I LOVE being on a mission

I have never heard so many random pieces of advice/information from people, in my life. haha I've learned about dating, marriage, birth, and how to pop bigger pieces of popcorn (put/store them in the freezer before use!:) As well as insights into how different personalities work. Did you know, not everyone is loud and wants to be asked a bijillions of questions? I do now... haha. The Visitors' Center is on fire. We can barely keep up on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, with youth groups and family home evenings! We hit 5,000 people through the door in the past two weeks on Saturday at 1pm. 

We had to go up to Gresham, Oregon for a doctor appointment and on the way back got sidetripped to none other than a RUSSIAN BAKERY!!!!!!!!!!! nevermind we'd already been to DONUT LAND (The only good donuts...in the world.) (Sister Holman thinks it's really funny to have people ask me and Sis. Arts what our favorite donuts are, because we flip out about it. :p).

So, of course, I got a GIANT, like 84 ounce mineral water--because it's all in Russian--, and some chocolate Russian cake, and some of the most delicious apricot juice, this side of the Atlantic Ocean :)
 As we were jumping into the car that morning, coming from Donut Land, we had to hurry and were freaking out trying to be speedy to get into the car. We had had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Showtunes on earlier, and as we JUMPED in the car, "Who Will Buy" from Oliver! the musical, greeted us. Bhahah, we couldn't stop laughing. It's been such a great week, I don't know when I stopped having a good time. Good parties, all around. We've been teaching in the Visitors' Center, as much as we possisisisbly can, and on the downtime, I study out of the Church Almanac, which contains the growth of the Church for each year! Mostly, I study the maps with the temples on them...;) It's really cool finally hitting our stride, and knowing what's where in the Center, to be able to show people who want to see a Finnish Mormon.org "I'm a Mormon" video, for example. I've pretty much memorized their lives. Also!!!!! There was a youth group in the other night, and TWO OF THE PEOPLE IN OUR DISPLAYS CAME with the youth. Just boppin around, like hey, I'm just here to help, blah blah. We should've gotten a picture, but for them it's kind of embarrassing, and apparently blase ;) haha

Ouff, it's kind of frustrating to have people come into the Center, and say, "Oh, we're members, we're good." Oh, yeah?! Really!? Have you been here before!? Did you know everything's touch screen and if you sit in front of the Jerusalem exhibit without touching anything, it's just a screensaver? Did you also know that if you pick-up a Book of Mormon in another language it'll start reading to you from Moroni 10:4-5, where it talks about knowing for yourself about the Gospel, and that we are promised we'll get an answer!?

Nope, didn't think so.
People tend to think we're tour guides, and to a point we are, I mean, we know where everything is, but they're missing out on SO MUCH! by thinking they can do it on their own! My heart hurts that they'll not get to see the amazing videos we have for them. :(

I have learned and changed so. It's weird to look back at how angry or mean I used to get, ever. Here, you do the right thing, or you don't. If you don't obey and don't listen, which I've struggled with, then you are sad and ashamed, and can't do the work of the Lord, with His help. And then, what's the point. Boof. Pointlesssssssss

Transfers are coming! We're in a trio right now, and the Lord has blessed us immensely, the more we work. We don't do ANYTHING to affect someone changing, and they do, etc. woof.
Today, we went ice skating, and a Zone Leader split his head. I prayed in companion prayer that everyone would be alright, but what can you do, when people have their agency! :(

Please don't pre-judge people the missionaries teach, by not helping them, or thinking they will suck all our assets away. They might, but sometimes, they just really need your help; it breaks our Hearts! to think that anyone wouldn't love the people we teach. I know you all are the bestest ;)

I love you all!
Googma!
Sister Bothwell

This week....

This week in Sports: the Lord took over. The Visitors' Center has been taking up A LOT of our time...in a good way! But it's forty+ hours a week. with how much we study and eat during the day, that wasn't leaving a lot of time left over to, ya know, go out and invite people to learn. So, we got creative :) And went on splits (a member comes, and we go two and two) for several hours, this week. Bumping up by double, most times, what we were being able to do before. :)

The Visitors' Center? Well, It's fantastic, of course. Not of course, because I didn't really know a Visitors' Center could be fantastic, or really what could happen, or what it entails. It can be a place of inspiration, and bring the Spirit really strongly. I probably didn't really understand what a Visitors' Center could do, until I watched a lady stay at the Book of Mormon exhibit for thirty minutes, reading along with the videos in the book provided. She was a member, and maybe someone else wouldn't have been as reached by it, but she was, and many people consistently are. It's really incredible to watch.

The Lord has really blessed us for working our hardest in the Visitors' Center, and I love it. It's a huge perspective check when we spend almost no time outside the Center, and then get two new people who want to learn, in one day. Perspective check that it's not through any effort of my own, that people are open or prepared. I knew that, but it really hit home yesterday when these two girls were excited about the Gospel! 

