Holy Cow! (I have realized i say that a lot now) :) Area: Cincinnati, Ohio Companion: Ashlee Hatch, Layton, Utah

WOW!! How are you all my wonderful family and friends? I love you all so much! This week has
been a crazy miraculous week!!! I cant believe where i am and what i am doing. It is truly by the grace of God that we are able to do his work. So my new address is 6403 Apt 5 Clough Pike Cincinnati OH 45244.

Sister Hatch and Sister Davis

Sister Hatch, Sister Davis, Sister Elmer, Sister Johnson

Okay so when i got to my new are we went to visit the relief society presidents house. She is amazing and fulfills her calling for sure. She was talking to us about decisions in life and how the smallest decision can have a huge impact in the long run. She compared it to the rutter on a boat. She said just a degree turn on the rutter will take you on a whole new coarse on the boat. I thought that was such a cool analogy. It is so true. We all make so many decisions everyday and the decisions that we make set the coarse for which we travel everyday and into the eternities. It is awesome! We also visited another member who is absolutely amazing! She was telling us how her life was so busy. She was telling us how she had gotten out of the habit of reading her scriptures. I guess the stake president had sent out a challenge to the stake to read their scriptures everyday for 30 minutes. And she said that she was just struggling with it so bad. But then she said that she had a thought pop into her head the other day and it was "If i can take 30 minutes to watch TV why can i not take 30 minutes to save my soul?" It was awesome and such a powerful statement. I know it is so true thought that if we just set time aside to study our scriptures, say our prayers, and go to church it will truly save our souls!!! 

Okay so funny story! We were out teaching with this member. We were talking to this random guy on the street. All the sudden you hear this fart. And the member starts slowly backing away and says "Ohhh i got gas" Sister Hatch and I could not contain ourselves we just burst out laughing. This guy we were talking to was giving us the weirdest look. But we were just cracking up!

So we had this meeting on Thursday. It was so awesome! It was for all the missionaries that have six months or less left. President Porter talked to us about what kind of legacy we want to leave behind. It was powerful. We talked about regrets and stuff like that. Something that always confused me was when people would say "Live life with no regrets" I understood that we wanted to live life to the fullest and such but i kept thinking the things i regret in life i have learned some of the biggest lessons from. But president Porter explained it so perfectly. He told us that in life we totally are gonna have regrets. He said if we never regretted anything than we never risked anything and if we never risked anything we never would grow and if we never grew there would be not point to the doctrine of Christ. He said that when we have regrets it is evidence that the doctrine of Christ is alive in our lives. It was awesome and it is so true. It is the doctrine of Christ that changes us. 

Everyday this week has just been full of miracles. I know that God truly provides for all his children. He is so aware of every one. I had an experience this last week again with this. So this last transfer i was made a sister training leader. I was feeling super stressed and super inadequate for the position. So i was studying with this thought in mind and I decided to read "The Hope of Gods Light" from Dieter F. Uchtdorf. As i was reading i read this part that said "It doesn’t matter how unqualified you may think you are or how far behind others you may feel. The very moment you begin to seek your Heavenly Father, in that moment, the hope of His light will begin to awaken, enliven, and ennoble your soul."  Bam!! The spirit hit me so strongly and i felt such comfort come from my Heavenly Father! 

I know that we are all sons and daughters of God! I know he loves each of us and has a very important plan for us to accomplish here on earth. I hope you know that i love each of you so much! Keep at the hard work you all are doing and know that God is with you. Be strong and faithful and i will too. Love you all!!!

 

Love your sister Davis :) 

Leaving Kendallville!

I found heaven in indiana!!! ;) 

Hey all you wonderful family and friends!

Nothin like being in an area for six weeks and leaving. This transfer went by so fast and they just keep getting faster. It is so crazy. I have loved serving here in Kendallville. Everyone here is so loving and sweet. There is definitely a special spirit here in this wonderful little town. 

This week was a spectacular week though. We found out that all the people named Jessica in Kendallville are the nicest people here. Haha! We had found some people named Jessica this week and they were all super nice. So we decided to look at all the people on the potentials list named Jessica and go and contact them. All those ones were nice too and agreed to lets us come back. It was so awesome!

I have learned once again that God is so aware of every single one of His children. For a little while i have felt so disconnected with my prayers. Like i wasnt getting answers and stuff. So i have been studying about praying this week. We also had interviews with the mission president and i talked to him about it. He told me that usually when you feel disconnected it means you arent being completely honest with your Heavenly Father. At first i didnt really understand what he was talking about. Then he explained that i need to tell Heavenly Father exactly how i feel my thoughts my feelings everything. He asked my if i told Heavenly Father that i felt like he wasnt answering my prayers and i said no and he asked my why not? and i didnt know why i hadnt. But then i got thinking about it and i kinda felt like i couldnt say that to God. Then president Porter told me that God already knows how you feel and if you talk to him about it he can help you through it. It helped so much. So that night i knelt down and seriously poured out my heart to my Heavenly Father. IT FELT SO GOOD!!!! Then i contined to study it for the rest of the week and went to church on Sunday and all that was talked about there was prayer too. It was amazing! I know that God truly does listen to our prayers. I dont know why it can be so hard to pour out your heart to Heavenly Father sometimes. But just know that he already knows. He wants you to talk about how you are feeling with him. He wants you to know that he loves you. Just do it! We teach this to people all the time i dont know why it took so much for me to do it too. But i promise it feels so much better when you talk to Him like that. I love my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ! I love my mission and everything that i learn. I love all of you guys and pray for you constantly! Keep smiling and staying strong!!! 

 

Love your sister Davis :)

SNOW!!!!

