Teaching People!

Another week on Temple Square...it was another good one. Yesterday right after District Meeting we got a text from West Gate asking if anyone could take a tour with two English. We were going on the square so I responded right away to get the tour (it's so nice when tours are given to you) and we got it. So we went out and found them by the Assembly Hall. They were a younger couple from California and they were driving through on work/vacation. We walked around with them and found out that they are Christian, but don't associate with any denomination. They really just want to follow God and Jesus Christ and not just according to one man's opinion. I smiled inside because I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not founded on one man's opinion in the slightest. We showed them the Temple model and explained the Joseph Smith story and made an effort to emphasize the doctrine of a apostasy and restoration to help them see the significance of what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claims to be..."the Lord's kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah" (Introduction to the Book of Mormon). I think that they got it. As we were in the basement of the North Visitors' Center, which talks about apostasy and restoration, they both looked to be very deep in thought and I'm not quite sure how much they heard of what we were saying, but we took them to one of the kiosks and showed them a video clip of one of President Monson's talks. Afterward we invited them for missionaries by asking them if it would be important for them to know if God had really called a prophet again. They both slowly nodded their heads, "yes" and agreed that they would like to have missionaries. It was definitely a tender mercy for Sister Bat-ulzii and I to be able to share something so valuable to people that are genuinely searching for truth. We're calling them tomorrow to teach them!

We talked with Amy (a former investigator in the Salt Lake mission), Debora, and Lizbeth (the mother from Las Vegas) this week. Amy and Lizbeth both went to church! They liked it, but Amy told us that it was very long . The missionaries are teaching all three: Amy, Debora, and Lizbeth, which is great because we can only take them so far over the phone. We mostly try to teach them the tools that they need to be able to receive a knowledge that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Christ's church. Those things include how to pray and receive answers, the role of reading the Book of Mormon, and the importance of going to church. We gave Amy an assignment to read Mosiah 2-5, which is King Benjamin's address to his people. We invited her to read and to pray specifically to know if the things that she is reading is true. We weren't expecting her to finish all of that by the time we called back, but she did! AND she really enjoyed it! She is still working on her testimony that the Book of Mormon is true, but she will get there. Teaching people is the absolute best part of missionary work.

This past Friday Sister Bat-ulzii and I were walking across the square early in the morning and a woman stopped us to take a picture of her by the temple (This is a common occurrence on Temple Square). She was dressed up in a white and green dress and looked like she was here for a sealing. She pulled out from her purse a little bear from Hard Rock Cafe that had a purple mow-hawk to be in the picture with her. As she was taking out this bear tears started to come to her eyes and I figured that this bear had some kind of sentimental meaning to her. I took her picture and as I was returning the camera to her she started to explain her situation. She told us that her daughter was getting sealed in the temple right then. That daughter has a twin sister that was driving up from Texas for the wedding and got in a car crash on the way up and passed away this past Tuesday. I didn't quite know what to say to her, but the first thing that came to my mind was to take her to God's Plan. I was a little hesitant to offer her that because I knew that it would be very emotional for her and sometimes that is really difficult for her. She wanted to see it, though, so we went. It touched her heart in so many ways and afterwards we went and sat on some of the couches by the Old Testament paintings. I knew that she just needed to talk so we let her. She bore her testimony of the power of the Plan of Salvation and how much of a difference it made especially this week. She wasn't worried, she knew that she would see her daughter again and that her daughter that had passed away was at her twin sister's wedding. She told us stories about her daughter that had just passed. Her name was Christina and she served in the National Guard and had spent time in Afghanistan. Christina stood up for her beliefs and lived them. Her mother was very proud of her. We gave this woman a copy of The Family: A Proclamation to the World and told her to find somewhere quite and to read it and on the back write down what she was feeling that day. She liked that idea. I sure hope that she recorded her own testimony of the Plan of Salvation because that will have a great impact on her and her future generations. 

The Gospel Blesses Families

Temple Square Sisters

This week was a week of firsts for Sister Bat-ulzii. We took our first motor coach of the season and our first investigator lesson too! A motor coach is a big tour bus that comes to Temple Square and we get to take them all on a tour here. On this motor coach there were 38 people from all over the US and they were on their way from Jackson Hole, WY to their next stop. Usually these groups of people are retired and so much fun to be around. Before the motor coach, Sister Bat-ulzii and I were exhausted and probably not in a mood to be taking so many people around. We had just finished role playing what we would say in each place that we would take them and it was a difficult thing to get straight, but we managed to do it. When we started talking with the people that we were going to take on the tour both of us perked up and we enjoyed the whole thing. It's always wonderful when you can focus on other people and not yourself. We took them to the Tabernacle and talked about the building and how it was used to listen to the Prophet and the twelve Apostles--they mostly wanted to know about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, though.... Then we went outside and talked about the Temple and how through the Temple our families can be sealed, or united together, for all eternity not "until death do you part". I shared the Amanda Smith story, which is about how a mother's faith produced great miracles in her son's life (It's from "Our Heritage", Chapter 4):

On 30 October 1838, three days after the extermination order was issued, some 200 men mounted a surprise attack against the small community of Saints at Haun’s Mill on Shoal Creek, Caldwell County. The assailants, in an act of treachery, called for those men who wished to save themselves to run into the blacksmith shop. They then took up positions around the building and fired into it until they thought all inside were dead. Others were shot as they tried to make their escape. In all, 17 men and boys were killed and 15 wounded.

