27 Feb. 17 Letter

This week has been a really good one! We saw so many miracles and received lots of tender mercies. The highlights include:

Stuart's baptism: the elders in Belconnen ward have been working with him for years. He is the best and was finally baptized on Saturday night. Our potential investigator, Ali, came to the baptism! Ali found us after we talked to his friend, Korosh. They are both from Persia. Ali called us like right after we met Korosh wanting to learn more and have a Persian Book of Mormon! Heavenly Father really blesses us with tender mercies when we work hard and are obedient! After, we taught Ali the Gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end). We usually start teaching people with the restoration but he was confused about baptism and it was good to teach about it directly after he had just witnessed one. At the end of the lesson we asked if he would follow Jesus Christ’s example and be baptized if he came to know for himself if it was true, and he said he would. We are so excited about Ali! We usually refer to him a Prince Ali (not in front of him), and Aladdin songs are sung regularly around the flat.

-Ali and two other investigators, Facree and Bree (lots of e's) all came to sacrament meeting! Facree is an older Arabic man, he is so cute! He doesn't speak very good English, so it is hard communicating with him. We only were able to teach him one lesson so far, and it only worked because his son-in-law could translate. We are not really sure how to proceed with him so if anyone knows a member who speaks Arabic that we could Skype into lessons let me know lol. Bree has been learning about the church for a long time. His partner’s family, (the Amosa’s) are strong in the church but he is not. We have Family Home Evenings with her at the Amosa’s almost every Monday night. Recently her house burnt down which has been really hard for her and her two daughters. The church has been a big help to her through it all though-- so she has been coming to sacrament meeting almost every week. I think she knows it’s true but she doesn’t believe that she can change. We are going to start meeting with her at her new house now as well so we can help her more personally than at the FHE’s.

-We had a missionary work themed sacrament meeting in Ginninderra ward yesterday. One of our less active YSA, Paita, gave a really good talk on her conversion story and how she needs to continually be converted. Brother Loney gave a great talk as well, as did Elder Jensen, one of the YSA missionaries in the stake. All of the 7 of the full-time missionaries in Ginninderra ward plus the 5 YSA missionaries did a musical number. There were twelve of us singing the EFY medley “As Sisters in Zion-Bring the World His Truth”. I think it was pretty powerful and encouraging to the ward to see so many missionaries that they have at their access to strengthen our ward. I feel like good things are coming in the coming weeks and months in the Canberra Stake, and I’m excited to be an important part of it!

-I have been feeling a lot of support and appreciating from our wards lately, especially our awesome ward mission leaders. It is good to know that our work is bringing about something good, and I see that happening as we are bringing more investigators to church and are helping them progress towards baptism.

I have been praying a lot this week to have patience and to overcome my pride as Sister Nilsson and I try to work through minor differences that keep us from being completely unified. I think it is working and it has been a humbling process so far. I love and admire Sister Nilsson so much and I’m glad that we are able to work through little things like this.

God is so good and His way is always the best way and the winning team.

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Sister Pace

Pictures:

(Above):  We had dinner with the Vuki Family the other night. They are the ones who have 7 daughters, 1 son, and they feed us HUGE plates of watermelon after HUGE meals. I always hurt after.

 1- I just got all these beautiful watercolor paintings from my older siblings, haha. I definitely have the coolest wall.

2- Tradeoffs with Sister Bird in Woden ward on Tuesday. The other two are her companions SIster Haretuku and Sister Bergoyne.

The following didn’t come through (maybe next week J):

1-We got Greek pitas from a food truck for lunch

2-missionaries trying to get their tan on by pools they can’t swim in.

More museum pics

Pics from the Australian National Museum last P-Day

Heaps of Books of Mormon and Potentials

Hello good people. Coming at you from Canberra, Australia after another solid week.

The highlight of this week included singing at the Canberra Multi-Cultural festival on Sunday with most of the other missionaries in our zone. We sang at the pacific islander stage and we sang "Called to Serve", "The Spirit of God", "Humble Yourself", and a missionary medley which ended with us singing "I am a Child of God" First in English, then in Tongan, Samoan, and Maori. After, they wanted an encore so we sang "Armies of Helaman". It was so good and fun! I love how many opportunities we receive to sing and preform as missionaries. If you want to see the performance, I was told that a Tim Kalinohea uploaded them to his FB page. I'm not sure if they will be public for anyone to see but its worth a shot. It was such a great experience to invite the spirit and share our testimonies at a festival with thousands of people there and many stopped by to listen.

