This week was kind of weird, in that Sister Angelie has been sick for a few days so we spent quite a few days at home. We did go to Sister ________ house twice, so that's what I'll share about.
On Wednesday we taught Sister _________ about the Holy Ghost. We did the simple explanation about how he is the third member of the Godhead and he is a comforter and he will be our friend. So we asked her if she wanted to have the Holy Ghost with her, and I love her honest answers, she said "Nggak, Takut" (No, that's scary) hahahaha! For her the word "Roh" or Ghost meant something bad. She pictured a creepy ghost following her around everywhere she went hahahaha. So we explained that Spirits aren't always bad, but if God sends them to help us they are good. So we asked her again, "So who is the Holy Ghost" and she said "Roh yang baik" (A good spirit) that was good enough for me! She makes me laugh so much! She is the most honest person ever and it is just so much fun to teach her. Then on Saturday we went and explained the whole Plan of Salvation. We had explained up to our life on earth but we never had finished it. So we talked about the difference between resurrection and reincarnation, and something actually stuck with her this time, I think. We talked about how she could live with her family forever. When we asked if she believed she would see her family again, she said "Nggak Tentu" (It's not certain.) We were able to testify to her that it IS CERTAIN! We asked her if she wanted to meet with her parents again, and she didn't really answer. I don't think she's even thought about if she wants to or not because she didn't even believe it was completely possible. That is so very sad to me. But I think we opened up a thought process in her mind that wasn't there before. She also comes to church without us even having to remind her. She was there up in the chapel area by herself talking with the members. She was answering out loud the rhetorical questions in Relief Society too. She has progressed so much and I am so glad I get to be in this area for a long time so I can see her progress :) Other than that I have had quite a few Liahona reading Marathons and Solitare games too. That's what happens when a companion is sick. I hope you have a great week and Happy Fathers day to you all! Love, Sister Davis Thank you for all your pictures! Everyone is just going vacation crazy and it's so fun to look at. There is so much of this world that needs to be explored, and it's cool that our family is going all over the world to find it. I've loved hearing about your vacations and I'm excited to see even more pictures next week!
Wednesday Sister Rowntree flew back to Malang and I got my new companion! Her name is Sister Angelie. She is from BOGOR!! I love Bogor :) So I know her family and we can talk about all the members there and it's way fun. Sadly I never made it to her family's house. She is of Chinese descent, like a lot of Christians in Indonesia. She went to BYU Hawaii for 4 semesters so her English is way good. and also my Indonesian is going to get better because she is my first native companion since the beginning of September!! So that's really great. Here in Jakarta we mostly do the same things every day. Get up, study, ride the busway to our appointments, contact on the busway, get stuck in traffic for hours, and so on haha. I want to share about Sister ______ though. I love that little old lady so so so so much! She might not yet understand everything, but I know that she feels the Holy Ghost and she really loves to have us over. Before it was easy to have a lesson in a half hour, but now it's WAY hard to keep it under an hour because she loves telling us stories. She found some old photo albums in her house and she showed us all of them and there were a ton of pictures. She pointed out all of her siblings and where she was. She also had me pick out where she was in the picture and I got pretty good at guessing after a while. Wednesday was when the miracle happened. She usually doesn't want to pray at all so on Wednesday I had her tell me a few things that she wanted to pray for. I wrote them down so she could just read it for the first time that she prayed out loud. She wanted to pray for her health, and also that her house could be fixed so it doesn't flood anymore if it rains. I gave the paper to her that I had written out with her prayer, and then she looked at me and smiled and said "What if I pray something like this? Heavenly Father, thank you for sending me Sister Davis and Sister Angelie to teach me. Please bless them with safety as they are about to go home." and then I reminded her "In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." It was probably one of the sweetest moments on my mission. The first time I heard her pray out loud, she prayed specifically for us and prayed to Heavenly Father to thank us for coming. Even though it is slow and steady with her, it is steady. She comes to church now every week without us having to convince her. She can sit by herself without us having to be with her at every second. She makes sure to shake hands with some of the members she is friends with now before she leaves after church. She is such a blessing to teach and I just love her heart that used to be closed off and negative about life most of the time, but now is softer and she is recognizing that what she thought was just "good luck" from Chinese