Week 31 Gathering in the Rain

This week has been great! 

We had some Mission Zoom meetings that were amazing. My companion had a birthday, and I hit my 7 month mark. It was a packed week.

Highlights:

-It has rained and snowed so much this week, it's not okay (it rained the entire day yesterday then ended with some snow)  meanwhile, Sister Oleson's family in Arizona is "enjoying" 100° weather.

-Since it was Sister Olson's birthday, we had a lot of chocolate... It was awesome, but also, the worst.

-DQ is understanding the Book of Mormon so well. He bore a powerful testimony yesterday about it being the Iron Rod in Lehi's dream. He is amazing!

-We were planning on inviting Barbara to be baptized in yesterday's lesson, but she had read out of the Gospel principles book instead of Come Follow Me. However, by divine intervention, she read the chapters on Faith, Repentance and Baptism in Gospel Principles. Hopefully we will be inviting her to be baptized on Thursday! She has come so far!

-Milton has not received a witness of the Book of Mormon being true, so last night we committed him to take some time to read from it and pray about it and then WHEN he recieves a confirmation that it's true, to let us know so we can help him progress more. He is so good at following what God tells him to and he wants to get an answer that this is true. I have faith that if he reads and prays sincerely, he will receive his answer.

-We found some amazing people this week and had some great impromptu lessons.

-We were also able to do some Family History work this week! I love Family History!

President Nelson said the "gathering [of Israel] is the most important thing taking place on earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude, nothing else compares in importance, nothing else compares in majesty." 

And we also learn that, "Anytime you do anything that helps anyone—on either side of the veil—take a step toward making covenants with God and receiving their essential baptismal and temple ordinances, you are helping to gather Israel. It is as simple as that." 

This means it's not just the full time missionaries gathering God's children. Any testimony we share, love we show, and Temple and Family History work we do is helping gather His children.

That being said, President Nelson in this April 2020 conference said, "While worshipping in the temple is presently not possible, I invite you to increase your participation in family history, including family history research and indexing. I promise that as you increase your time in temple and family history work, you will increase and improve your ability to hear Him."

I have seen my love and excitement grow while doing family history work. I challenge all of you, as President Nelson did, to work on Family History, and I know that as you all do so, there will be stacks of names of God's children who will be able to receive the ordinances of Salvation when the temples reopen and you will feel their love and appreciation for your diligent work.

Have a wonderful week! Love you all!

Sister Thacker

Pictures:

The weather this week...

It started raining on our walk and we got drenched

some of our meals from this week. Crepes for Sis O's B-Day and hamburgers and potato salad yesterday because we were craving it

Week 30 Hope in Christ

Hello Family and Friends!

This week has gone by so fast.

We have had some great lessons with our friends and not so great lessons. The life of a missionary as usual, haha.

So Barbara is finally understanding the Restoration! We feel that this week, we can invite her to be baptized. She loves the Book of Mormon and now understands the Great Apostasy. It's amazing what free time because of self isolation can do for someone trying to gain a testimony God works in mysterious ways.

We also had a great lesson with DQ! This whole week, we have felt lost on how to help him understand the importance of reading the Book of Mormon. We also had no idea what we were going to teach him yesterday. We had the impression to invite him to read Alma 32, which is about Faith. We had no idea how this lesson was going to go, so when we began the lesson, we asked how his reading went and he said he had a lot of questions and comments. We were so happy! He had so many great questions and he even asked us to share experiences with growing faith before we had shared any personal experiences. He said that he feels he got a lot out of this chapter because he read it with his heart! ♥️ We invited him to begin reading the Book of Mormon on his own and we would talk about the things he was learning. The Spirit was so strong and I know, in time, he will come to know these things are true.

Our district, studied a talk this week called, "Brightness of Hope" by Neal A Maxwell. I wanted to share some quotes from it and a thought from President Vest at our mini mission zoom conference.

"Having ultimate hope does not mean we will always be rescued from proximate problems"

"Sometimes in the deepest darkness there is no external light—only an inner light to guide and to reassure."

President Vest said, "In life, there will be moments you didn't expect or want. What you do with those moments will affect forever."

When we have Hope in Jesus Christ we won't be free from problems. Life is still hard and we are still mortals. However, when we have Hope in Christ, we have an inner light that guides us through the dark trials of life. Hope guides us into the future and eternity.

I love you all! I hope you have a wonderful week!

Sister Thacker

It snowed this week...

We got cookies from our mission nurse!

The moment we found out quarantine was extended to May 15th.... 

Not going to put a picture of this, but we did the Census this week! Adulting!

Week 29 Happy Belated Easter

Hello Family and Friends!!!

I cannot tell you how much Joy I feel from our efforts this week. Not only did we find 7 PEOPLE to teach this week, we also celebrated Christ's final week leading up to His Glorious Resurrection. I have read more about the Saviors Atoning Sacrifice and felt more love and peace from it than ever before! I KNOW that my Redeemer LIVES!

This week has been a crazy one, for sure! We met so many great people! It was hard because Milton was only able to meet with us one time this week, but he is doing well and still wanting to meet.
But our other friends are doing great!

We talked about the Priesthood with Barbara and she is understanding it well. Now that she understands how it works, we are going to teach her about the Restoration of the Priesthood this week! Hopefully we will be able to invite her to be baptized. She has been meeting with missionaries for, we think, 10 years... Now is the time for her to make the steps to be able to return home to her Heavenly Father.

DQ is doing well. We are trying to help him see how learning about the Gospel blesses him spiritually and not just intellectually. He loves learning about it though!

