Week 47 - birthday

Hello everyone!

This week we got to have our district council and it was the best! It's so nice to see people in person. Although things are loosening up a bit, we still are supposed to be cautious and try to co tact people online and wear our masks so still just waiting to see when we can get out again.

We had a lesson with our friend Nelson and he basically just told us to repent so yeehaw. 

This week was my 21st birthday so yay! We went to Chick Fil A and they gave me a free meal. Literally the best place ever. My companion was the best and all the sisters in our district too. We had a red velvet cake.

We got to meet a few more members this week as well. Doing video calls and ward correlation meetings. Hope we can get out soon and meet everyone!

We've been really trying to get in contact with past people that have been taught and we've got a few of them that have been interested in calling us this week! 

It's hard to write these emails because every week is about the same but things are good! We are doing the best we can! Church hasn't started back up yet but hopefully soon! 

Have a great week!

Sister Coleman

Week 46 - transfers!

Hey everyone! Another pretty eventful week here. 

We got to have a fun district p day last Monday since it was our last one before transfers. Then transfer calls came that night and I'm now in Dacula, Georgia! So fun to be back in Georgia again haha.

On Tuesday we got to go say goodbye to some of our members and left them all know that we were leaving. The area actually got elders now instead so I think they were pretty excited for that. 

We got all transferred and I had my companion Sister Fuller. We live with two other sisters as well, Sister Venema and Sister Montour. Then that night, President Marsh calls and says that they accidentally put and english Sister in a spanish area so they wanted to switch Sister Fuller and her. So the next day I got a new comp Sister Flower! She is from West Valley Utah and she just got reassigned from the Sydney, Australia mission. 

We dont have anyone we are teaching because we are opening a new area but we have been able to meet and talk with quite a few members since being here and they are all so amazing! 

A tender mercy from the week: We were at Walmart and Sistwr Flower and I were waiting by the car for the other sisters when a woman walked up to us and asked us to buy some candy for her daughter's color guard. We bought some from her and asked her more about her family and her life. She asked us about where we were from and about our missions and said she had talked with elders a lot before she moved here. It was a little tender mercy to be able to talk with her and share who we are and what we do. We haven't been able to do that in a while.

We called a guy that had previously been taught by the missionaries and he just bashed us on the phone for 30 minutes so that was fun haha.

This week I was reading in Ether and in Ether 2:7 it says, "And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people."

And I was thinking about how a lot of times I want to stop. I get to a place that I think is good enough and I want to stop there and hang out. But the Lord won't suffer us to stop there. He wants us to keep going because he has something even better prepared for us. A land of promise prepared for us. Even when we feel like we are good enough or in a good enough spot, Heavenly Father wants us to keep progressing because he sees potential in us that we can't always see. 

I hope yall have a great week

Sister Coleman 

Pic 1 me, Sister Montour, Sister Venema, and Sister Flower

Pic 2 last district p day! 

Pic 3 Sister Montour, Sister Fuller (my companion for one day), me, Sister Jordan, and Sister Venema

Week 45

Hi everyone! 

Last Monday we got to go to these really pretty gardens and lake and I'll just attach pics because so pretty. 

Our Cinco De Mayo dinner was this delicious venison. Made me feel like I was back at home lol. The members here are all pretty dang good cooks so that's been so fun. 

Quite a few of the missionaries in our zone got another missionary this week that was reassigned from a foreign mission. So our mission has got a lot bigger in this past week. It has been fun meeting all these new people though. 

We had a mission wide zoom call on Friday with John Bytheway. It was so great! He talked about how the gospel has the answers but if you aren't receiving those answers yet, you will still be given direction. His main message was keeping the atonement of Jesus Christ the focus of everything we are doing. It's so easy to get distracted and that is one of the main ways that Satan tries to deceive us. But with our focus on the Savior we can't fall. 

We have been able to teach a couple lessons this week. We have been receiving quite a few referrals so we have met a lot of new people that way. We also were able to get in contact with some people that were previously taught and talk with them. 

We were going to pick up some pizza to take to dinner at a members and before that we decided to call this guy named Eddie that had been taught a while ago. We called him and talked with him for a little bit and he said that his wife had ripped up his Book of Mormon. We offered to bring another one but he said he had to go into work at pizza hut! We were pretty happy how perfectly that worked out and we were able to drop it off to him at work and get our pizza. Blessings 

Sunday we went to a members house for sacrament and shared a message. It was so nice to get to go to someone's house for sacrament again. Blessings

Hope everyone had a great Mothers Day!

I hope yall have a great week! 

Sister Coleman 

Pic 1 my deer meat lol

Pic 2 pretty gardens 

Pic 3 the district 

Pic 4 the lake

Pic 5 the district pt 2

Week 44 - Happy May

Another great week here in North Carolina!

We got to spend a couple days with the sisters that are in Blairsville making videos for our Facebook page. It has been interesting trying to come up with ideas of things to post but we came up with a few and made some pretty fun videos. We made a giant Christ collage on our wall and made a video making it. So hopefully we will have that up soon so yall can see it. It's pretty intense. We spent a very long time cutting the pictures out of ensign's. Quite the party. Our Facebook page is "Church of Jesus Christ in Cumming, Dahlonega, Blairsville, and Murphy" if anyone is really interested in seeing it. 

Some exciting news! We are going to be getting about 140 new missionaries in the next 2 weeks. All of them were serving in foreign countries and are being reassigned to our mission. It is going to be crazy and crowded but we are really excited. 

We had a great lesson with our friend Tracy and shes now on date to be baptized! We are so excited for her. It's pretty crazy that we've never even met her in person but she is wanting to be baptized. Quarantine is such a weird time. 

Yesterday, we got to go to a non denominational church here. They had a drive up so you just park your car and they have speakers so you can hear everything from your car. We just sang and listened to the preacher and it was a lot of fun. 

Also the animal is back living in the vent so that's exciting.

We had a mission zoom call and got the news that we are now allowed to hold baptisms again. And we are now allowed to go to members houses for sacrament again. So things are looking promising! Hopefully we can start opening up here soon. Georgia has been opening up but I am not in Georgia anymore so things are still pretty closed up here. 

Not much else happened this week. It's now May and I've now been out for 10 months! Pretty crazy. 

I did read an amazing talk by Elder Bednar this week that was talking about the enabling power of the atonement. How it allows us to do things that we wouldn't be able to do on our own. He said: "As you and I come to understand and employ the enabling power of the Atonement in our personal lives, we will pray and seek for strength to change our circumstances rather than praying for our circumstances to be changed. We will become agents who 'act' rather than objects that are 'acted upon.'" How powerful that through the enabling power we can be strengthened to change our circumstances and overcome things we never thought we could. 

If you want to read the talk it is a BYU speech by Elder Bednar called "In the strength of the Lord"

I hope yall have the best week ever 

Sister Coleman

Here's some pics from last p day at the giant 10 commandments.