culture are actually blessings from God. We are going to focus this week on Repentance, and that instead of our sins staying with us until we die and then having another chance to try better when we are reincarnated, that they can actually be wiped away in this life through repentance. I really pray and hope that the spirit will be able to help open her understanding to such a new concept. Because everyone in Jakarta is SO busy sometimes we have people that will come to church but to meet with them to actually teach them is way hard. So lately we have had to focus on finding more people. Always finding, finding, finding. Hopefully I have a new investigator to share about next week! Probably the most exciting thing that wasn't missionary like is that near the Mission Home there is a grocery store that has a ton of imported stuff, so today I bought a big box of Pancake mix so that was exciting. Maybe in a couple weeks I'll buy the instant Country Time Lemonade powder or the Queso cheese dip haha. It's expensive so I have to pace myself. I hope you have a great week with getting back to normal life and vacations and all that fun stuff. Love you so much! Love, Sister Davis This week with ______ was good. She is still pretty much the same. She still comes to church and she does the things we ask, but we found out this week that she pretty much still believes that all religions are good and that it doesn't really matter what you do as long as you do good. So we really need to focus on teaching her about Jesus and how he really is her Savior and he is the way that she can receive happiness.
We also had a miracle where the Elders met this girl named _____ and she was interested so we taught her the whole restoration on Friday and she came to church on Sunday and then she had questions about the Gospel Principles lesson on Agency and about how it says we can become like God, so we taught the whole plan of salvation after church. She is about 23 and is so smart. She is really open too and is willing to read. She read the Introduction and a little bit about Nephi too, so we are really excited about her. The only thing is that she lives in the other Sisters area, so we have to find a way to give her over to them. Most people don't actually meet at their homes in the city, so sometimes it is hard to make sure they meet with the right missionaries and not just with the missionaries that contacted them. So hopefully things work out well with her. We also have an investigator named ______ who we haven't ever met since Sister Xiao and I came to Jakarta, so we tried to call her again and she answered and she came to church! She lives way close which is amazing here. We hardly talked to her because she is only 17 so she went to Young Women's and then had to leave way fast, but the leaders said she was really cute and that she liked church. She had to call her boss to ask for the morning off so she could come so that means that she is actually way interested. We will try to meet with her this week to teach her so hopefully there will be more info about that next week. Also Sister Rowntree is going back to Malang! Sister Angelie is feeling a lot better and so she gets to come back on her mission and she is going to be my companion in Jakarta. She is from Bogor so that will be fun to talk about her home ward with her too. I'll send a picture of her next week. I'll send some more pictures next week. I love you and I love hearing about all your vacations too. So SEND ME PICTURES!! Love, Sister Davis Wow this week has been pretty crazy but so fun too! I have lots of experiences I want to share. Also, this week Elder Jensen brought his laptop for us so now we don't have to share the I-pad, So you'll get a normal email again :)
Tuesday we had a meeting with our investigator _____, his younger sister ______, and his friend _____. They came with a lot of questions, like what do you believe about Heavenly Father, what does it take to be saved according to Mormons, how do you baptize, and lots of other questions. It was kind of fun to answer all their questions and to understand where they are coming from. After we had answered a few of their questions, it got to the point where we just needed to testify of the Holy Ghost and how through reading the Book of Mormon with an open heart, you can really receive a testimony of the truth about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and the Gospel for all of us. His friend was way closed off, but as I looked at _____ as I was testifying I know that he felt something and that he will read from the Book of Mormon. I'm excited to see what happens when we meet with them again to see if he read it with an open heart or just looked for problems with it. Sister ______ is also doing great. She is so so so cute! At first when we would go there she wouldn't really understand why we were there, but after a few times she knew that we would be there for about an hour and that at the end we would teach her about what we believe and about Jesus. We were able to teach her about Jesus Christ by using the gospel art book. We also taught her about what a commandment is and that through following them, we will receive blessings. She doesn't really understand anything yet, but she has enough faith to do the things we tell her even though she really doesn't know why. She came to church again and she actually kind of was paying attention (she