Sister Jennifer Bradley, Indianapolis Indiana Mission : Hello Fishers!

Hello from Indiana!

Well it is officially winter here...seriously, and it hasn't even snowed yet! My new companion is named Sister Degener (yeah, no one can say her last name, it's German!) and she is from Southern California, so this weather has been a bit of a shock to her :)

Little background on what Fishers is like:

It is a super wealthy area
We have 120 primary children in our ward :) (confirmed by Bishop)
There are some deaf people in the ward, so we had an ASL interpreter in our class, that was fun :)
There are no soliciting signs in almost every neighborhood
There is lots of potential :)

We did a TON of finding and had a lot of really amazing experiences :) We knocked on the door of a man named Brad and he was SO nice, he siad he wasn't super religious and would be totally willing to let us come back! He also has some teenage children, so they are potentials too :) We also ended up giving a Book of Mormon to a man named Barry who told us he was curious about the Book of Mormon and had always wanted to read one! He also told us that he is out of town a LOT (like 50% of the time) and had come home 15 minutes before we knocked on his door! :)

Our Saturday was a little rough, not going to lie. The very first door we knocked on a lady yelled at us and told us we were soliciting our religion and that she was going to call the police....sooooo, we moved to a different neighborhood, and met some nice people, and then we pushed a fancy doorbell that people have connected to their phones so they can still answer their door even if they are away. So this lady starts talking to us and then she also starts telling us that the police were going to be called on us...sooooo, we left that neighborhood too. My poor new companion, that definitely doesn't build your confidence. I told her that because we were facing so much opposition that must mean that something great must have been coming our way :)

We kept finding, and after a man gave us a sermon about how the democractic is of the devil and anyone who joins it is going to hell (this guy was kinda nuts) and a pastor's wife was really rude to us, we met a lady named Janelle.

Janelle was working in her garage on some dressers and told us she was on a time crunch. We offered to help her with her project, and she said, "Are you serious?" We told her yes and she said, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I am going to cry, you have no idea how much this means to me." we rolled up our sleeves and got to work :) She told us a lot about herself and this lady totally needs the gospel! She is recovering from some addictions and is trying to turn her life around :) she is moving and we offered help and service to her and she was so grateful! She has a lot of health problems so it is a miracle that she was even out that day! She called us her "angels" and profusely thanked us. God never ceases to amaze me. I had been praying in my heart for someone to be open and to talk to us, especially after what had happened earlier, and He answered my prayer.

The next day we went finding yet again, and thankfully, we only talked to nice people. My companion told me that she wasn't sure she could take another mean person, so Heavenly Father definitley blessed us once again.

This week I Iooked a little deeper in Moroni 10 to look at all the things Moroni "exhorts" us to do. And Moroni 10:32 stuck out to me in a way it never has before, it says:

" Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God."

First off, we have been given a pretty daunting commandment from God which is: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matt 5:48) At one point in my life, I thought that perfection was something I had to achieve all by myself which, now having more experience, I know is impossible. Perfection is only achieved through Jesus Christ, and just as Elder Holland said last conference, "perfection is pending." The process begins just as Moroni 10:32 says with denying all ungodliness and loving God with everything we have and are. I think the more we love God, the more we are willing to do what He asks of us and the more able and willing we will be to make and keep the covenants, or promises, we have made with Him. The more we love God, the more we will keep our covenants, and the more we keep our covenants the more the Holy Ghost can be with us to sanctify and purify us so that day by day we become more like God, just as He has commanded us. I came to the conclusion, that our covenants help us become perfect.

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley

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