There were lots of good finding opportunities this week with the Multi-cultural festival and orientation week at Australian National University. Brother Loney (the Ginninderra ward mission leader) organized for us to get a booth at their "O-Week" Markey Day! We were next to booths of other churches and religious groups and we basically tried to stop people and pull them in for a minute to share more with them or give them a Book of Mormon. We ended up handing out over 50 Books of Mormon and getting over 40 potential investigators! It was crazy but really fun too. I love the missionaries in my district and zone. I am so glad I get to be here and meeting so many great people!

As for our investigators, we are excited about one named Awak. She is from South Sudan. She has two adorable little girls and her partners name is William. We have taught her twice and met William once at the door. He said he had started reading the Book of Mormon, out of curiosity after we gave it to Awak. We hope to be able to teach both of them next time! Awak said she would come to church yesterday  but she and her daughter ended up being sick and couldn't come. We pray that she will continue to have the desire to come this week, and to read from the Book of Mormon so we can help her progress.

On Saturday, We met a Persian man sitting on his porch named Korosh. He has no family here and he has to work all the time to provide for his family back home. We told him about the gospel and how our wards in church are like families that support and love one another. He seemed interested. When we got home, we got a call from his friend, Ali. I guess Korosh had given the Book of Mormon we gave him to Ali and Ali wanted to learn more! We are meeting with him on Thursday and they are hopefully both coming to church on Sunday! It is going to be a good week and I will keep you updated!

Besides that, we had a super awesome zone conference on Friday. The trainings were exactly what I needed to hear and in the perfect order. Heavenly Father is constantly teaching me what I need to know to make me a more consecrated missionary. He answers our prayers when we pray with faith and humble ourselves. We got to hear the testimonies of the 5 missionaries who will be departing after this transfer. IT was so tender to hear the refined testimonies of those who have experienced everything missions bring. I love our zone and I am excited to reach our goals this transfer. Sister Nilsson and I really are working hard and trying to prioritize our time so that we are doing what is most important in all of the things we could do covering two wards. I know that we will find the right balance and help investigators to progress eventually, if we continue to have faith and be exactly obedient.

I hope everyone is doing well and loving life. I am! Have a great week!

Love,

Sister Pace

Two weeks of news!

Feb 6, 2017 Letter

This week was really good! It started out with a multi-zone missionary conference where they broadcasted a worldwide missionary devotional where Elders Oaks, Anderson, Bednar, Sister Oscarson, and a few other general authorities talked about applying our purpose of teaching repentance and baptizing converts, how to teach and live according to that. They also talked about the new missionary schedule and how we will now only report on 4 key indicators. After they talked about them on the video broadcast, all of us missionaries had a discussion about it. Basically the benefit of the schedule change is that we get to practice our agency with how we want to organize and spend our time instead of it being an exactly set schedule. The main benefit of the key indicators (now we only report on baptisms, new investigators, and investigators who attend sacrament meeting) is that it is focused more on the progression of those we teach instead of trying to get a high number for lessons taught. I really like this change already because it has helped me build stronger relationships with those we teach rather than just looking at our visit with them as  a number.

It was a really motivating conference! I also got to see my past  companions SIster Ockey and Sister Fotu, and another MTC bud Sister Howard. It was so good to see them all again! Sister Fotu goes home back to Tonga this week, which is so crazy to me! She is so sweet and I’ll miss her. She gave me a photo album of pictures from last transfer, which I absolutely love!

Today is actually the start of another transfer. Sister Nilsson and I are still together! The other day, Sister Back called us and said they were contemplating taking us out of one of our wards because there is too much work to do. We said we were handling it pretty well but that it might be nice to just focus on one ward. Now Sister Mills and Sister Kapu, I think, are moving in with us. We have flat-mates, woohooo!! I guess they will be mostly working with the YSA because they are trying to form a branch, I think. Basically the YSA is really weak here and needs help. We are not sure if they are taking one of our wards or not yet, so we will see. I hope they do because recently it has been a bit overwhelming trying to visit and work with all the people we want to. Especially the less active members, there are SO many here.

