Sister Elle Jackson's Adventures in the Washington Everett Mission: Week 54: "We are Going to Have one Heck of a Companionship Inventory"

Sister Leininger and Elle received their packages from home.
Thanks to the Mergens for hauling them back to Washington.

Blessings come in all shapes and sizes, but it is up to us if we are willing to recognize them or not. This is a very interesting principle and it all goes back to the Plan of Salvation with our agency and being able to come to this earth to choose for yourself. What we are going to do and how we want to choose to live our lives. I can't even imagine how hard that would be for our Father in Heaven to have to watch so many of His children choose to do things that are not going to help them and only hurt them. He must love us a lot to be able to sit and let us learn and grow and make decisions for our best self yet know when to give us the help that we need, but not so much that he does things for us!

Sisters Oveson, Washburn, Leininger, and Elle

This last week has been a lot of fun and full of so many blessings. On Tuesday we had exchanges with Sister Packer and Sister Deaver. I was with Sister Packer here in Lynnwood and Sister Leininger went to Harbour Point with Sister Deaver. So many amazing things happened. So many miracles happen every day but whenever I go on an exchange there is always just an abundance of miracles

Elle learning to cook.

So a couple of months ago Sister Leininger and I ran in to this lady who just moved here from the East. She is not interested in learning about the Church but when we were talking to her we learned that she loves to cook. So we asked her if she would help teach us how to cook something and she said that she would be more than willing to! So fast forward some time, Sister Packer and I were able to go to our fist cooking lesson. When we got there she was telling us about how she wants to blog about how Mormons and Christians can be friends and that Mormons are actually really cool people. She said she was either going to video it our take pictures she didn't know yet. We told her that she could do whatever she would like. Side note it has become pet peeve of mine when people say that "Mormons are not Christians" So that was so much fun to be able to learn how to cook and she told us that next time she is going to teach us how to make a dessert!

Thursday we went on exchanges with Sister Oveson and Washburn. Sister Oveson is in the first six weeks of her training and she is so funny. I can now laugh because I am not at all where I once was. We had such a good day! We talked to everyone and their dog, it was so much fun. We talked to this one lady who has friends to that are LDS but she herself was not interested. We answered questions about the Book of Mormon and the Church and it was so cool. We then were able to find a new investigator and we are all loving missionary work now!

We had an interview with President and Sister Wilding!!! They are amazing and I am soooo grateful that they are my Mission President and wife!!!!!!

The lemonade stand

We also did a lemonade stand at the Park and gave away Free Lemonade. We had so many people come over and obviously ask for some lemonade and then there were quite a few people that asked about the church and for the missionaries to come and answer questions and teach them more!!! What a successful day! To make things even better Sister Leininger and I had breakfast with the Wildings! It was really good. Good oil Texan cookin'!

Sister Leininger and Elle

When we were knocking doors this past week I had a really loud and clear call to repentance. We were knocking, knocking and knocking and at one of the doors this lady answers. When she opened the door all the gross Smokey air came out and we had to catch our breath. She wasn't too excited to see us but then we asked her if she knew anyone that needed service or an uplifting message and she started to cry. She told us to go and visit P101. She told us that her husband just died and that she needs the Mormons now! We told her we could go visit her and that we would help her in any way that we could. We walked up the stairs and I knew exactly who she was talking about. I had seen Annette before and I didn't want to see her again. It took me a couple minutes before I would move to the door. We knocked the door....no answer; we knocked again....no answer. I was so happy; as we were walking away there was Annette. So we said Hi and she invited us in and we told her we would love to. I was not too excited but I went in anyways. While we were in there I was in a serious call to repentance. The Spirit was so clear that we needed to invite her to take the lessons. Then again the Spirit told me that we needed to invite her to be baptized. So I did and now we are teaching Annette!

I have never heard the Spirit speak so clearly in my entire life. Right then and there I made a commitment to forget myself and go to work! We have so many amazing things in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I will never do anything that will hinder the spirit from being able to talk to me! I love you all so much and hope that you have an amazing week!