Indiana Facebook Page -Stake Conference

Missionaries in the Indy North Stake attended the Saturday evening session of Stake Conference on January 27, 2018 (as an exception) because the meeting was all about......... missionary work! What a great and inspiring meeting it was. Members and missionaries left feeling uplifted and ready to share the gospel, working together and using technology.

I lost my mind - Email from Jenny

Hello! This week was a crazy one...and kinda interesting...

We taught Carla this week and we originally planned to teach her about how we can continue to learn through our membership in the church, but we also felt inspired to review the Gospel of Jesus Christ before the lesson and lo and behold, the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the lesson that needed to be taught. I think now with more exposure to the things we are teaching, the gospel is starting to sink in more. We were able to review the key principles and ordinances that are foundational to us enduring to the end. She related to us a story of how she understood the Holy Ghost. She described that in her dreams there would be a Thunderbird (representing the Holy Ghost) that would come and pick her up and bring her above her troubles and opposition in her dreams. She said that when the Thunderbird didn't come and lift her up, she knew she was "in trouble," meaning that she didn't have the Holy Spirit with her. The Spirit really does speak to us all through our own language and experiences, in the words of Thomas Monson, “There is one language … that is common to each missionary—the language of the Spirit. It is not learned from textbooks written by men of letters, nor is it acquired through reading and memorization. The language of the Spirit comes to him who seeks with all his heart to know God and keep His divine commandments. Proficiency in this language permits one to breach barriers, overcome obstacles, and touch the human heart.”(Preach my Gospel)

We taught Bella and she brought her friend over! An unplanned opportunity to teach someone new! Her friend really helped her stay focused and was a great blessing to the lesson! :)

We tried contacting a potential named Nicole, we stopped by her house and met her mom who was getting out of the car, she told us Nicole wasn't home. So we start walking back to the car and then her husband opens the door and yells to us, "how do you know Nicole?!" Yikes. That always makes us nervous haha but we told him who we were and he told us to try back the next day. So flash forward, we go back and for some reason we were feeling hesitant to see her. We prayed to receive a confirmation that it was the right time to talk to her and I saw the words, "Go and Do" come into my mind. We went and her husband ended up being nicer than her, and she looked appalled that her husband let us in her house, lol, so she wasn't interested, BUT now we know at least and we can spend our time elsewhere!

On an exchange we were given an envelope by this man who appeared nice but hated organized religion. He was like, "You're Mormon and believe in Jesus Christ right?" So seemingly friendly, we took the envelop and looked at it later and there was a letter bashing another religion, not even ours! It was pretty sad, and then a CD with some preachers angrily speaking. I am grateful for the love that I have for people of other religions! We are all brothers and sisters after all :)

So after we exchanged back and got home, we discovered that the other sisters had taken our phone....this is pretty unfortunate when you only have one phone...so we asked if we could borrow our neighbors phone and got ahold of them so we could get our phone back. At that time we said, "Maybe we should just go back to bed and start over..." so THEN flash forward to the evening, we made an appointment to teach a member family before dinner with our ward mission leader. We get in the car and go to dinner and then after dinner, I looked in my purse for my planner...and it wasn't there...so we looked in the car and texted our Ward mission leader to see if I left it at his house, and they couldn't find it. We tried by a potential and I kept looking and then I started to slightly freak out haha our planners have a LOT of information, names and addresses and phone numbers and would not be good if someone got ahold of it. I was praying in my mind that we could find it. We tried by the home we saw before dinner and didn't find it, and then went back to our WML's house and asked if he could look again and still nothing! We got back in the car that we had turned upside down and Sister Gotay suggested we say a prayer, I told her I had said many in my head and she responded "out loud" haha so we prayed. I remembered seeing something in the street on the way to the WML's house and suggested we turn around and see what it was. IT. WAS. MY. PLANNER. No joke. Lying in the street open, about 5 houses down from his house. The weirdest part is we still cannot figure out how it got there! We didn't walk there and I didn't leave it on top of the car either...anyway, moral of the story, spoken prayers are POWERFUL and God is so so mindful of us!!!

Brothers and Sisters, God loves us. He really does. I found this gem in General Conference and invite you to ponder on it,

 "To accept and love others does not mean we must embrace their ideas. Obviously, truth mandates our highest allegiance, though it should never be a barrier to kindness. Truly loving others requires the ongoing practice of accepting the best efforts of people whose life experiences and limitations we may never fully know. Looking beyond what we can see requires conscious focus on the Savior." (Zwick Oct 2017)

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley

Pictures!