After the massacre, Amanda Smith went to the blacksmith shop, where she found her husband, Warren, and a son, Sardius, dead. Among the carnage she was overjoyed to find another son, little Alma, still alive though severely wounded. His hip had been blown away by a musket blast. With most of the men dead or wounded, Amanda knelt down and pleaded with the Lord for help:

“Oh my Heavenly Father, I cried, what shall I do? Thou seest my poor wounded boy and knowest my inexperience. Oh Heavenly Father direct me what to do!” She said that she “was directed as by a voice,” instructing her to make a lye from the ashes and cleanse the wound. She then prepared a slippery elm poultice and filled the wound with it. The next day she poured the contents of a bottle of balsam into the wound.

Amanda said to her son, “ ‘Alma, my child, … you believe that the Lord made your hip?’

“ ‘Yes, mother.’

“ ‘Well, the Lord can make something there in the place of your hip, don’t you believe he can, Alma?’

“ ‘Do you think that the Lord can, mother?’ inquired the child, in his simplicity.

“ ‘Yes, my son,’ I replied, ‘he has shown it all to me in a vision.’

“Then I laid him comfortably on his face, and said: ‘Now you lay like that, and don’t move, and the Lord will make you another hip.’

“So Alma laid on his face for five weeks, until he was entirely recovered—a flexible gristle having grown in place of the missing joint and socket.” 

I love that story. Mothers play such an important role in their children's lives. Then we went to the Assembly Hall and talked about the Book of Mormon. They had great questions and were very kind a respectful. We had a great time with them and I hope that it left a good impression for the next time they hear about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

An investigator lesson is where missionaries from the Salt Lake City or Salt Lake City South missions bring their investigators to Temple Square for a tour. We took around a part member family and the son, Landon, was the one taking lessons from the missionaries. The Elders wanted us to focus on how the gospel blesses families. We showed them the temple model and pointed out the sealing room. Then we took them to the Seagull Monument and talked about how God answers prayers and how family prayer is a powerful way to unite a family. I shared with them about my experience with family prayer--kneeling around mom and dad's bed making jokes with each other and talking about our day and then ending with prayer. Those are some of my favorite memories. The mother of this family really liked that idea and she wanted to apply that too. Then we ended the tour with God's Plan for His Family. I love that presentation SO much, it touches people right where they can feel the Spirit the most. The Elders invited this family to think and pray about a date that Landon can be baptized and to work towards that day. I sure know that the gospel really does bless families because it has blessed mine more than I even knew.

We had another great tour yesterday with Mike and Au, a married couple, who were probably in their upper 30s. They are from Washington state and they have lots of friends that are members of the church. Their member friends encouraged them to come to Temple Square while they were in Salt Lake and to take a tour...so they did. We had a great time with them. We found out that Au is from Thailand and actually Buddhist, but also kind of Christian because she also prays to God. Sister Bat-ulzii was also Buddhist so she was able to relate to her really well. Sister Bat-ulzii and I both felt that we should take them to God's Plan for His Family so we ended our tour there. Part of the presentation was about how our children lived with God before they came to this earth and that the most important things we can teach our children is that they are children of God, that they are loved, and that families can be together forever. This was only the second of six rooms and Au was already crying...usually people don't cry until the fourth or sixth room. At the end we found out that Mike and Au are in the process of adopting a little boy from Thailand and they came to Salt Lake so that Mike could find work so they could afford the trip to Thailand. They said that this presentation was absolutely applicable to what they were going through. I love how the Spirit directs us to do things even though we don't know exactly why. They didn't refer for missionaries because they don't know where they will end up, but we showed them mormon.org as well as a profile of some members that went through the same thing as they did. I hope that sometime down the line they can have the full blessings of the gospel and be sealed together as a family. How wonderful that would be for them!

This morning we got to do baptisms for the dead at the Salt Lake Temple! It was our zone activity. Sister Bat-ulzii was proxy for both her grandmothers and her great grandmother and her great-great grandmother. The man doing the baptisms had a hard time pronouncing their names, but Sister Bat-ulzii loved the experience. 