Besides that, the week was pretty average. We met with Steven again and had a good chat. He acknowledged that he is moving at a snail's pace but that is just how he is. He reads the Book of Mormon a lot and understands the concepts of each chapter really well. He is not ready to step out of his comfort zone and come to church yet though. He does have some mental or social anxieties so it will just take a little longer with him. I think that he will eventually accept the gospel though.

We met with Jason again, the less active we found. He has forgotten most things in his 14 years or so away from the church, when nobody knew where he was. We noticed he had some word of wisdom issues so we taught him about it and he immediately was willing to live it again. That same night, when Brett, our ward mission leader, and one of the elders went to visit him on splits, he dumped out a big jar of coffee in front of them and made them call us to tell us that he did it. He is so funny but has so much faith!

The good news is, school is back in now after the summer holiday so people should be more reliable! We went finding at UC (University of Canberra) on Friday and found lots of potentials! People there are much more open than door knocking. One night this week, our night appointment fell through so we door knocked a neighborhood that ended up being super crusty. We got told to buggar off (which I was told is a very bad word) by one lady and another called us disgusting. We didn't get discouraged though which is probably what those people needed to teach me. I know I can do anything now because I can door knock a crusty neighborhood after dark! I know I will be protected from physical harm and I don't have to be offended because it is not MY message I am declaring, and they reject it because they are not prepared for it yet. I am coming to learn that no matter what the situation, I can always chose to have a happy attitude.

Overall, I am loving doing the work of The Lord all day, every day! It is all I have to worry about! And I know that I am making a difference in people's lives, no matter how small it may be, just by showing them love and inviting them to Jesus Christ. Have a great week everyone!

Love, Sister Pace

The pics are of our zone water fight we had last pday! The other sisters in the one picture are L to R: Sister Whaanga, Sister Haretuku (New Zealand), and Sister Alofoki (Tonga).  [These pictures didn’t actually come through this week.]

 

Driving to go email with our new flat mates!  

13 Feb 2017 Letter

This week was really good! We have flat mates now! Its fun being with more people all the time. Their names are Sister Kapu (from Hawaii) and Sister Mills (from Idaho). They have both been out on their missions much longer than we have so I look forward to going on trade-offs with them and learning from them. They are just working with the YSA here. I think it’s under the direction of the area presidency. They want to form a branch for the YSA here (which  is a small ward).

With this new transfer, there are a lot of changes in our zone. There are a lot more missionaries because we have three trios of missionaries instead of companionships and there are extra missionaries working with the YSA. Canberra was one of the smallest zones, now it is almost the biggest! There are three greenies (brand new missionaries) as well. One of them was in my institute class when I was in a BYU ward right before I left for my mission, which is cool! Her name is Sister Hampton.

This week was the hottest of my life. There was one day when I didn't stop sweating throughout the whole day. That night, we all pulled our mattresses into our tiny living room to sleep with the AC. It has cooled off though now, hopefully for good but it will probably keep getting hot until the end of Feb.

The highlight of the week was stake conference! Elder Johansson from the quorum of the 70 came and he is so cool! He is from New Zealand. In the adult session on Saturday night, He talked about how one thing that our church lacks is that we don't talk about Jesus enough. Some churches only know a little about Him but they will say a lot, whereas our church knows a lot about Him but we only say little. We get embarrassed when people are very vocal about their love and admiration for Him, but that is how we need to be! He kept saying "Hallelujah!" I loved it. He also said that latter-day saints need to be more joyful. He said that we should be the happiest people in the world because we know that through Jesus Christ, we can be happy in any situation. I know that that is true! Especially living on my mission where there are a lot of long days. I can always choose to be happy!

President and Sister Back were also at conference and president announced that the new mission president, starting at the beginning of July, will be President Bingham. He lives in Montana right now. It will be interesting to see how the two are different. I will sure miss the Backs. They are so cool and down to earth!

Not much to report with our investigators but Overall, the week was really good. I love you all, have a great week!

