Oct. 26, 2009

Yá'át'ééh pronounced (ya ta ay) means hello in Navajo! The language is soooo hard! I wish I could learn it, but it's like mandarin Chinese where the meaning of the word depends on the intonation (I don't know if that's a word); but anyways I am learning a few words here and there. "Oat" means "yes"

Anyway things are going really well here! We are working hard and seeing much success. We have a lot of people to teach and work with, and it's only going to get better!

We are working with this family and they are so awesome! It's a single mom with 5 kids ranging from ages 18-3 and the two oldest are giving her a lot of grief so; she had to quit her job to stay home and make sure her kids were staying out of trouble. But they are really fun. Lots of work to do and hopefully we can be a good influence on the 16yr old girl.

We have a lot of people we are working with so it's nice to keep busy.

Halloween is coming up; we are trying to think of something to be. We might just be Elders, but we will see.

Mom to answer your question about keeping the ward thinking about missionary work... we did a 40 day fast which worked really well. We also thought about making magnets to stick to their fridge that has a picture of Jesus and says something about missionary work. Firesides and getting the ward involved help give them a place to invite friends to see them perform. I could send you the living Christ one we did a few months ago. We did a bag with missionary tools (i.e. book of Mormon, together forever DVD, restoration DVD, pass along cards) and at dinner appointments had people reach in and pull something out. Then they had to give it away or show the DVD to a non-member.(but don't tell them that until after they have pulled it out) the sisters in another ward did a BOM rock, where they got this really big rock and painted it bright yellow and it said "Book of Mormon rock" on it and they put it in someone's yard and they had to keep it out there until they gave away a Book of Mormon and then the family would put the rock in someone else's yard (if they needed help they could call the missionaries) there are a few ideas hopefully some of them work :-)

Well life is good! I love you all and I am so grateful for your love and support xoxo

Sister Marchant
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October 19, 2009
Hola familia!

My new companion is Sister Lotulelei (sister "lo" for short) and she is AMAZING!!!!!!!!! I absolutely love her! We teach so well together, the spirit has been so strong in every lesson we have taught so far!

We also work out every morning wahoo! 4 months to sexy is under way... ha-ha

This week we have been looking for new investigators and we found a golden one tracting. Her name is Katija and she said that a lot of different churches come by but she "picks us" so we are pretty excited about her.

Life is good! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the mission and my love grows daily as I am trying to serve the people and bring them the gospel. Our mission has been focusing on baptism a lot lately and I understood that is our purpose but I read an article in last month's new era called "Why do we do missionary work?" by Elder Dallin H. Oaks. It's really good and but baptism in a new perspective for me. Here is a quote from it that I loved:

"We do not preach and teach in order to “bring people into the Church” or to increase the membership of the Church. We do not preach and teach just to persuade people to live better lives. We honor and appreciate the many ministers and others who are involved in the kind of ministry that makes bad men good and good men better. That is important, but we offer something more. One can qualify for the terrestrial kingdom instead of the telestial kingdom without the aid of this Church. We are concerned with a higher destination.

The purpose of our missionary work is to help the children of God fulfill a condition prescribed by our Savior and Redeemer. We preach and teach in order to baptize the children of God so that they can be saved in the celestial kingdom instead of being limited to a lesser kingdom. We do missionary work in order to baptize and confirm. That is the doctrinal basis of missionary work."

SO DO YOUR MISSIONARY WORK!!!!! I hope you are all looking for opportunities to share the gospel. There is an article in this month's ensign that talks about a stake president in Texas that promised his stake that if they would properly prepare themselves to teach the gospel, people would approach them and ask to be taught! What an amazing promise! It takes all the awkwardness out of sharing the gospel if someone asks you! You should read the article it's really good it's called "the member-missionary effect"

Can you tell I gave a talk on member missionary work yesterday! It got me all fired up! So do your missionary work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOVE YOU ALL and hope all is well! Keep on keepin' on xoxo

Sister Marchant

10/12

I am so excited to get a new companion! Sis Lo is awesome. She is companions with sister Boisselle (the crazy Canadian) right now. She is a hard worker and obedient... woot!

So yea things are going great! We set a bunch of baptismal dates last transfer and a lot of them dropped off the face of the earth, but hopefully they will come back! Our goal is to get 9 baptisms next transfer :-) so it should be exciting!

I am so sorry to hear about grandma! My prayers are with the whole family. I hope the treatment works!!!

Well this week has been kind of slow missionary work wise, but I know it will start to pick up! Sorry I don't have more to report

I love you all xoxo

Sister Marchant



9/28

Things are going well. This week was kind of lame. Our investigators with baptismal dates dropped off the face of the earth. We haven't been able to get a hold of anyone. So we went tracting this one day, for an hour and got 11 "other" lessons (teach a principle and say a prayer with a non-member)! That's got to be some kind of record or something. In Cedar Crest we would tract for 5 hours and get about 2 others.

Guess what!? We might have the opportunity to butcher again! I am so excited. I don't know what my fascination with butchering is, but it's kind of cool (plus no one has faith that I can do it, so I like to prove people wrong)

This weekend is the Shiprock fair! It's going to be great. Although hard for missionary work. No one will be home so we will have to go OYM at the fair for 4 days. Plus the traffic is so horrible that we have to walk up to the church for general conference (about a 4 mile walk) but it will be good to get some exercise in :-)

It's been a hard week, but going to the temple on Monday really helped to give me the strength to carry on!

I don't feel like I bear my testimony to you all enough, but I really do love the gospel of Jesus Christ. Every day I grow and my faith is strengthened. Especially the last few weeks as I have been focusing on faith. I didn't realize that an outward expression of faith is obedience. As I learned that my testimony of obedience grew also. as we are obedient to the commandments we are showing God that we believe that He knows what is best for us, and in return He says "here are some blessings" I was reading a talk from conference a few years ago and there is this story about a girl who needed to pay her tithing but also needed to pay for school or she wouldn't be able to take some tests. She didn't' have enough to pay for both so she agonized over the decision. Well she finally knew that she needed to pay her tithing so she did. well at work a few days later (as the tests we approaching) her boss (who she said wasn't very kind) was about to leave and asked her how school was going and she said "it's going good" well the boss left and a few minutes later the secretary came in and said "today must be your lucky day, the boss just said that all your school and books are paid for from today on" she said that she knelt down and told heavenly father that she only needed this month's tuition paid. I loved that story because it reminds me of the scripture in Malachi that the blessings will be POURED out that will not be room enough to receive them! She was greatly blessed for paying her tithing and that's how God always blesses us. So much so that a sacrifice isn't really even a sacrifice. The blessings that come are 10 times more than we gave up!

Anyways I love you all and hope that you are doing well xoxo

Sister Marchant


9/14
Hello family!

Well things are going great! The work is starting to pick up. We set a goal of 8 baptisms this transfer so we have 4 more weeks to accomplish that! (We are working off our faith right now because we don't have any that are coming to church) getting people to church is the hardest part out here. Everyone just wants to be baptized but they don't understand the importance of church, so we are going to have to learn how to teach how important it really is.

Can you believe it's been a year already? AH! Where is the time going? Everyone said it would fly by and it really is!

Abby: I sent you letters the past 2 or 3 weeks so I hope you got them...

So I am sending Alex his bday present (I know I know I am horrible), probably tomorrow, so look for it in the mail.

I don't know what has been going on lately, but I just am running out of words I guess! So love you and hope all is well xoxo

Sister Marchant