1. Found my planner!

 2. Exchange with Westfield! Left to Right: Branch, Lay, me Gotay

3. Battle wounds...

Indiana Facebook Page - Indy North Zone interviews

Wednesday, January 24, 2017 was the Indy North zone interviews. Here are some of the missionaries from that zone, waiting for their turns and learning more about how to use Facebook as a missionary.

Hello yet again! - Email from Jenny

HEY FAM!!

My new companion is Sister Gotay and she is awesome! She is a convert and was baptized at 14, as a result of missionaries knocking on her door! (who woulda though?!) She is super sweet and thoughtful and has a huge desire to do God's work! I am pumped! Oh, and she's from San Diego, CA!

So many miracles this week!!!

Okay to start the week off we had a lesson with a HQ referral. Her name is Cutrice and she requested a Bible. She was so sweet, so humble, so prepared for the gospel!!! We taught her the Restoration and she was feeling the Spirit and love and peace, especially when we talked about the peace the gospel can bring our families. She seemed so excited! We got through the First Vision and the Spirit was so strong! As we stared talking about the Restoration of the priesthood her husband walked in. The environment completely changed. Cutrice seemed to put a wall up and got really tense. He introduced himself and we told him who we were. He was really awkwardly walking in circles and then sat down at the table with us. We kept teaching and got to the Book of Mormon and literally said, "the evidence of our message is the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ." and then her husband, James, was like "I'm going to stop you right there." and then he proceeded to tell us all the things that were wrong about the Book of Mormon and said that it had "no merit" and literally was talking himself in circles, this man made absolutely no sense. He was super condescending and forceful in the way that he spoke and there was no love in any of the things he said. And he told us repeatedly that he was a preacher!!! A preacher!!! While his wife and family are starving for God in their lives. All of his family would shut off when he talked and not listen, but when we could speak (he didn't really want to let us talk, and interrupted so much) his family listened to us intently. The fact is though, this man had no faith. He wanted to see the plates that the Book of Mormon were written on and told us there is no way they could be brought into Heaven, and then 5 minutes later told us that God could do what He wanted and He could bring them to Heaven...make sense? No I didn't think so either. If he saw the plated it would make no difference! We testified over and over and over again, shoot, I even cried when I bore my testimony. Every time we talked he would look at us but you could tell he wasn't listening to a thing we said, which is unfortunate for him because he has a lot of stuff wrong about us that we were trying to help him understand. He kept saying "you haven't convinced me" over and over and every time we were like, " we told you it isn't our job to convince you, it's God's job!" finally, after seeing this was literally going no where, we told him "hey, James, we don't want there to be contention and we don't want to argue" and this is what got us laughing super hard and is literally sums up all his logic. He said, and I quote, "Oh, I am not arguing, Imma argue, but I am not arguing." LOLOL after this though, I felt prompted to ask him if I could share my favorite scripture from the Bible, and I proceeded to share Proverbs 3:5-6. It totally changed the atmosphere in the home from hostile to peaceful. I talked about why the scripture meant so much and we all started sharing experiences with each other. I then testified of the gratitude I had for my morals that following Christ has given me and Sister Gotay did the same. Then, James started telling us that we have to be careful because we are going to face opposition, and we were like Cutrice we literally just told you about this before your husband came home! And then I felt inspired to share Helaman 5:12 with them. They all cheerfully agreed with the scripture and we were able to talk more of the joys that come as we center our lives on Christ. We asked if we could leave with a prayer (because by this point we had been there 2 hours...) and surprisingly he said yes, and let me offer it. I reverently prayer to Heavenly Father and everything was still and peaceful. He didn't say much to us before we left as we hugged all of his family members and called them by name. Their grand-daughter kept reaching for my hand as if she was asking us to stay. We texted Cutrice after and she told us she still wanted to meet with us!

Soooooo, another crazy miracle. We talked to an Elder who used to serve in this are and he was surprised to hear that sister Osthus had moved. He told us that couldn't be true. So we went out to the Boonies of Noblesville to figure out if this lady still lived here. We parked our car on the side of the road and started to walk. There were these 3 kids playing in the melting snow trying to sled and so I figured I'd ask them if they knew where the address was. Turns out they lived in the trailer park that Sister Osthus did. We asked if she lived in trailer 9 and they were like "um, we don't think so, oh, look! #9 is pulling up right now!" and literally the man owning trailer #9 is pulling up in his car. We asked him about Karen Osthus and said there was a Karen Ott that lives in #12 that we could check. We journeyed over to #12 and lo and behold it was her! She was ecstatic to see us!!!! She is of Native American decent and she gave us a turkey feather that was very symbolic and spiritual. She said she hadn't given anyone a feather in a very long time! She also told us she could see auras and that we were glowing like angels, and that we were "shiney" :) anyway, we asked if she knew anyone that would appreciate a visit from us and we hear someone yell from inside the house "Me!" so Katy is going to join us when we go back!