Love,

Sister Pace

Pictures with Sister Nilsson and Jason

 

To the Pace's, From Australia!

The Tim Tam Slam:

#1:  Prepare a cup of hot cocoa.

#2:  Take a Tim-Tam and bite off a little bit from one corner, then from the corner opposite.

#3:  Suck hot-coco up really hard by putting one bitten side of the Tim-Tam in and sucking through the other one. (You have to suck hard or it won't work.)

#4:  Shove the Tim-Tam in mouth before it breaks into your cup.

Missionary work brings happiness!

This week was really good. This coming week is the last week of my second transfer, which blows my mind! Thursday I hit my three month mark. Time is flying and it really makes me want to appreciate each moment! Thursday was also Australia Day. It was fun getting to say "Happy Australia Day!" to everyone met, especially the ones who rejected us at the door. Yesterday, I was thinking about my plane ride here, and how it took me 15 hours to work up the nerve to talk to the man across the aisle from me (granted, he was sleeping pretty much the whole time). But now, that wouldn't be nearly as hard for me. It's amazing what wonders the Lord can work in us when we let Him by stepping out of our comfort zones and into our growth zones. I still get a little nervous introducing my religion to random people, but it is so much easier now.

We had to do a lot of re-evaluating this week, of which of our investigators are actually on the path towards progressing, and which ones we need to drop. It was good because we are focusing our time where it will be most beneficial.

Steven is still reading and praying, but he said he is not in a rush to get baptized into another church. We invited him to pray about baptism specifically, and if he should. We really need him to get the desire for himself. If you want to include him in your prayers, that would be good.

We were able to have another lesson with Chloe (12) and Leland (10) the other day finally. We taught them the restoration of the gospel by putting together a puzzle of a picture of Jesus Christ, with each point being a different piece. I love the faith that kids have. We have seen that a lot. Many adults are just so hardened because of the trails of life, but kids are so trusting and full of faith. At the end of the lesson, I was inviting them to baptism by saying, "if, when you pray about these things, you find out that it's true..." then Leland stops me and says "it IS true!" It surprised me. I love that!

This Wednesday, we have a multi-zone conference where they will teach us more about the new schedule for missionaries and different key indicators. Usually, for key indicators, we count all of our lessons. Now it is more just counting the major things like baptisms, new investigators, and investigators who attend church. I think I will like this because I am always stressing about getting a lesson in with people even when it feels forced or unnatural, just so that there are numbers to prove our efforts for the day. Now I think it will be easier for me to focus on building a good relationship with people before we dive into teaching, which I think will benefit all of our missionary work. There are so many good changes happening in missionary work and I love it!

A few other cool things happened. One night, we were knocking doors in a complex of flats. After talking to one lady for a while, we contemplated going back to the flat to do half an hour of our first 12 weeks training study, but we decided to knock one more door. A man named Adam answered. We got into as long conversation (mostly him talking) about how there is no evidence of God in history or science and how religion is just a way to make the powerful more successful and put the poor in greater poverty. It was hard for us to get a few words in even though we felt like we had the answers to every question he had! When we got little chances to speak we mostly just testified. I really felt Gods' love for this man, and knew how much He wants him to come back to Him. Eventually, it all came down to the Book of Mormon because that is our "proof" of our faith. He ended up being really nice and got us water because he felt bad for making us stand there in the sweaty stair well for so long. He's just really passionate about what he believes. He said we could come drop off a Book of Mormon the next day because we didn't have one. We may never know what came of that night, but we hope that He reads it and feels the spirit testifying that it is true.

We also had a cool old guy answer his door one day and immediately invite us into his back yard to teach him about our message. he said he had heard it before but had recently had a stroke and forgotten lots of things. Then his neighbor came over. Turns out he is a catholic priest and she comes over often to get counsel from him. We had a good conversation with both of them. We purposely left the BOM on his table when we left. when we were putting our next destination into our GPS, he came out to our car and tried to give it back. We assured him that we wanted him to have it. He looked happy to keep it after that. We are excited to follow up with him!

Besides that, I am happy and having a great time! It is so so hot here. President is allowing us to have a zone water fight at the lake later today because today is especially hot. I'm so excited!