falls asleep sometimes because she is 65 haha). I'm so excited for her to continue to learn, because I know that she has so much potential to become baptized, especially as we help her recognize the spirit. On Wednesday we were also trying to find someone we could take to the member meeting with Elder Ulisses Soares. We aren't allowed to go unless we have an investigator there. We met this lady on the Busway who said she would meet us later because she wanted to come, but that was pretty iffy.. Then later we got a missed call from a random number, so we called it back and we told the lady about the event and she told us to text her the information and that she wanted to go! Turns out she actually called us on accident. She wanted to call someone else to go to another preaching thing from another church, but she called us and said why not. She had been a contact from the Sisters a few months ago, so that was really cool. The meeting with President Soares was so wonderful! It was pretty sad though because there was SO MUCH TRAFFIC!!! It is the beginning of the month of the fast and also the assension day of Christ which they get as a holiday here, so EVERYONE was trying to get out of Jakarta. It was so sad because there were so many members that got to the church when it was already almost over. We got there late too, but only like 10 minutes. So that was way sad. But anyway He focussed on telling the members about how much the apostles and prophets really focus on all members of the church all around the world and how they pray for them in Asia always. He also focussed on the Sabbath day. I actually learned a lot from him. He talked about how the first presidency wrote the family proclamation and how everyone was confused why they were focusing so much on families, but we see now how families are always being attacked. He said the same thing about the sabbath. That we don't really know what is going to happen in the next few years, but that the Sabbath will literally be attacked and we have to be ready for that day. So I want to invite all of us to really focus not just on what we aren't allowed to do on the Sabbath, but to ask ourselves, what can I do on the Sabbath to remember the Savior? There is this WAY good video on the Sabbath about Christ and the atonement too, so all of you should watch it because it is absolutely amazing. Then on Thursday we all went to the church again and the whole mission was there! There were so many missionaries I hadn't ever met before, but also it was so fun to see Sister Roylance again and Sister Hyde and my old companions. Sister Rowntree has been here for a week with the Sister Training Leaders because her companion Sister Angeli was sick and had to go home for 3 weeks to see if she could get better. Her companion is from Bogor, so she just went there. He taught us about the importance of having faith, setting goals, and being obedient. Just like President Rowley always talks to us about. He and his wife were so cute and it was cool to hear him talk about the first presidency like they are just great friends because he meets with them all the time. After the meeting, all the missionaries were just there waiting to be told where everyone was moving. Those who were moving were told to bring their stuff and then they were told right then where they were moving and to where. Sister Xiao is moving to Solo as a Sister Training Leader with Sister Roylance! Then, all of a sudden Sister Rowntree opens her letter and it says you have been assigned to Jakarta Utara! WE WERE SO CONFUSED!! So pretty much Sister Angeli is still sick and can't come back to the mission yet, but if she does she'll [probably be my companion in Jakarta. There is a Sister that hasn't gotten her visa yet so now Sister Rowntree and I don't have companions, so we call each other "The Leftovers." she will probably be here for about 3 weeks. It has been SO FUN being her companion again. We teach so well together and have realized how much we really enjoy each other. I have felt the spirit a lot in lessons and my confidence as a missionary has gone up so much too. We have made great goals and contacted a lot of people and I just sleep every night feeling happy about the next day to have to work again. I'm so so so glad the Lord gave us an opportunity to be companions together again. It was way fun after Church yesterday to go to Monumen Nasional again with Sister Rowntree with her Afro out because two foreigners with her are just so interesting and everyone wants to talk to us!! It was way effective and way fun! So we might try it again next week after church if we don't have an appointment. Overall I really like Jakarta and I am actually really enjoying being a missionary. I hope you are all doing great at home and life is treating everyone well. Remember the Savior always and you will be happy!! Love, Sister Davis |
Sister Jacqueline DavisSister Davis is currently serving as a missionary in the Indonesia Jakarta Mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. ContactMission Address: Sister Jacqueline Davis Indonesia Jakarta Mission Jalan Senopati 115 Kebayoran Baru Jakarta 12190 INDONESIA Email: [email protected] Prepare to Serve Link: http://preparetoserve.com/indonesia-jakarta-mission Learn more about the LDS Church:www.lds.org
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August 2017
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