This is Heavenly Father's work. His timing is too perfect for it not to be. If we will "go and do the things the Lord commands" (1 Nephi 3:7) we will be blessed and receive help beyond measure. I have witnessed that time and time again and am grateful the Lord is able to utilize me as an instrument in His divine work.

oh, another good quote from James "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord (looks at us and realizes we serve the Lord)...with the Bible"

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley

1. The feathers we got from Sis Ott :)

Indiana Facebook Page - Zone Conference

The Indy North and Indy West zones met for zone conference on Wednesday, January 10, 2018. This mighty group caught the vision of what it means to be purpose driven - to use their missionary purpose to determine all they do, including the use of smartphones. They were told that the Lord has confidence in them and that they will have the capacity to honor that confidence.

Happy January! - Email from Jenny

HELLO! Good news, it's supposed to warm up to 50 degrees this week! Today it was 36 when we went outside and we are so grateful it is warmer! :) I'd much prefer that to the negative numbers we've had.

So, this week despite my companion getting sick, we were able to have some awesome experiences!!!

We started teaching the 8 year old daughter of a Less Active family. Her name is Bella Arnold and her mom is from Brazil, so her english isn't very good. But we were able to teach her about Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. It is amazing how quickly children can learn. No wonder Christ commands us to "become as little children." They are so humble! Like little sponges!

We also got to teach Ryland! Also, found out his last name and decided I'll never be able to say it...it's Krzywicki. Yep. Anyway, the lesson went great! We had a lesson on the Plan of Salvation which was perfect because he recently had a family member pass away. He seemed to soak up the plan of Salvation and understood it well! We also committed him to get permission from his dad to be baptized so he can finally enter into the waters of baptism! His mom told us that he had asked her before why he hadn't been baptized yet, but now his opportunity is coming! :)

We also discovered that the last Recent Converts in this ward (which are about a year ago) never had their new member lessons. The 3 oldest kids had gotten baptized, but their dad, Kyle, never joined because he has concerns. However, Kyle LOVES us! I'm not really sure why but he gets so happy when we come over, and when we came, he stayed for the entire lesson and even participated! The Spirit was there and it was such a pleasant evening. He even asked us if that was it or if we got to come back again! :)

CHURCH WAS AWESOME! SOOOO many little miracles! #1 Bella Arnold's family finally came to church! #2 Brother Mitchell asked us if we could call before we came to drop off a note to his roommate to make sure he was there because "he really took to us" (that just made us laugh because the elders were trying to work with him) #3 Kyle and the whole family (this hasn't happened for a while came to church!) Not only that but he stayed all 3 hours!! I don't think he'd ever done that before! :) #5 so many members came up to us asking if we could visit their families :)

This week I feel that the theme has been humility. I've been reading in the Book of Mormon about the people after Christ came. They went from "and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God" to "it is impossible for the tongue to describe, or for man to write a perfect description of the horrible scene of the blood and carnage which was among the people...And there never had been so great wickedness among all the children of Lehi, nor even among all the house of Israel, according to the words of the Lord, as was among this people" in a matter of 300 years. What was their downfall? What went wrong? It was the root of all evil, pride. Which is probably why the Lord commands us again and again to be humble. I dissected a scripture this week that shows the power of humility, hopefully you can follow, it's Helaman 3:35:

"Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God."

Fast and  ---> wax strong in humility ---> souls filled with ---> hearts were purified <---all this came from yielding

pray often       and then, firmer in               joy and                   (cleansed) and                their hearts to God

                       faith                                     consolation             sanctified (made holy)    (because they were humble)      

Being humble is not easy by any means, but the fruits of humility are so so sweet. Please examine your lives and ponder what more you could do to humbly submit to the will of the Lord, I promise you won't regret it in the end.

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley

P.S. I will literally get a smartphone and become a Facebook missionary the WEEK before I come home :) 

Picture!