Sister Elmer & Sister Davis

Hey everyone!

I love you all so so much! I hope you all are staying warm and being safe. I dont know what the weather is like where ever you are at but here it is snowy and super cold. The temperatures dont seem like it would be that cold cause we get those temperatures in Utah but there is this wind chill here that is so cold. It just like freezes everything in its tracks. They have cancelled school cause of how cold it is the buses cant start. CRAZY!! At the beginning of the winter i kept praying that the winter wouldn't last long. That it would warm up fast after the holidays. Then i read this talk that was talking about the enabling power of the atonement and it talked about how when we pray we should pray that we can receive help with our circumstances rather than praying that our circumstances could change... needless to say i have started praying now that my body can adapt to this cold weather. :) But that was a good lesson i learned this week. 

I also had another cool realization this week about receiving answers to our prayers. I was reading a talk in the ensign and it was talking about receiving answers to our prayers. It kinda talked about how Heavenly Father isnt going to give you a play by play of everything you need to do in life but rather he is going to let you decide. That is where the growing takes place. My whole mission i have been praying that Heavenly Father will help me become what i need to become then i ask for guidance in every little thing... which isnt a bad thing but instead i realized that i need to make my own decisions trusting that Heavenly Father will let me know if what i am doing is what he wants me to be doing or not. It is our job though to build that relationship with him. And that is how we will grow and become what we are meant to become. It was a great realization and super comforting. Something i will use for the rest of my life. Also one of the sister training leaders was tellin me that that sometimes in life our prayers go unanswered for a while so when they are answered they will be treasure more. Just as a long searched for treasure is more valuable to you so is a long searched for answer to a prayer. I loved that! 

The cutest thing happened in church yesterday. We were sittin behind this cute little family. They have four kids. The youngest is 3 and the oldest is 11 then the others are somewhere in between there. But anyway the mom was up giving a talk and the dad was doing the best he could to keep the kids under control.The three older ones were doing good but the youngest little girl was givin dad a run for his money. She started jumping on the pew and the dad grabbed her and wrapped her in his arms then he let her go and he was paying attention to his wife speaking but you could see the look in the little girls eye as she sneakily got back up on the pew and eyed her dad and started jumping again. Haha he got her down again and then she had to go to the bathroom. So he took her and then the other kids started playing rock paper sissors. Then the dad came back and set the little girl down and got after the other kids to stop playing that well while his attention was turned to them the little girl kicked her feet up on the back of the pew with her hands on the seat of it and was in a hand stand when the dad turned back around. I was giggling so hard. It was the cutest thing ever! I do have to say though that dad is amazing! And what a trooper he is :) Well everything here is just wonderful. We are having fun and laughing  A LOT!! Sister Elmer is so amazing and such a hard worker. The time is flying by! I love you all so much! you are in my prayers always!! 

 

Love your sister Davis :)

2015 has begun :)

We are out for a district fun day!
Bowling and bbq!
Love your missionaries :)

Hey all you wonderful beautiful and handsome family and friends of mine :) 

I love you all so much and hope you all had a fun safe new year. We definitely did! I set a record for the time i went to bed on new years eve. We were in bed by 9:50! Earliest i have been to bed i think my whole life on new years. But we were exhausted :) haha We had to be in by six and couldnt leave our apartment until three the next day cause of all the crazy things that happen on new years. But our mission president put together a packet thing for us to do while we were inside. It was really neat he had us set goals for what we wanted to become by the end of our missions, what kind of marriage we want, what kind of home we want, and visions for our lives pretty much. It was awesome. I have never felt so prepared going into a new year as i do this one. :) 

So a couple funny things that have happened this week....

First last night we were eating at a members home and she made such a delicious dinner. But she put a ton of vegetables on my plate. There was like zucchini, and broccli, and cauliflower and carrots (which are not bad) and stuff like that. So i grabbed some salt and put it on there thinkin it would taste better with that. Well i could still taste the stuff so i put a little more and a little more on them and then i took another bite and choked a little cause the salt was so strong. So i quit with the salt and just ate them anyway. It was kinda funny but she didnt notice... well i hope she didnt notice.

The other funny thing that happened this week... we went to teach our investigator and we took a male member with us. She is wanting to be baptized so bad but just cant quit some of her addictions that she has and she is living with her boyfriend who is a less active member. He never will come and sit in on the lessons with her. So we took this male member in with us and start talkin and once her boyfriend heard that other males voice he was in there in a snap and participating and everything. We thought it was so funny and everytime we would ask him a question the investigator would chuckle a little and be like "Yeah get him" haha it was so funny. We were crackin up after that lesson. She thought it was pretty funny too that he came out when the male member was there she said that he told her after we left that he was just protecting her but we were all like Uh huh sure he was ;) 

Okay now for the amazing things that happened. We had an awesome experience with one of our newer investigators. The other sisters had been teaching him previously but just wasnt progressing so they didnt see him much. But we went back and he met with us and seems so sincere now. We talked about the restoration and he thought it was amazing. He talked about how he missed his mom cause she had passed away a while ago. The member that we took with us had just recently lost her mom and bore a powerful testimony on how they will see their moms again. He said he wanted that so bad. Then he came to church yesterday! It was so awesome!!! 

This week we were so busy and by yesterday we hadnt found very many people. We needed to increase our teching pool so we planned to whole day to go and see potentials and former people who had studied with missionaries and by the grace of God we found four new people to teach. It was so wonderful!! I love my mission and all the miracle we see everyday! This gospel is truly a gospel of miracles. We see them everyday! I love everything i am learning and i am so grateful to have so much support back home. I love you guys and pray for you always. Keep staying strong :) 

 

Love your sister Davis :)