We met some interesting people and had some of the best phone calls this week.

We have also been working a lot with Less Active members and that has been awesome! We are constantly helping others come unto Christ.

The spiritual thought this week is about Easter and Jesus Christ's Atoning Sacrifice.
A talk I read this week is by President Boyd K Packer, The Brilliant Morning of Forgiveness from October 1995 General Conference.
I highly recommend reading all of it, because it is all amazing and hit me so hard, but I will share a little bit of it.
For everyone who feels that their actions have taken them beyond the forgiveness from the Savior Jesus Christ, and of course for everyone else:
"Save for the exception of the very few who defect to perdition, there is no habit, no addiction, no rebellion, no transgression, no apostasy, no crime exempted from the promise of complete forgiveness. That is the promise of the Atonement of Christ.
....Restoring what you cannot restore, healing the wound you cannot heal, fixing that which you broke and you cannot fix is the very purpose of the Atonement of Christ."
Christ pays the price for all of our mistakes. He can take the guilt, pain, And Eternal consequences away. All He asks is that we repent and follow Him.

I am so grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ!
HAPPY EASTER!!

I love you all,
Sister Thacker

Pictures:

1. Waiting for our friends to join our video call

2. It snowed... In April...

3. Thank you mom for the Easter gifts! (also, we have the cutest nieces and nephew wall)

4. Happy Easter!

5. Our yummy Easter Dinner

6. Self explantory

7. Waiting for another call

8. Our adorable masks, shout out to my cousin Kiersten

9. And finally, the Heavy Duty masks from my neighbor!

Week 28 Happy April

This week has been a crazy one, and I don't even know where to start.

I guess it began on Tuesday, we drove to Syracuse and I picked up my new companion, Sister Oleson! I am the driver, so that's interesting. This was my second time driving in 6 months 

Harold and Melissa dropped us because of a busy schedule these next two months. We think they are avoiding talking about baptism. We had some powerful lessons about it the week before, but I guess they don't want to accept it. It's really sad! I absolutely love them and want them to have the same Joy I feel by making and keeping covenants with God. They said to contact them in June, so hopefully I am still here and I can knock on their door and see what's going on. It was really sad because they didn't even call us back to say goodbye to Sister Barrett. I know the Lord is aware of them.

Barbara is still progressing. We are going to have more lessons with her throughout the week and we know that she will feel the spirit more and understand that she is ready for baptism even if she feels she doesn't know enough. She only watched 1 session of conference, which was disappointing. It was the Saturday evening session, so she got a lot of information about the Priesthood. We are going to clarify that for her in our next lesson. When she understands the Priesthood was restored, she will understand that the authority to baptize is only found in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

DQ watched almost all of the sessions except the last one! Which was crazy because that session would have had the most meaning to him when President Nelson announced the temples. He said he is going to watch it, so that's good.

We also found 10 people to teach this week! Not all of them have stayed in contact with us, but we taught and set up return appointments with 10 people!! My companion has never had that in her mission, and neither have I. It's so apparent that the Lord is hastening His work, even while we are in our apt.

Our miracle for the week....

The Carillos family! We called them on Wednesday night at 8:59, right before our night was done. We asked if we could pray with them. The mom was so happy to hear from us and said that she missed us so much! She gathered the family and we said a prayer with them. We set up an appointment to call on Saturday! It was amazing! We were able to do a video call and she said the morning of the day we called, her and her husband were thinking about calling us, but decided not to. It was so amazing to see the Lords hand! They are basically ready to be baptized, we are going to see what happens in their lessons this week and go from there.

This week I have seen so many blessings from being exactly obedient. We found 10 people, first of all. Our friends are progressing, the days have not seemed as long, and we have been able to accomplish everything we need to. I am so grateful for this opportunity God and President Vest have given me to learn from my companion/Sister Training Leader and become to best missionary I can be. I am learning so much about humility. I am learning to be humble enough to accept council, repent and be better each day. It's a work in progress, but I can already see the progress.

Okay, so sorry this is a longer email, but I have to talk about General Conference!!!!! Oh my goodness! It was amazing!! I am so grateful for a living Prophet on the earth. So looking over my notes, I think my favorite one was Elder Hollands about Hope. The main theme of his talk was that, yes these amazing events happened, but that doesn't diminish the future events that will come.

He put himself in the early 19th century and thought about what hopes he would have had regarding religion. He found that all of them were answered by the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then he went on to talk about what we hope for the future. To paraphrase, our righteous hopes can be fulfilled. Of course it is all in Gods timing and His will. But I know if our will is inline with Gods, our hopes will be fulfilled.

A quote I wrote down, "The future is going to be just as miracle filled as the past."

This includes the miracle that will come as we fast for the global relief of Covid-19. President Nelson issued a worldwide day of fasting and prayer for April 10th. On this day, we will go without food and drink for 2 meals to show our faith and desire for this relief to come. I know that God answers the prayers and pleas of His children and as we participate in this fast as well as invite others to participate, our worldwide faith will bring relief from Covid-19.

I invite you all to join me in this day of fasting and prayer, April 10th. I know miracles will come!

I love you all!

If you are bored, feel free to email me or write me a letter...

Love,

Sister Thacker

Address: 37 uptown rd apt 15B Ithaca, NY 14850

Pictures:

•Conference Crepes

•Our "masks" for grocery shopping today

•My new comp, Sister Oleson

•Now that the parks are closed, no more swings for us

•The invitation from President Nelson

•It's illegal to take a picture of the Coronavirus testing center outside of target, but here is the test site sign

•My comp and I on General Conference day!