Prayer

Hi everyone! It feels like summer on Temple Square! It's hot today, just below 90, and it feels great. Yesterday Sister Bat-ulzii and I ate dinner just outside of the Church Office Building and enjoyed the beauty of the day. We had a great time. Missionary work at Temple Square is also moving along. On Sunday Sister Bat-ulzii called Amy* who a former investigator of some missionaries in the Salt Lake City mission to re-invite her to meet with missionaries. Sister Bat-ulzii did a wonderful job talking with her and helping Amy feel comfortable and loved. She learned that Amy is in high school and everyone in her family is a member of the church except for her. She stopped meeting with the missionaries, though, because she was scared of the commitment that baptism is. Amy said that she would like to meet with the missionaries again so Sister Bat-ulzii set up a time to call her again the next day (yesterday) so that we could teach her a little. Yesterday morning as we were planning for Amy I felt like perhaps we should teach her about her relationship with her Heavenly Father. Once you understand who you truly are, then it helps in all sorts of areas of your life. When we called we told her that she is a daughter of Heavenly Father and that He knows her and loves her. I asked her what it means to her to know that she is a daughter of God and she told us that she had never thought about it like that before. She realized that she is important to Heavenly Father. We read Alma 18:32 and we taught her about prayer. She is so important to her Heavenly Father that He wants to hear from her how she is doing and so we can pray to him. We told her that Heavenly Father doesn't only hear prayers, but he answers them too and that is usually through the Spirit. So at the end of the phone call we invited her to pray. She was a little nervous, but we told her that if she got stuck we could help. She said the most sincere and heart-felt prayer that I have ever heard a investigator offer on my mission. Growing up in a member household she had learned the language of prayer: thee, thou, thy, etc. but it wasn't the eloquence of the prayer that was significant, it was the Spirit that gave her a big embrace as she was saying it. Tears came to her eyes as she spoke with her Father and she knew that He was there. We told her that the feeling she had was the Spirit and it was Heavenly Father telling her that He loves her. That experience with Amy reminded me of a phrase in the Bible Dictionary about prayer: "As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are his children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part." I know that Heavenly Father hears AND answers prayers because he loves each one of you and because you are His child. What a blessing to be able to call on our Father whenever we need Him. We also taught Debora* this week over the phone. Her son is a member and lives in Utah and he referred her when he came to Temple Square for General Conference. She told us that as she has been talking with her son and reading more about the basic beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she had found that her interest has increased and she feels like this is something that she should be doing right now. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and how she can know for herself that it is true. At the end of the phone call we invited her to pray and she said a beautiful and heartfelt prayer. I love the sincerity of people who are sincerely seeking to know their Father in heaven. Remember that family from Las Vegas that I told you about a few weeks ago? Well we also talked with her this week. The missionaries in Las Vegas contacted her and gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and were coming back the next day! We shared a scripture with her from the Book of Mormon about the mothers of the Army of Helaman and how they were key in the success and faith of those young men. She talked about how she wanted to be baptized, so hopefully those missionaries in Las Vegas are doing their job! We're going to call her tomorrow and see how she is doing. *I changed their names

Me and Sister Bat-Ulzii

This morning Sister Bat-Ulzii and I went to the temple. It was really nice to be able to feel the Spirit there and to feel closer to Heavenly Father.

Something new that we're doing on Temple Square now is indexing. We're doing one hour of indexing each week to help digitize the 1940 census that just came out. It's really fun. I did a batch from Chicago and it was neat to see all of the names and where people came from. It's kind of addicting.

Yesterday we were on the square and we met a man that was taking pictures of the Assembly hall. Sometimes it takes some work on our part for people to start talking with us, but he just started talking after we said hi. It's always a relief when that happens because I don't have to work so hard to get people to open up. He was from Florida and he came out to Utah because his wife had some kind of reunion. He had been to Temple Square a few times in the last few days and had really enjoyed himself. We found out that we were the first missionaries that had talked with him (that was a surprise to me). He told us that he was 70 years old, but he remembered his LDS friends in High School and what nice and genuine people they were. He told us that he hadn't seen missionaries back at home in Florida so I asked him if he would like to and he said "sure!" How great is that! I'm sure that the Spirit worked on him while he was here on Temple Square because we didn't really do much to help prepare him to meet missionaries.