Love,

Sister Pace

1-We see incredible sunsets so often!

2- CHezzels and ginger beer from one of our favorite members, Joy.

3- when we were stranded outside the chapel, eating dinner.

Also, if the videos come through, one is of our FHE with the Amosa family last week, the other is my first time experiencing vegemite because Sister Ireland made me. I was avoiding it, but I think I like it!

Two Emails: This Week and Last

Monday, January 16, 2017:

This week has been pretty good. Sister Nilsson and I are still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't in planning and working with people. I think we are getting a little better every day though. I am trying to work harder to make good relationships with ward members and investigators, instead of just jumping straight into the lesson. Sister Nilsson and I have a great relationship and we are trying to help each other understand what we need to work on, as we are both new. Overall, things are going good! We are trying to get our investigators progressing, so that is one of our goals this week. We also have some potentials that seem really golden that we are excited about! I am still trying to figure out how I can really lose myself in the work and be as happy and positive as I can be, but I am praying for those blessings right now and things are already improving.

That is what I sent to my mission president this week, to give a brief overview of how it went. But to add a few more details:

-On Monday night, after p-day, both our appointments fell through which we were sad about but it was ok because we got to meet Mohsen and Jason! Two different occasions, but we gave each a Book of Mormon. I invited Jason to be baptized if he ever found out for himself that the Book of Mormon was true, He said " sure I'd be baptized again!" haha, apparently he has already been baptized twice in to two different churches. He's a character, but he's so nice. Mohsen was really cool. He said that every Christian religion claims to have the truth and the only way to salvation. It was really cool to be able to testify that the Book of Mormon is proof of the true restored gospel of Jesus Christ!

-On Wednesday, we visited the Vuki family, because sister Vuki just got out of the hospital. Sister Vuki is Samoan and Brother Vuki is Tongan. They have 8 kids all 13 years old and younger, 1 boy and 7 girls! We went to see if she needed help with anything. Turns out her kids are all well trained in their specific roles and jobs so they ended up serving us. They gave each of us a huge bowl of watermelon and we had a good chat and spiritual thought. We got to talking about missions, all the girls were saying what year they will serve their missions in. It was cool to see that they were all planning on going and already being missionaries to their friends. It made me re-appreciate how cool it is that I get to be serving my mission RIGHT NOW! Every minute of my mission is precious and I need to be using all of it as productively as I can in doing the work of salvation.

-Thursday  President and Sister Back came down to Canberra for interviews. It was so good to get to talk to them, know them better, and talk about how we are feeling. It was so good to get motivation from them, to recenter on my purpose as a missionary and the joyful part of the work. They are so encouraging and kind to us! I will be sad to see them go back home to Sandy, Utah in July.

-Friday we had trade offs with the Sister Training Leaders. Sister Whaanga (pronounced Fanga) came to my area. She is from Auckland, New Zealand  and she's really cool. All the islanders eat a lot and not a lot of healthy foods. Sister Whaanga kept asking me "do you ever eat?" or "are you on a diet or something?" haha I always thought I ate a lot but I guess not. It was cool to learn from her. She is really natural with people and she always knows what to say. We had an interesting experience following up with a potential, Stuart. His roommate Jeremy was there and he immediately started telling us about all of his "spiritual experiences" a.k.a. his exorcism practices and how his friend is a shape shifter... It was hard to get a word in, but eventually he was just talking at Sister Whaanga while  I gave Stuart the briefest overview ever of about the Plan of Salvation. I'm not sure how successful it was because it must have been really hard to feel the spirit. Hopefully Jeremy will be sober next time.

-Sunday we got to teach young women's in the Ginninderra ward! It was really fun, we taught about setting meaningful goals that our Heavenly Father wants us to set. I think I'd like to be a young women's teacher someday.

I don't know if  I mentioned, but Sister Nilsson, my companion is from Raymond, Alberta, Canada. We work well together and I love her! She is super sassy and we have a lot of fun.

We weren't able to have lessons with our investigators Steven or Elwyn the past week, but this week we will and we are excited about them!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! Remember to put the Lord first, then everything else will fall into place.

