Week 44 We Have a Pet

So first things first, we have a massive pet spider in our window. His name is Jeffrey and we just found his son yesterday, and his name is Jeffery Jr. and we are pretty sure there is a third one somewhere. We bought some raid at the store, so we will be sending them to heaven soon.

We had an interesting week, we are now in Phase 1 as missionaries! We can now have in person lessons with the people we are teaching, and in person District Council. We also have in person interviews with President Vest this week!

We have some great friends! Braden came to church on Sunday! We had a lesson with our friend Carl and with President Brandt. We read from the Book of Mormon and then we had to go after 20 minutes, so we suggested that they could continue talking. They did for another 20 minutes and they both loved it! President Brandt was impressed with his desire to learn!

My spiritual thought this week comes from my district leader, Elder Jensen. 

He said something to the effect of,

We have the answer to eternal life and it would be selfish to keep it to ourselves. We can be out of our comfort zone and away from our families for 18-24 months of our lives to help people be together for eternity.

I know I have heard that before, but for some reason it just seemed to click this time.

Have a great week! Happy August on Saturday

Love Sister Thacker

A picture of Sister Gardner and I

Our friend Jeffery and Jeffery Jr.

Week 43 Quite the Week

The first thing that happened this week was that we actually had a refferal who actually wanted to meet!! She requested a Book of Mormon, and we had our first meeting with her on Tuesday over Facebook messenger. Her name is Anna, and while we were meeting with her, her son, Carl was there and he was also interested! Carl came to church too! It's amazing how God leads the elect to you. 

Church was stressful because 2 of our friends came, but it was great! Also, Sister Gardner gave a talk in church about the Book of Mormon she did great!

We had a great lesson with our friend Carlos about the talk "What Lack I Yet?" with the Branch President there, it was awesome!

Other than that, not much happened, but its been a long, stressful week.

I love you all, hope you have an amazing week!!! 

Sister Thacker

Pictures

We went to a place to see Lake Champlain

A fresh grave in the cemetery we walk through

Sister Gardner and I on Tuesday night

Week 42 Broken Heart and a Contrite Spirit

There are only a few major things that happened this week.

The first is that our baptism didn't go through... He wanted to wait until after the Pandemic... We are working with him still and he still knows this is Christs church, he is just nervous. There might be something bigger too, and we are going to do everything in our power to help him feel ready for baptism. (he was supposed to get baptized in April, but no baptisms were happening then, he is more than ready) but we love him and will do anything to help him.

Please pray for Braden!

The second major thing is that we went to..... IN PERSON CHURCH!!!!! Yes, thats right, we had in person church for the first time in 4 months it was really nice. As missionaries, church is normally very stressful, it is almost never a relaxing, spiritual experience, but yesterday, we had only 20 people there and (sadly) none of our friends were there, so we had a really calm sacrament meeting. Also with COVID, it was nice to just get in and get out.

That was the best part of our Sunday, now for the worst part of our Sunday... 

We walked out of our apartment to drive to church and there was a massive dent in our drivers side bumper of our car... Yes that's right, our car, which hasn't moved since Monday, was involved in an accident. AND there was not a note! We have no idea who hit our car...so frustrating. Luckily it was drivable, so we went to church and came back home and called the mission office. It wasn't our fault, so thats good!

My spiritual thought comes from our mission discussion on Thursday. We talked about Humility, and specifically the sacrifice that is required to access the Atoning power of Jesus Christ. President Vest pointed out the connection between offering animal sacrifices on an alter before Christ became that sacrifice for all of us and our sacrifice today. In order to access Christs Atonement, we need to "offer for a sacrifice unto me(Christ) a broken heart and a contrite spirit" (3 Nephi 9:20)

President Vest invited us to put something on the alter (figuratively) to increase our Humility. It was an amazing experience to feel the peace that came as I prayed and offered up my "sacrifice" to Christ to be a more dedicated disciple and missionary.

I invite all of you to prayerfully ask God what you should "put on the alter" to become a more dedicated disciple of Christ. A talk that might help you gain more of an understanding of this is by Larry R Lawrence, "What lack I yet?" from the Oct 2015 conference.

I love you all!!

Sister Thacker

Pictures

The car... 

The mission had pizza delivered to all of our apartments! 

Church!!

Week 41 Happy July!!

Hello Family and Friends!

This week has been great! We have a few new people to teach, so that is exciting! We shares a very powerful Restoration with a woman and she is very interested in reading the Book of Mormon.

We had a missionwide discussion about Humility this week and it was really good. I have been praying about what specifically I need to do to be more humble. One way that I felt would help me is to be more forgiving and ask for forgivness from others.

I invite all of you to think about how you can be more humble and teachable to be ready to accept the will of the Lord.

This is a quote from a conference talk called, "Forgiveness will change Bitterness to Love":

"When we forgive others, it frees us to choose how we will live our own lives. Forgiveness means that problems of the past no longer dictate our destinies, and we can focus on the future with God’s love in our hearts." 

I love you all so much!

Have a great week! 

Sister Thacker

It was July 4th so, naturally we had to take pictures. Thanks mom for the package!