This Has Been Such a Good Week!!

Sisters who completed their missions last transfer

Going Home--Sister Jenna Mettra

This has been such a good week!! We have really been trying to focus on being more diligent and it has really paid off. We have been working so hard in the RC (referral center) to get a hold of people and teach them. We have a few great investigators in Brazil and they speak English! I have been trying to contact over 20 referrals I got who live in Brazil and we are really making progress. It is so great to see what faithful people they are and how willing they are to learn more about the Church.

We have also had some very interesting phone calls!

Joseph*, an investigator in Texas doesn't believe in pre earth life, so we shared with him D&C 138 last week and he loved it! Missionaries have been trying to work with him on this topic for probably over a year now. And he had stopped meeting with them because of it. We are really making some progress with him and we've been working so hard. I found some other great things in Jesus the Christ I want to share with him.

I have been emailing a man, Brigham* about why Christians recognize Sunday as the Sabbath day. I couldn't find any scriptures about it for a couple days. This morning in personal study I found the answer in Jesus the Christ! Because Sunday is the day Christ was resurrected, which was the first day of the week. Hence, the first day of the week became recognized as the Sabbath instead of the 7th!!! 1 Cor. 16:2! ps- He thinks Sabbath should be on Saturday. He might be a 7th Day Adventist. I'm not sure. Anyways, he's great!

This morning during personal study I was like "OMG Jesus the Christ is the best thing that's ever happened to me!" It’s true! I love this book so much. After the standard works of the Church, of course.

Well this is the LAST week of this transfer already! Going into the 3rd now. Sister Au-Yeung thinks she will be going outbound. Transfer conference in the Temple Square Mission is so crazy because you just suddenly find out on Monday that you will be leaving to a whole new mission in a whole new place 2 days later!!! Chances are pretty good that I won’t go outbound this transfer. We shall see.  Come what may, and love it!!

Well everything here is great! Love you and thank you all for the support!

XOXOXO

Sister Jarvie

*-Names may have been changed to ensure confidentiality.

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Sister Lauren Jarvie

UT- Salt Lake City Temple Square Mission

50 N. West Temple St. Rm. BSVC

Salt Lake City, UT 84150

Anti-Mormons on Temple Square? We're used to it!!

Sister Jarvie and her companion Sister Au-Yeung
Sister A-Y speaks four languages fluently!

Hello Hello!

This week was kind of slow but a couple of interesting things happened. So we have been really used to the square being slow lately but all of a sudden a few days ago, all the phones were ringing to ask if there were sisters there to give tours! So we had just finished a tour with these two super cute ladies from China. One of their names was Potato; I love the English names Asians choose. They're the best. Anyways, they both referred AND wanted copies of the Book of Mormon!! Whenever people from mainland China come to the Square and want to refer, all we can do is get all of their information and ONE copy of the Book of Mormon each. Obviously, we can't send missionaries or call them because that country hasn't opened up yet. They were so great!  Hopefully they will read the Book of Mormon!

So, we had just finished evaluating and Sister Sukbaartaar asked if we could take a group on a tour. So we meet them and they are obviously not members, but they have their Bibles with them and one of them has a quad... You guessed it... An anti-mormon group. Anyways, they were actually super nice and seemed open to sincerely learning. But they had the standard questions that these groups usually come here with. So it turns out that it was a huge group visiting from a World Religions university class that was  studying Mormonism. Sister Gilbert’s group was TOTALLY anti but she is going to forward me that story soon. So maybe there will be more on that next week. So, it is always funny and sad to talk to anti's at the square.

Oh, and the guy from the Bahamas who was baptized last week?  All 4 of his daughters are now investigating the Church! Yay!

Love you all!

Sister Jarvie

Xoxoxo

CTR

oh, I just got Sister Gilbert’s anti-mormon tour group story—here it is:

Here is a great “Sisters Encounter Anti’s On Temple Square” to show you what we often face here at Church Headquarters.  It happened this week to Sister Gilbert!

From Sister Steffany Gilbert of New York—

Story of the week is when I pulled a total Abinadi in front of 4 anti-Mormon kids. They were my age, visiting from La Mirada actually!, and asked for a tour. Immediately we knew it was sketchy when the boy was holding a very LDS looking bible, but was clearly not LDS. So he introduces himself and the 3 girls with him as students from an evangelist Christian school coming to share the "joy of Christ" with others. (Clearly, our faith only.) We begin the tour and I felt icky inside because of their fake friendliness and how they inched their way into telling us we were wrong, in a "nice" way of course. It wasn't my first run-in with antis, I have been out here on the square for 100 years you know, but it made me mad when they would try to separate my companion and I as one of their tactics to convert us. So I started being a little sarcastic and felt myself being rude. I knew at some point this tour had to end because they were completely wasting our time. After Sister Kemp quoted the Bible to the boy as he tried to open his scriptures, a girl "bore her testimony" about how she knew the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants (red flag, girlfriend!) wasn't true and I was DONE! I prayed for the ability to shut them down...in a Christ-like manner...and here is what I can recall saying...."We appreciate your faith in Jesus Christ, but we can't continue this tour. I know what you're doing and I don't appreciate you coming here to try and combat our beliefs. We believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, so you don't need to do this." Then the boy ringleader pipes up with, "We aren't trying to combat your beliefs, only to share the Bible and Chr..." and then I responded "We would never come to your church and do this to you, so I do not understand why you come here to do this to us. We respect your belief in Christ, but every missionary here knows what you are doing. What we share is true. I live 10 minutes from the Hill Cumorah and I know how this works!" BAM. Shut. Down. Then the boy once AGAIN has the nerve to speak and asks us if he can pray for us at that moment and I told him they could go pray for us somewhere else but not with us on Temple Square. Moral of the story: the SPIRIT rocks, ANTIs DO NOT.

