The Gospel: Personalized January 24th 2017

I live! I am almost, almost, almost back to my normal alto-voiced self. My throat is a bit sore, but after about five days of hacking and coughing I have managed to come out on top. Still constantly using sanitizer just in case, though. As my teacher told us the first day, the MTC is a petri-dish. No one is safe.

As my other teacher would say, on your mission the days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days. A glimpse into eternity . . . But I swear I just arrived! Then I record in my journal what happened every day and there's always too much to tell. Sister Mayne and I have been over the sisters in our zone officially since last Monday, but the new district that arrived are already feel like old friends of ours. Sister Anderson and I, who are in one of the pictures I've attached, learned we both love to harmonize and spent a lot of fun downtime playing around with harmonies for hymns this week. Yesterday during a very long, slightly hysterical evening of class, Elder Craig and I likened the Spirit to a candy bar, and the metaphor became very long and nonsensical and hilarious to our exhausted brains. It was definitely time for P-day today, haha.

This week there was a huge focus in our training on how to teach lessons according to the needs of the people we're teaching. So, not just memorizing lessons and principles and commitments, but personalizing them for every individual. To do that, we've learned to get to know our investigator first, to plain ask them right-out what they want to gain from meeting with us, and sometimes just ask them to be baptized the very first lesson to see where they're at. I had no idea I would be asking that so often! But it really does make clear our purpose as missionaries.

One thing I had no clue about was the ability missionaries have to promise blessings. Specific ones, too. I think that's what really brings the Spirit into my lessons, though-- when I invite people to follow Christ and feel inspiration as to what specifically they will be blessed with as they do. I had no idea I could do that myself, or how powerful it can be. 

I can't wait to find and teach the people in Missouri being prepared for this message: Jesus Christ lives, and through him we can find happiness! For me right now, the gospel has never been so simple, and it has never felt more personal.

~Sister Fluegel

P.S. Sister Mayne, being from California, experienced falling snow for the first time this week, so whenever its happened she insists on taking pictures. Hence the obscene amount of snow pictures this week.