Aloha Everyone!

So I am here in South Jordan, Utah. I live like right next to the Jordan River Temple. Pretty cool huh? When I got here on Tuesday we spent all day with the mission president. We did a training ate a lot of food, went to see the Draper temple (it's really beautiful). Then we had a couple more meetings and then we were sent off with our trainers! 

Trainer.

I have a wonderful, sweet trainer. Her name is Sister Revolorio. She is from Guatemala. She is so on it. Every day we are up at 6:20 on our knees praying then we work out, we get ready, eat and study (for 3 hours) 1st hour is personal study, 2nd hour is companion study, 3rd hour we do language training. Or she does language training because she says that her english isn't very good. It's probably better than my english! Haha. So if your wondering, I am not learning spanish because this is not a spanish speaking mission this is an english speaking mission that is what I was told. Even though we run into latinos all the time! Its okay, sometime she catches me speaking pidgin and she has to ask me what that means and then I tell her that it is not really english. I love her so much!

Work.

The work here is hard. Every mission is hard, but this one is a different kind of hard. It is not physically hard (physically hard is riding my bike in the middle of the day up hills in 100 degree weather) or materially hard, but the people are hard, not all of them. Just the ones that we are trying to teach or reactivate. I guess this is true in many missions, but this one so many people of turned away from the church and the gospel because of what others have done to them or because the church requires too much from them. No matter how many times a door gets closed without me being able to say anything, or someone just says something rude. I am so happy! I walk away and say oh well, start singing a hymn and it's okay, because I know that all I did was try to share my testimony. So far I have met 2 of our investigators. One is a guy named Wiley he is funny and I know that he knows that this is true, but he just does not want to commit, the next is a family they are so nice and same thing they know that this is true and this is what they should be doing...but they are scared of commitment. I just think, what if the Savior did not commit to us, what if He decided to drop out at the last minute. Where would we be? Our commitment is not to anyone in this church our commitment and loyalty is to the Savior and keeping His commandments. And the Book of Mormon testifies of that. It's like it says in the introduction of the Book of Mormon, if we know that the Book of Mormon is true than we know that Jesus is The Christ. 

We do a lot of reactivation, it's difficult, but it's coming along. We also see a lot of senior citizens because there is two senior branches in our stake.OH Ya! In my mission we are not over just one ward, like normal missionaries. We are different, we are over 9 wards and here in Utah that is a whole stake! Yesterday I went to 3 wards. Me and my companion have figured out a way to cover more wards on Sunday. We split up, we will find new companions, (relief society presidents, Young women, etc.) Then we can meet more ward members. The reason we are over a whole stake is because the ward boundaries are so small we wouldn't have any work if we were just in one ward.

Food.

I have been eating great food. Not too many potatoes just yet. A lot of corn and what is really awesome is that most people of their own gardens so we eat organic a lot. I think my two favorite meals was this brazilian dish and this vegetable soup that had squash, green, yellow, red peppers, and other stuff I can't remember, but it was really good.

Message for the week...

Members are really important in missionary work. I am realizing that, i'm so sad that I did not try harder when I was at home with some of my friends. This is all of our work not just the missionaries, yes we are called and set apart, but the members know the people they are referring. I want to leave a commitment with all of you. Will you find 1 person this week that you can share your testimony with. Just 1. "How great is my joy if you bring one soul unto me..." (I think that is how it goes) I taught gospel principles yesterday about missionary work and they all seemed to think that it was only the missionaries job to bring people unto the gospel, (we changed that). After I leave a commitment I hope to hear a yes! so I am imagining all of you saying YES! 

I Love you all so much! Thank you for your kind letters of support and love. I feel these prayers every single day!

Sister Swain