C'est la vie!

Hey Folks!

  So you know how my mission has been super crazy? Well it just got a little crazier!!! My new companion just got her visa to go to Brazil! So i am companion less for the next five weeks!!! So the stake has arranged for me to have a new companion every week from the young women in the stake. So for the rest of the transfer i will be conducting mini missions with sisters in the stake and teaching them how to be a missionary, while trying to do the work in my rather large ward! Haha so i would say i am a little stressed but at least i can say that my mission is not boring! I am really learning to rely on my Heavenly Father and the spirit and i am sure i will keep learning about that in the coming weeks as my companions are not set apart/ trained missionaries but it should be a learning and growing experience :) So that it is pretty much what is going on here. I know these next couple weeks will be a little different and i think i will probably be a little stressed but i know that it will be great and that we will see miracles!

My testimony of being self reliant really grew this week. When Elder Pieper Of the Seventy came to visit and taught us pretty much how to answer our own questions, i feel like my eyes were really opened and i know that i can answer my own questions. I have already found some great answers to my questions. I had a bunch of really great spiritual experiences with prayer recently and really feeling the presence of our Heavenly Father around me! I know that he loves me and is aware of me and this is His work and he will help us do His work!

I hope you were all able to see the broadcast on missionary work yesterday! It was so amazing if you didn't get to see it go on to LDS.org and watch it. It was super inspiring and i want all of you to watch it. I love being a missionary so much! I know that it is a privilege to be out on a mission and that this truly is His work that i am doing. I know that if we rely on Him, He will guide us to where we need to be and He will teach us what we need to learn. I love you all so much and i LOVE getting your letters! They honestly mean the world to me :)

I hope you are all doing well. Keep the Faith and remember that, "your future is as only as bright as your Faith!"- President Thomas S. Monson

Love you lots
Sister Robinson

Transfer 4 here we come!

 Holy Moly all can you believe that it has been another six weeks already? I honestly can not! Transfer calls have come and... I am staying in the Shawnee YSA ward!!! I am super excited about that! Alas, my dear companion is being transfered :( But she is still in the mission until she gets her visa! I know that she is going to do so many great things, she is such an amazing missionary and i learned so much from her. My new companion is named Sister Jones. I know nothing about her yet at all... so more next week. So ther is a video that i will send home soon and it will pretty much sum up Sister Jensen and I's companion. It is quite great and involves Sister Jensen and Cats. More later.

So i know i am terrible at sending the funny things home to you all, there are just so many funny things that happen and i don't have time to write them all and i am also not sure if they will be funny over email but a little summery of the fun things that happen here...

Sister Jensen Meows at every cat we see. Funny thing is she doesn't even like Cats. Yesterday while she was Meowing at a cat it started to follow us and climbed in our car. It was trying to curl up on our seat and come home with us. We had a difficult time trying to get it our, clearly Sister Jensen doesn't speak Cat as fluently as she thinks she does.

Sister Jensen and I also now speak OP. If you don't know what that is you might be able to google it! We are pretty good and it comes in handy when we get in tough situations, just start speaking Op and we can get right out of there. No just kidding we only speak Op in the car, we don't need people thinking that Mormons have a secret language!

Another fun thing Sister Jensen and I like doing is looking for opportunities to back the car in public. Most missionaries look for those pull through spots so that no one has to back the car out of the spot (a mission rule because some missionaries just can not drive) but we look for those opportunities to back the car in public. We just love watching people's faces as they try to figure out what we are doing!

Anyway that is just the weirdness of Sister Jensen and I. We have a good time what can i say! In other news Sister Jensen is so great and i am so excited that she gets to go serve in a family ward. I am sad that we won't be companions anymore but i know that she is going to go and do such great things and she is a wonderful missionary who will bless the lives of so many! I am excited to get to know my new companion Sister Jones as well. I am sure she is great :)

My testimony of the choices i make and faith has really grown this week. I know that Faith is a action word and that it is always forward moving. Faith will propel us to do what we need to. As we are exactly obedient and believe in the work that we are doing we will be able to do the work of the Lord. We will be allowed to witness miracles! I love being a missionary so much and am so glad that i am able to serve here and at this time. I know that Heavenly Father has a plan and as we have faith and follow that plan then we will be able to be tools in his hand to bring to pass great and marvelous things!

This weekend we were having a pretty rough day when the Shadle Park Elders (some Elders in our zone, or the town over from us) called us and asked if we could attend their baptism and teach the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then invite everyone on a church tour. We said yes of course and we went!  As we were there we testified of the restoration and then afterwards we were talking to the converts friends that came to her baptism. We invited them on a church tour. The wonferful girl being baptized was named Gina and she was 18. Most of her freinds that were there were teenage girls and so it was so cool that we were there to connect with them and take them on a church tour. We were able to relate to them in a way that the Elders wouldn't have been able to. We invited them all to be baptized and they said they would. So now they are being taught by the Elders. We were so excitied that we were able to be there and meet this wonderful young women!

I know that this church is true and that Heavenly Father cares about your missionary efforts. This is His work and he will help you as you share the gospel with those around you.

I love you all and hope you have a great week

Love Sister Robinson

Are you Australian?

HEY!!!

So we had an amazing week this week!!!! We have been working with a lot of Less Actives and we have been seeing MIRACLES!!! It is so great :) We had 7 less actives in church this week and it was crazy amazing. We were so excited to see them there.  It was so cool becasue all the members went and found people that they didn't know or who were sitting alone and they went and sat with them and talked with them. There was a warm spirit at church and you could tell that everybody was a lot happier. We can tell that the ward's bond is growing deeper and it is amazing to see them all a little happier!!!