 1. WHY???

2. We decorated a Less-Active's door, I thought my hands were going to fall off they were so cold (gloves would have been very inconvenient though...) :)

Happy Birthday Jesus! - Email from Jenny

Hello!! And Happy late holidays!! :) sorry, we are going to have to back track a bit because it has been so long since I emailed!

Before Christmas (I know it seems like ages ago) we were able to go to the Palmer's apartment (they are some Senior missionaries that take care of the office stuff) to have a Christmas sing along! Sister Palmer played the guitar and Sister Degener and I were asked to help with leading the music (especially with the songs others may not be familiar with)! We were able to invited this sweet lady in our complex that we helped move and she brought a friend too! It was so fun to be able to sing about Christ in the midst of the season :) Funny side note: After the singing was over and we were enjoying treats this Senior Sister asked me if I could sing Oh Holy Night for her, as a solo, right then and there. So I said sure, and I sat down in the chair in front of her. I didn't want a whole lot of attention and I hoped others would just carry on and not pay attention, but eventually everyone was silent as they listened to me sing. I was SUPER nervous at this impromptu solo but the Lord helped me that's for sure :)

Christmas Eve we went will a family in our ward to a place called Wheeler mission. It is a shelter for woman and children who are in distress, homeless or bereaved. We were able to prepare a Christmas meal for them and serve it to them. This is the the best part though, one of their traditions is to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus and have a cake for Him. This cake was MASSIVE and it is the most sugary cake you've ever seen!! Literally every child's dream birthday cake. There were chocolate chips and M&M's slapped on the side, it was out lined in dum-dums and there were rows and rows of Jelly beans and gummy bears. Oh and we put 2017 candles on the cake for how old He is...TOTALLY KIDDING! But we did put like 3 packs of candles on this cake! On a more serious note though, Sister Degener and I were able to serve this cake to the woman there and that was a really special experience to see these women and think about how God feels about them. They had been through so much, more than I can comprehend and to see how hard life had made some of them, and then to be able to share a little light with them through being kind and smiling and talking with them, to help them feel a little of the Savior's love this Christmas. Seriously the highlight of my Christmas with the people in Indiana.

We were able to contact a potential who knows a member and said she would be interested in learning what we believe! Her name is Becca, we should be contacting her the middle of January so stay tuned!

Funny things that happened:

1. We ate dinner with 3 people who were in their 70s, two of them being non-members. One of them was a man named Tom who had absolutely no filter whatsoever. Toward the end he said, "It's nice to be around young people with tight skin for a change." Afterward, Barb said, "Well I guess we know where we stand." hahahaha He also said "Mormons are such a fertile group"....it was so hard to supress our laughter!

2. We knocked on a Less-Actives door last night to ask when we could start teaching his daughter the discussions. He said, " I knew you were coming." We were like "You did? How?" We didn't tell him that we were stopping by... and he replied, "I had a dream about it last night." Woah. Apparently this is a normal thing for him. He even took a picture to prove it to his wife because he told her earlier that morning that we were coming over.

Also, I found out the COOLEST thing! There was this lady named Berta Knox in Mishawaka that Sister Murray and I only talked to on the phone and texted. She was going through a rough time, so we gave her encouragement. She was a Bible referral, and we ended up giving her a Book of Mormon too and writing our testimonies in it too. I just found out that the Sisters are now going to start teaching Berta and it is all because of how much love she felt from us! So cool how God works!

Okay, I've talked your ears off enough, I wanted to end with talking a bit about goals with it being the new year. In Preach My Gospel, there is a quote by Elder M. Russel Ballard said, “I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” PMG also states, "Goals reflect the desires of our hearts and our vision of what we can accomplish." This is a fantastic time of year to re-evaluate where we are and where we desire to be. Remember what your ultimate goals are, and make plans to accomplish them. Elder M Russel Ballard also said in His talk Return and Receive, "Goal setting is essentially beginning with the end in mind. And planning is devising a way to get to that end. A key to happiness lies in understanding what destinations truly matter—and then spending our time, effort, and attention on the things that constitute a sure way to arrive there." Remember to "seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."  For in this can we find the most joy! Love you all! Happy goal setting!

Serving with a smile,

Sister Bradley

Pictures!

 1. It was my first white Christmas!!

 2. Say hello to my new friend, Sister Snow.

 3. It's SOOO cold!!!

4. Happy New Year with the Gadbury family!!!

*(and some additional pictures Jenny forward to me)

Email from Jenny

Received this email from Jenny, she's pretty resourceful!