Love,

Sister Pace

1&2- The district Ginninderra and Belconnen wards. Sister Nilsson and I are in both and the Elders are split between the two. Front Row: Elders Ross (Washington), Whitlock (Utah), Miller (Utah), and Smith (Utah)

Back Row: Me, Sister Nilsson (Canada), Elders Lee (New Zealand), Dereag (Utah), Flandro (Philadelphia), and Farreira (Brazil)

3-Our sweet ride

4-me, trying to take more pictures

5-Sister Nilsson is the cutest

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Monday, January 23, 2017: 

This week was super good and super-fast. It’s amazing how fast time flies when you are trying to work as hard as you can. I'm sorry the email last week didn't send through, I have no idea why but I sent it again so hopefully you will be getting double this week.

We got to have another lesson with our new investigator, Elwyn, finally! His girlfriend Bindy was there but we still sat on his back porch steps because he just moved into his house and doesn't have any furniture yet. He has a lot of super deep questions and sometimes we don't know what he's talking about but we do our best to answer  by the spirit and he's always satisfied with what we give him. We wanted to teach the plan of salvation, but ended up only talking about the atonement. We talked about how Christ has experienced every trial and feeling, so he can help and comfort us in every situation. It was really good. Bindy participated too. We are hoping we can keep teaching her as well. He always jokes with us and sends us really sketchy and confusing text messages, but he just reassured us that he just likes to tease like an older brother. In his prayers, he refers to us as "my sisters here".

We also had a good lesson with our investigator, Steven, this week and his mom, Elizabeth, who is already a member. She is from Papua New Guinea(if that is how you spell it?) We started teaching him the first couple commandments and he received them well. We tried to emphasize keeping the Sabbath day holy and helping him see why coming to church is important, as that is the only commitment he is having trouble doing. He still didn't come on Sunday. We think he has some sort of social anxiety. But Brett, our ward mission leader said that he is going to try inviting him to his house and hopefully their friendship will help Steven feel more comfortable coming to church. I think the lessons are good for Elizabeth too, as she is a convert of 4 or so years and struggles to understand the Book of Mormon, which we read and discuss a lot.

As for our "investigator" Jason, I was flicking through the ward list after we had a really good first lesson with him on Tuesday, and right there on the Belconnen ward list, I see his name! We were flabbergasted. After talking to Brett about it later, we found out that he was baptized into our church 15 years ago but had disappeared soon after. He has a few mental problems and it might involve his memory. We are sad that we don't have such a solid investigator anymore, but we're happy that we found him and will hopefully be able to reactivate him. He was at church on Sunday:)

Another Miracle was, our long-term investigator Bree came to church on Sunday! We have family home evening with her and her partner's family, the Amosa's, a Samoan family in our ward, every Monday night. Her partner is not very supportive though and we think that is what really holds her back. We had a really good FHE last week where we talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and encouraged them all to find something they could try repenting of. Usually, no matter how hard we try, she never comes to church, so that was a miracle. We have another good lesson planned for FHE tonight so hopefully we can keep making progress with her.

I am really trying to be more bold and loving with those we teach. Sometimes the things missionaries invite people to do can be hard for them, but I still need to invite them to make commitments with the Lord, because that is what will bring them closer to Him, and bring them greater happiness and peace than they have yet experienced. I am usually way too apologetic in my invitations but I shouldn't be because it really is simply what the Saviour would invite them to do out of love for them. This is the work of salvation, so we don't need to be apologetic or scared!

Lastly, this week, I am grateful for the scriptures. Especially the Book of Mormon. Our new schedule allows us more time to ourselves in the mornings and in the evenings. President encouraged us to use a little of that time reading a chapter of the BOM in the morning and before we go to bed. He thinks this is way more likely to develop into a life-long habit than just 3 straight hours of scripture study in the morning ever could. I am not perfect at it yet, but already, I see the benefit it brings my days. The Book of Mormon was written by prophets called by God specifically for the challenges we would face TODAY. We can learn so much from it if we take it slow and pray for the spirit to teach us what Heavenly Father wants us to learn. I love the BOM!

Thanks for all the constant support and love, Its what gets me through the rough times!

Love,

Sister Pace

The pictures are of last p-day when we went to the Australian war memorial in Civic (the Canberra town center)

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