You'd think I'd get bored of the Gospel displays, about Jesus Chris and the Special Witnesses of Christ, and the temples, and the Christus, but it keeps being trues...crazy. ;)

Bahahaha, so funnnnnnyyy story: There's a temple geography quiz, that anyone can take, on a touch screen "Temples Around the World" exhibit. Well, when we missionaries have down time, we take it, and study up on it, and things. There was a guy "Joey" who asked one time, "What's the High Score?" welp, seeing as we didn't have one recorded, he was IT! haha so then the other sister missionaries (Sisters Baker and Holman), upped their game. Sister Holman had the outstanding high score of 29500, with Sister Baker not far behind (29434). President Morby and his wife, along with all the Zone leaders (district=8 missionaries; Zone=24-30 missionaries) came in to do training, and then had conferences with the missionaries. Long story short: after much hustling and bustling, and some stunning accuracy, Elder Blanchard--one of the Assistants to the President, got 29800 and was SUPREMEMEMEMLy proud of it ;) haha so funny. We had a friend there that we were teaching, and we wanted to show her the game-- we thought she'd do well at it. She didn't really care, or didn't really catch the hang of it, and so I jumped in, after some major bad plays, and started teaching her how the game went. I said, "Anytime you wanna jump in, that'd be great: this is YOur game! haha", but I keep going, and KNOCKED IT OUTTA THE PARK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With 41326. if I could all-caps numbers, I would ;)

oh, and then this guy named "Ian" came in, and got 71124.

whatevs.

Major <3 to all y'all!

Sister Bothwell

Breaking news.

Hi, I'm just poppin' in to say that Jenna just sent the first PICTURES!!!
So click-clack that link over to your right to see those (it's the one that says "Photos").
Also if you're like me and are too lazy check the website every time that Jenna sends a new letter/email/carrier pigeon then just click the "Join this site" button and follow the instructions on the screen.

Thanks so much for putting up with me,
-Jordan

yay!

haha hey there!
So this week was fabulous! as always!
We had a baptism on Saturday, and it's amazing how people can get so focused on the numbers. I l.o.v.e. the people we're teaching right now! They are so willing to learn, and their problems are not so insurmountable that we can't help them, and guide them to find the answers to their questions of the soul! The Visitors' Center opened up this week! and that's been an adventure, for sure! Beautiful exhibits, and wonderful videos, movies, paintings, history, all centered on Jesus Christ. He is the central message to our Gospel, and the Visitors' Center makes being in tune with the Spirit, absolutely VITAL. I was eating in the kitchen a few days ago, and looked up to have this massive prompting to go out and help this one lady. She was at an exhibit that is almost completely self-explanatory, and I just thought, "I don't really have anything particular to say to her..." I walk over, blah blah blah, and we start chatting about her. I love her to death, almost immediately--Christ-centered people are one-in-a-million it feels like,--and ran her over to the I'm A Mormon exhibit, where we can watch all the videos from http://mormon.org/people/. We were going on, and I really wasn't inspired to say anything, just chatting. Then she told me she had just started homeschooling her daughter, and seemed kind of overwhelmed about it. I loved her, and wanted to share what I knew, so I gave her my mom's email address-- haha sorry mom!

We have amazing resources at our disposal, but I'll tell you a secret--the Church is true.
That's all we teach, that's all we're here to learn in this life. And the way we can connect with people, is as much as we pray for. "God will give us as much light as we ask for."--as it says on the Savior of the World display.

We had an incredible Spirit the other day at a lesson with an investigator. First off, we were all really scared to go, because this boy wanted us to meet at his friend's house, and we had just recently heard a story of a similar situation that would have ended up badly, but in this second story, that investigator's friends didn't show up. blah blah, the point being, this man/boy, whaterr, had been very hostile toward us, last time, and it was us trying to keep level and failing.

Altogether, a recipe for disaster.
I wish everyone could have been in that lesson. I was just praying and praying and praying. Not for anything too specific. Just for the Spirit to be there. I figured everything would just work out, after that. It did. No miracles, maybe not too huge, but the Spirit was there, we worked together with Him to create a good teaching environment. The feeling there was almost peaceful, compared to the Bible hashing-out that was going on last time.

It may seem silly, but it's so fun to learn everything I possibly can about the Bible and Book of Mormon. It really truly does enrich my life. And as our recent convert said last night, "I'd like to know what it is I'm supposed to be believing"-in regard to life after death-he had some questions ;)

But the best part is we can pray about it, and receive an answer whether it's true--no matter what the teaching is or who is teaching you-- the Lord gives us personal affirmation, that these things are true. Check out Alma 40, for pete's sake-- he asked because he wanted to know!

:)
I love you all SO MUCH-O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sister Bothwell
Thanks for all y'all's support!
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