe in Him. It's actually nice to think that even when things are difficult, that God loves everyone no matter what. It strengthened my testimony because sometimes I get to give them a glimpse into the eternities, rather than their typical life is only the here-and-now attitude.

Funny story, so apparently there are now two sister missionaries here on Temple Square from my hometown. One, naturally, is me, the other I met just yesterday at the Joseph Smith Movie. In order for you to understand the incredulity of this story, may I mention that transfers are usually crazy and Sister Farmer and I are assigned to start the Joseph Smith movie every Wednesday from 10-3. Sister Farmer and I go to close one of the films and we run into Sister Andersen and her trainee who were racing to close the movie we just closed. We start talking and laughing and start asking the new Sister how she likes her first day, things like that. So of course I ask where are you from?, she answers "Florida." Excited I exclaim "Me too, where are you from?" She then says my hometown and then we just looked at each other (It seemed like an eternity, but we know that it wasn't that long really). We're from the same ward and do not know who the other is. So we play the name game and realize that we were in fact from the same place, we were even friends with some of the same people. Finally she says "I am Jonathan's girlfriend" and I look at her cockeyed and make a complete idiot of myself by making the obvious observation "You joined the Church?!" So Sister Wright is now here on Temple Square being trained by our favorite Swedish Sister( aka the only Swede here after Sister Victorstam left), and Sister Pielstick succeeds in being the most oblivious missionary at Temple Square. God does have a sense of humor and apparently it's not enough for it to be just once.

Hope that this letter finds the family and everyone well.

Sister Pielstick