Remember to read your Book of Mormon!

Sister Jarvie and companion Sister Au-Yeung

This week has been great. We had a really awesome zone conference this week and it helped all of us out so much! It is so nice to have a lot of time to be on the phones calling people, all of our investigators are doing so well! This is going to be a very short email we don't have much time BUT... Sister Au-Yeung and I got to run an errand to the Church Administration Building! Woooo! We had to deliver some Cowboy book to Elder Snow there. It was so BEAUTIFUL inside wow!!! Then we left. But in the mean time we lost our cell phone! eek! So we looked everywhere... We even went back and checked our apt to see if we forgot to even bring it that day. But we were sure we had it. So then we went back to the Church Administration Building and told the guy the whole story.. No cell phone... We found it in the office we had been working on the announcing stuff in! Ahhhh! Anyways, happy ending.

We had Zone Conference this week. We learned about each step in the "contacting model", it really helped so much. Then President Holmes bought us all lunch at the food court across the street! Yum! He treats us so well!

I hope you all have had a great fun week!

Remember to read your Book of Mormon, Pray and go to all Sunday meetings!

I am out of time!

Love you!

Sister Jarvie
CTR!

Sister Gilbert and Sister Jarvie
Below: My sisters from around the world!

Elder Scott Was Doing Great. Obviously.

The Sweet Tooth Fairy pays a visit!

Visit from Lyn Faulkner and Megan Faulkner Brown

Hello Hello!

This has been a very interesting week! First of all Christmas is OVER! We are back onto our normal schedule now so we feel like much more productive missionaries. My main man from the Bahamas got baptized on Sunday. He is so incredible, wow. He has so much faith and I am so happy. He is going to get confirmed a member this Sunday and can't wait to receive the Priesthood.

MIRACLE WEEK! On Monday we got two new investigators! Both told me they were going to meet with the missionaries this week. (Way to go Elders, contacting Church Headquarters referrals within 24 hours, ch.8 PMG). We talked to one of them today and she had a lesson with the Elders last night and is going to church on Sunday AND she wants to get BAPTIZED! Wow! So awesome.

Yesterday was interesting. Sister Au-Yeung and I always get off topic during companion study because we love talking about deep doctrine... Anyways, I won't get into that BUT it was very interesting/frustrating. haha. Then, we met a lady for a tour. She couldn't understand why there are not female prophets or apostles in this church. (How many times have I had this discussion with people?) She feels like women are repressed, yada yada yada, Politically correct, I get it. THEN, she was like, "Why does God just step back and allow innocent people to suffer. You never see evil here...Ya it must be really easy for you missionaries at Temple Square because you are completely isolated from evil." It made my skin crawl. So we kind of tried to help her understand that we don't have an "everything is perfect in the world" way of seeing things. As we were about to go up the elevator, I couldn't stop myself and I said, "Can I tell you something?" She agreed. Then I told her that she cannot say we are isolated from evil. "Every single second of every day that we are missionaries here at Temple Square or on the phone with people, we are engaged in a fight against evil. We see it every day. We talk to people who have been taken over by Satan. We fight it everyday. That is why we are missionaries for the Lord our God because we know it is true." She didn't have much to say after that. I could feel the power of the Holy Spirit testifying to her that these things ARE true and that is what caused her to have a loss for words. She is amazing and I hope that one day she will meet with missionaries because she would be such a strong member of this Church.

So we're totally defending prophets and apostles..then we meet one. Seriously. We thought we had to cover the Beehive house but we didn't so we decided to go to lunch across the street. We are walking to the corner and there is this man staring at the electricity box then he turns right in front of us! OMG IT was Elder Richard G. Scott! So he is right in front of us and we're like "Hi, how are you doing today?" He was doing great. Obviously. And then asked us where we are from. Then he said he was happy to meet us and stuff. He was so cool and nice. We were just filled with the Spirit because we know this man is an apostle of God! It was so great!

I love missionary work. I was able to see Camille Butler, one of my AMAZING EFY Redlands girls this week. If any of my EFY boys or girlfriendz are reading this...I hope you are CTR! I love you all so much. Thank you for changing my life. Read, "You Matter to Him" A talk by Dieter F. Uchtdorf from Conference.

FAULKNER AND BROWN FAMILY!!!! It was SO GOOD to see you oh my gosh! Sorry I looked gross, I promise I haven't let myself go! It's just been so wild here at Christmas! Anyways, The kids are BEAUTIFUL and I love them all so much. They are so amazing. Can I get Meg and Eth's new address? And Lyn, I need yours too. Oh it was good to see Johnny I guess. I'm just kidding! It was great to see you! You look great! Love the beard. Thank you so much for the cakebites I carried them around with me all week, seriously. I think we will go to the Murray store today? It's by Rubios and Costco. Anyways, I am so excited. Thank you for coming! Sorry, I couldn't visit for longer.

I love you all so much! Happy New Year!

CTR

xoxoxoxo Sister Jarvie XOXOXOOXOX