So have i mentioned that Sister Jensen is the BOMB! I love her so Flippin' much! We just work so well together and we are so passionate. She really is such an amazing missionary. Personally i think we should just keep her for the whole 18 months but it is the Lord's will so i will take another transfer if that is what he will allow! But honestly we just have so much fun and we love all of the members and the investigators that we are working with. We are seeing miracles and we can't wait to see the ward keep changing and drawing closer and closer together as we teach them all the gospel of Christ! You should all check out her blog: sisterhayleyjensen.blogspot.com.

Well my testimony of the Lord's work just keeps growing and this week was no acception! There were so many times this week that we were just led by the spirit and were in the right place at the right time! It was so amazing to see the Lord's hand so clearly in His work. We know that it is a privilage to be on a mission and that we are just tools, just vessels in the Lord's hand. If we can make ourselves the most effective tools then he will use us more and more and we will be privaleged to see more and more miracles! I am So grateful to be a missionary and i am so grateful to serve in this area, in this mission. I think by the end of my mission i am going to give Elder Holland a run for his money and say that no other missionary has loved their mission as much as i am loving mine! I am pushed and tried everyday but because of it i come out better and better! I love being a missionary!

So i know many of you yearn to do missionary work but you get scared, so i wanted to share with you some words from Elder Anderson that have greatly helped me:

"I promise you, as you pray to know with whom to speak, names and faces will come into your mind. Words to speak will be given in the very moment you need them.22 Opportunities will open to you. Faith will overcome doubt, and the Lord will bless you with your very own miracles."

I promise to you that Faith WILL ALWAYS overcome doubt! Every time! I know that it is true because i practice it each and everyday. There are times when i am super scared to talk to people but then i exercise a little faith and do it anyway and it always turns out well. I love you all and i know that the Lord's hand is in this work. This is his work and as we exercise faith he will allow us to see miracles.

Have a great week and don't forget to write me!
Sister Robinson

P.S. I should proably explain the title... So for some strange reason everyone i talk to always asks if i am Australian!!!! Always, so i guess Australians must sound like they are english and have lived in America for too long. I might start rocking it though if someone can give a good, convincing back story of how i am Australian...

TGIPD (Thank Goodness It's P-Day

Hey Friends and Family!

I hope you are all doing well! Thank you all so much for the birthday wishes i had such a great birthday! My companions are flippin' amazing!!! Sister Jensen decorated our kitchen with balloons and streamers! She is honestly too cute. She also bought me Michigan socks... yeah she is a funny one haha It was honestly such a great day though.

So my area is doing well. So this week Sister Jensen and I have decided that we want to work on strengthening the members. We know how important the members are to the work. With out members we can not be successful, us missionaries can not so it alone!  So we have started doing a lot of member visits where we are teaching the restoration, or the plan of salvation, or the gospel of Christ! Yesterday we had a lesson with a recently returned missionary. He has been back for four months. While we were teaching him the spirit was really strong. We asked him how we had felt while we were teaching and he said, "better than i have felt in a long time." That to us was confirmation that building the members is really what we need to do. The members need to feel the spirit just as much as our investigators do!. In a YSA ward everyone is still trying to figure out who they are and what they are supposed to be doing. It is when they are standing on their own testimonies for the first time. We love our members and we are excited to work with them more and help there friends come to the knowledge of the gospel too!

Yesterday at church we had no investigators turn up at all but it was the best day i have had at church in a long time because five of our less actives including one who hadn't been to church in 15 years turned up to church. It was a miracle! We were so grateful that Heavenly Father had allowed us to witness that and that we were able to be a part of that experince. We are hoping next week that we can get even more LA there!

Ok so Sister Jensen is amazing as usual. We really love being together and we love teaching together. I learn so much from her everyday! She is such a fire cracker and keeps our energy running high. We love working in this ward and although this has been the hardest area for me so far it has also been so rewarding. I have learned so much in only four weeks and i know that i still have SO much to learn. I! Sister Jensen is so focused on the work and our investigators and it is so fantastic! She is such a great missionary i am secretly hoping he visa doesn't come for a whole nother transfer!! Oh but i do have a pretty funny story about her. So a couple of weeks ago Sister Jensen was woken up by some loud noises upstairs. Her first thought when she woke up was that it must be a burgler, so apparently she started calling my name but i was sleeping like a rock so i couldn't hear her! So she gets out of bed and quietly walks over to my bed so the buguler couldn't hear her and shakes me awake. Just as i am waking up it crosses her mind that it might just be the members getting home (Which of course it was). So she tells me that she thought there was a burgular and then that she had realized that it was proably just the mebers. I confrimed that one for her. We then both laid awake for an hour as the members proceeded to unpack there thingts at 12am. It was pretty funny the next day when we woke up. We know have an inside joke though that she will wake me up in the middle of the night when she gets scared. Bless her little cotton socks haha.
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So this week I studied a lot about the nature of God and it was so amazing. I love my Heavenly Father so much and i know i can not comprehend how much he loves me and each child around me. But i do know that he loves us and wants us to return to him, and he is dying to bless us. I know that he tries to give us every opportunity he can to grow and learn. I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who knows what i can handle and helps me carry by burdens and helps me through my trials! I love the scripture in John 14 that says:

27 aPeace I leave with you, my bpeace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be ctroubled, neither let it be afraid.

And then i love the scripture in John 16 that says:

 33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have apeace. In the bworld ye shall have ctribulation: but be of good dcheer; I have eovercome the world.

There is so much hope and peace that comes from Faith in Christ! I know that Christ's gospel has been restored on the earth again through Priesthood power. I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who has given us a Prophet to lead us in this day. I know that Thomas S. Monson is that Prophet and that through him Christ leads the church today.

I hope you have a great week and remeber to talk with your Heavenly Father! He loves you and wants to hear from you!

Love you all
Sister Robinson