My Purpose

The sister on the left was escorted around Temple Square on her tour training week by Sister Peters and Sister Bascom. She is from France and assigned to the London visitors centre

Dear Family and Friends

These last few days I have been feeling really tired! (Thank goodness it is P-day and I can get a few more hours of sleep). I don't think I have ever been so driven and excited about being a missionary. We have some great people we are teaching, My personal favorites (I mean missionaries don't have favourites.) are Josh #1 and Josh #2. Hahhaha yep we are teaching 2 Joshs. They are both LA and they both come to the square to be taught. I shared a little about Josh #1 last week. This week was the best with him! He opened up to us about his challenges and how frustrating it is to have to wait to start his mission papers. We gave him a Preach My Gospel and told him that we are going to help him prepare for a mission. He texted us later and was just so grateful to have our love and support. Man he is going to be such a great missionary! I can't wait to go to his welcome home :) Josh #2 is a little bit older than Josh #1 and just got back from South Carolina.  He grew up a member, but has not always embraced his childhood faith. His fiance is hopefully coming to join him here soon and they are both making the goal of going to the temple. I just hope Sister Peters and I can help in our small way. Josh #2 use to come to TS all the time and meet with sisters hahaha he was so funny when he met us talking about how he needed to get 2 new sisters to help him out since the other 2 are long gone now.

Other exciting news? hmmmm I had my first district meeting since I got back and it went really well. I based it off of a lot of what Sister Peters and I have been talking about. The mission of late has really been focused on baptisms and as you can see from my 2 favorite people to teach I'm not wholly focused on that. Sister Peters was actually very.... hmmm against focuing so much on baptisms, but understood why we are doing that. So we have talked a lot about how we can accomplish our purpose. what our purpose is and feel successful. So that is what I taught in district meeting our purpose "Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end."

Sister Peters and Sister B went to see the Mo Tab perform this week.

I wanted to make sure we weren't loosing our focus on Christ here., Yes baptism is how we bring someone closer to Christ but do they know that? Do they know that Christ is at the center of everything we do? Not just as missionaries but as members of the church? Some people don't even think we are Christian. I think we need to fix something here.... So I will commit you as I commited my sisters "Will you keep Christ at the center of everything you do and say?" If you won't how can you say you are Christian? How can you be a part of his church and not have him at the center of your life? Its not possible. I only say this because I love you, I say this because I know that it is true. The ways of the world and the ways of Christ are very far from each other now, but where are we?

I would love for you all to read this talk that our zone leader (Sister Briggs) gave to us all
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2007/12/jesus-of-nazareth-savior-and-king?lang=eng

Its got some big words in it, but Elder Maxwell is truly inspired. My favorite line:
"This people is seen by the world as eccentric, because they are so Christocentric!"

Be weird to the world, be different  The world turns to us and says "You are not like us." and we turn to them and say "We know it, we don't want to be."

Sister B with Norwegian pro golfer Cecilie Lundgreen
She and two other pro golfers taught RS the lesson today.

You can read about Cei Cei's visit to Temple Square on this blog post. http://sisterbriggs.blogspot.ca/2014/05/its-spirit.html

I love you!
Sister Bascom