Sister Akayla Juliann Ferrara: Hello All! 7/6/2015

What a wonderful week it's been! Hope you are all doing well! So much has happened in the last few weeks, it all just seems like a blur.

Last Monday after preparation day, we got to see Tammy whom we haven't seen too often. She wasn't progressing at all so we dropped her for a little while and then decided we should try her again. She's the one with dialysis, so she can't physically get baptized so she says. Well, a doctor in our ward said that she could actually be baptized, she would just need to cover up the spot that gets hooked up to the machine so she can do dialysis. Anyways, we decided to restart teaching her the lessons so we talked about the Restoration and watched the Restoration film with her. It was such a great lesson with her! Being the TC leader makes it so that we don't have as much time in our area to teach people as other missionaries, so I had forgotten what a great lessons was like almost.

Tuesday we had a pretty good morning. Didn't have to go on exchanges this last week because we have 5 sisters in our stewardship so we could take a week off this transfer! We found a new investigator! We had a member with us and we went to go try a less active family on the ward list and came to find out that they had moved, so we met this 17 year old kid named Kevin and his grandpa named Richard. They just moved here from Puerto Rico and Kevin is very interested! He had lots of questions and is very intelligent! He asked us questions like how do people get introduced to God after they die when they didn't have the chance when they were living on earth. Well....what a great question! He seemed so shocked that we knew the answer and didn't have to go ask our "pastor." He's awesome! That afternoon we got to serve at the Tabernacle in Council Bluffs. Now that it's busy, we get a chance to go out there once every couple weeks. We got to serve out there with the Crandalls. As if we don't already spend so much time with them! Haha it was great :) They bought us dinner and Christy Creme sherbet since it's tradition :) The Tabernacle is always a lot less busy than the TC, but we did actually get quite a few tours. I hadn't been there since Gingerbread season, so it was nice to refresh my memory! We got home at about 8, so went and tried to see Debbie in her new house. She finally was able to move back into her old house so she's still in our ward, and hasn't been doing very well. Still feeling really hopeless and a little bit angry at God for giving her so many trials. She's at the point where she wants to give up and stop trying. It makes me so sad to see people like that! We are always going to have trials. God is never going to stop allowing opposition to come after great joy and happiness. We need it in order to progress and experience long lasting true happiness.

Wednesday was so great! We had our "Meet the President" zone conference, so we were to be in our seats by 8:30 and then were asked to stand when President and Sister Gardner came into the room. You could tell everyone was really jittery and nervous to meet them. The second they walked in, the room was completely silent and as I stood up tears filled my eyes because I knew in that very second that they were called of God to serve as mission president and wife of the Nebraska Omaha Mission. They are amazing! Of course I miss the Westons terribly, but I am so excited to serve with the Gardners now. They had us all go up in our zones with our companions and introduce ourselves, then they introduced themselves. Showed us pictures of their family and told us their experience when they got called to be the mission president. They are so very different from the Westons. Completely opposite in some ways, but so good! We had lunch and everything, and it didn't go as long as a normal zone conference would go, so had lots of time in our area. Sister Brower found out from some sisters that an investigator that she taught in her last area has cancer for the second time and isn't going to go through chemo this time so she will only have about 3-6 months left to live. She specifically asked if Sister Brower would visit her, so we set up a time to see her that day which was nice. She's such a sweet lady, and Sister Brower was so glad we got to do that. After that we called Donna because we felt like we really needed to see her, and she answered and told us she was home! Miracle! We went over there and tried to be really straight forward with her. She is really flaky and likes to tell fibs, so we don't really know what to believe sometimes. She's really struggling still. Cried a lot to us and told us that she wants to change so badly and isn't happy with her life at all. We tried to tell her that in order to change, you have to do the 3 most important things. Those are read the Book of Mormon daily, pray daily, and go to church every Sunday. She committed to do those things and said she would make it to church....Sunday came around and we called her several times with no answer, and she never showed up. She's really hard. She will never keep our commitments, so it's so hard to know what to do! You just wanna pick people up and shake them sometimes! But of course, that's not the right way to handle it. I just feel like we can't give up on her yet though. We were supposed to have dinner with the Huffstutters, but they ended up cancelling, so we decided to go out to eat. We went to Panda Express and kinda got lost a little bit...oops. Fun memories though ;) We were able to see Sister Ridgeway after that. She is not doing well. Her husband makes me so angry. I think he's sexually abusing her. The poor thing is so lonely and so hurt. You can just see it in her eyes. It breaks my heart to see these people hurting so much. The gospel is all I have to offer, and I know that's all that can help her. I just wish that there was more that I could do sometimes.

Thursday we were at the TC in the morning and the clinic in the afternoon. Nothing too special.

Friday we had MLC with President Gardner! It was so excellent. We discussed SO many different things. He asked us to name off all the rules in the mission that we've had that aren't written in the white handbook and we wrote them all down on the board and he told us that he would look over them this month and decide what we're going to do. He talked a lot about how he knows we are all adults and are capable of making our own decisions. He told us that he doesn't want to have all these strict rules for everyone to follow, but that if some missionary isn't following the higher law, than they should have the penalty to go down to the lower law. But not everyone should suffer for it. Lots of things that can be useful for my own future family as well. Oh, so many wonderful thoughts and things that we talked about. All good things, and I'm excited to get to know the Gardners better! After that we had an amazing lesson with Rebecca our returning member. We talked to her a lot about the temple. She has been endowed and we are helping her to prepare to go back again! She is so prepared! We had a fun picnic that night with a member in our ward. Kinda scary because we heard lots of fireworks and couldn't figure out if they were gunshots or fireworks ;) Haha no big deal though! We saw Valeri after that. She is struggling a lot. She has kind of lost her light that she used to have. She hasn't been reading the Book of Mormon anymore and is back on smoking pot and everything. It just breaks my heart so much. We committed her to read the Book of Mormon every single day for a week and then see what happens. I know if she really takes it seriously than she will change. She just keeps telling us that she's not ready to commit to giving up all her worldly addictions yet. I haven't lost hope though. I know she'll make it eventually!

Saturday we had a great TC training and then just did our studies and did some weekly planning and such. Then we served at the TC that night thank goodness. With all those fireworks going on, we didn't feel too safe outside. We didn't have too many visitors since it was a holiday, but we did have a bunch of families who are going to Nauvoo to perform in the pageant! So fun! That night was rough. Luckily we prepared ourselves and bought earplugs, but it was still pretty loud. Everyone around us was playing loud music and doing hundreds of fireworks. It's ridiculous how much money people spend on fireworks. It was seriously giving me a headache! But anyways...all is well! We had hardly anyone at church because of the holiday. Only one member of the bishopric was there. I had to lead the music for sacrament meeting, and then we were asked last minute to teach the gospel principles class because we had no teacher! Pretty crazy! Great day week though! Hope you are all doing well! Love you tons!

Sister Ferrara :)