Lots of Love - Email from Jenny

Well ladies and gents, your girl in Indy has shook the hand of a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: Elder Neil L. Anderson. This is like having James or John from the New Testament come and meet you!! What a special experience!! Elder Anderson talked about how he served with my mission president, President Carlson, in France! It was so cool to see how he joked around and made little side comments about how President Carlson was "living it up in the mission home" as an Assistant to the President while he was freezing on the streets of France as a "normal missionary." haha okay okay, I know you are dying to know what he talked to us about, as you should be! Elder Anderson devoted a great portion of the time he spoke to us about the principle of Faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ. He addressed keeping our faith in the Lord, in ourselves and in the fact that the Lord has prepared people for us to bring closer to Christ at the forefront of our minds, making our faith more active than dormant. He invited us to "make substance of our faith" over and over and over again and invited us to not be satisfied with where we are but to be constantly and continuously striving to be better. He had us pull up scriptures about miracles, and not surprisingly, the majority of the scriptures that talked about miracles were "according to their faith." There is great strength and faith involved with memorizing scripture and recalling it in time of need, it is yet another way to strengthen our faith. Our Father is ready and willing to bless, strengthen, uplift, and help us as we exercise our faith in His beloved Son, Jesus Christ who has shown us the way and performed miracles Himself according to the Father's will. He told us not to fret when our Faith struggles, because it means that we are growing, and becoming, as long as we press forward and keep moving toward the Savior. The power of our faith can never be underestimated, and "no effort we give will go unnoticed" to our Father in Heaven. (Elder Anderson)

I was able to Facetime into my brother Tyler's funeral on Saturday (shout out to Skyler for taking charge of that!), and friends and family, there was a lot of love felt there. Though I was not present physically, the experience was indeed very special, and I am not sure I could have felt anymore love than if I were there. I loved what my brother in law Ben said "We all come from different Faiths, backgrounds, and are diverse, but the one thing we all have in common is love." (hopefully I got that pretty close Ben!) It was definitely not an easy experience, but one that will be dear to my heart the rest of my life.

We have been putting great effort this week in working with the members this week to find and teach people, the process is a bit longer, but we know that the fruits will be great once harvested. Some sisters invited their friends to the Relief Society party, and we were able to socialize and explain who we are :) One of the ladies who came with a friend loved talking with us! She was a cute, old Catholic lady, who we will hopefully be eating dinner with this week! Pray for her heart to be soft please!!

Random experience: We were trying to find a member in an apartment complex, when this lady looked at us and we waved to her, but she kept walking. She did three double takes and then yelled "Are you the Mormon Sisters???" We replied "yes!!" and she said "my son is in my apartment, he would love to see you!" and she proceeded to tell us where she lived. We hurried over to her apartment :) Her son went to Southern Utah University and is very familiar with our church, we asked him why he chose SUU and he said one of the reasons was because of the good morals! We can teach you more about why we have good morals :) haha hopefully there is potential there!

Brothers and Sisters, I am so grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ, without Him, I would be nothing. Without Him, I would never see Tyler again. Without Him, I would never see any one of my family members and friends again or my dear Father in Heaven. I am incredibly grateful to be representing His name this season that we celebrate His miraculous birth. Let us praise Him in all that we do this season, and share His divine light with all that we meet.

"Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12)

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley

Pictures:

 1. Posterity Pic! Me and my two "babies" Sisters Degener and Bitter, then Sister Bitter's "baby" Sister Arlint and then Sister Arlint's "baby" Sister Burrell :) hopefully you followed that! All of that non-sense means that I am a great grandma! :)

2. It Snowed! :)

3. #LightTheWorld