Sister Bat-Ulzii

We also had a great tour this week with extended family that came to Temple Square. Part of the family lives in Orem and the other part came from San Francisco to visit. We took them to the Temple Model and there were a ton of people there so it wasn't a good place to really explain things. Then we went to the Tabernacle, which was actually closed because of the organ recital, and talked about how God has called a prophet again. When we show people around Temple Square it is always the best when we get to know people so that we can teach the gospel to them in the context of their lives. At this point I didn't really know anyone in the group very well because there were so many people and it was difficult to just gather them together so that we could talk with them. So I didn't really feel like the tour was going anywhere. One of the sisters/daughters (I'm not sure what everyone's relation was) wanted to show the step-dad God's Plan for His Family. So we scrambled through some history and information about the beginnings of the church and headed towards the North Visitors' Center. It was there that I found out that everyone was a member of the church except for the step-dad. So they had brought him to Temple Square to expose him to some of our basic beliefs. That just tells you how much I knew about this family half-way through the tour, I wasn't doing a very good job. But we walked up the ramp to the Christus and bore our testimonies of the Savior. The tour was getting closer to the heart, but God's Plan for His Family hit the ball out of the park. We took this family through the presentation that speaks about the Plan of Salvation in the context of a family's life. It ends at the Temple where the daughter gets married and it explains that families are eternal. Half of this family was in tears. Sister Bat-Ulzii bore a powerful testimony of how the gospel has blessed her family and how she knows that families can be together forever. I know it's true too and that because my family is sealed in the Temple we can be together forever too. We invited the step-dad to meet with missionaries and he happily filled out his information. Afterwards he asked where he could get a bigger picture of the Salt Lake Temple and a copy of the Book of Mormon. I am so grateful for the Atonement that can help to make up for our mistakes and shortcomings. The Spirit is amazing and teaches to the heart.

2 Nephi 25:23--"...for we know that it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do."

I also had another fun coincidence this week. We were walking in the North Visitors' Center and I heard someone call my name, "Sister Smiley?" I looked over and we realized that we knew each other from the Oakland Temple Visitors' Center. She took us through God's Plan for His Family with Leo just a few weeks prior. She had just got off the plane a few hours prior, still a missionary, and wanted to come to Temple Square with her family and show them God's Plan for His Family. I don't think it was coincidence that we took her and her family through the presentation. We let her bear her testimony in the end and share with her family how it has grown. What a tender mercy it was to be there with them. I don't think it was a coincidence.

A random phrase that came to my mind this morning: setting goals is like opening your eyes--you can see where you're going. Thought I might share it.

Back at the Square

Hello From Temple Square! It is wonderful to be on Temple Square with all of the tulips in bloom (I just made it in time to see them) and a TON of new sisters to get to know. My new companion is Sister Bat-Ulzii from Mongolia! This is her first transfer (that means I'm training) and we're doing our best to find people that want to be baptized. Sister Bat-Ulzii has been learning English for about 10 weeks (plus a little bit of studying in Mongolia) and her English is much better than my Mongolian would be if I were in her situation. Sister Bat-Ulzii brought family names with her to bring to the temple. Obviously there is no temple in Mongolia, the temple they attend is the Hong Kong temple, so she went to the temple for the first time in Provo. She hasn't seen a baptistry yet either, just what is in the temple model. She'll get to do those family names while she is here. She is super excited about it. I'm sure that her family is excited too. Sister Bat-Ulzii and I took our first tour with a family from Las Vegas and it went really well. It was a mother, father, and their two-year-old daughter and they had a wonderful friend that invited them to learn more. The family came out to Utah so that the mother could go to woman's conference at BYU and I asked her what she liked about it. She told me that the part that impressed her the most was how families interacted there with so much love and care for each other. She really wants to raise her daughter in a good home and she has seen that people who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have something good that she wants. We showed them the Temple Model and explained to them about eternal families and of course they liked that. We went to the Seagull Monument and talked about prayer and how God answers prayers. She told me that she had been praying about what to do for her family and she received an answer that this is what Heavenly Father wants for her family. I was surprised to hear that she prayed AND received an answer. When I first met her at the Temple Construction area  you could feel the Spirit around her, she was just such a good person, so thinking back on it I'm not too surprised that she has such a relationship with God. At the end of the tour we took the family through God's Plan for His Family to help her see how having the restored gospel in her life will give her what she is looking for in her family. The Spirit was there the whole time and it bore witness to this family that this is what they are looking for. So naturally they referred for missionaries.  We also had another tender mercy yesterday. We went up to the Christus to see if anyone was there that we could talk to, and there was a woman, probably in her 60s, sitting on one of the couches, who we approached. It turns out that she was a returned missionary from Western Samoa and understood Sister Bat-Ulzii's difficulty with learning a language. I asked her what suggestions she had for learning English and she told us "children's books". I thought that was a neat idea and something that I hadn't thought about. We parted ways and later in the morning we were walking back across the square and we saw this woman again walking towards us and she handed Sister Bat-Ulzii a Deseret Book bag with children's books in it. Her act of kindness completely took me by surprise! She was the kind of person, just like the mother that we showed around, that you could just feel their goodness when you were around them. This is something that I've been learning about the gospel--it's not about the list of things you do, but it's about the person that you become. I want to be the kind of person that lives their testimony all the time so that people can feel the love that their Father has for them. I really love Alma 5:14-- "And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?" That's conversion.