Saturday, November 22, 2014

Another Temple to Dot the Earth..........November 17, 2014

11-17-2014

Hello Everyone! Well, it's starting to chill down in the valley of Arizona. It was cold enough this morning I grabbed my jacket before leaving the house to go to the gym. The native Arizonians are pulling out the coats- I'm contemplating pulling out the long sleeves. But it still feels so nice in the day! We'll see how the weather pans out :)

Yesterday was the dedication of the Phoenix Arizona Temple, the 144th Temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the earth today! I haven't had the opportunity to see it in person yet, but I will soon. I am so thankful that my mission is just a few hours away from my home! I'm probably be down here all the time :) The dedication was beautiful and amazing, and the Spirit there in the Stake Center where we watched the broadcast was peaceful and fulfilling, but not all-consuming huge. It was warm and comfortable and beautiful, so much like the temple itself. I love our prophets and apostles on the earth! And I love our temples!

This week was crazy. We had Elder Lawrence of the Seventy come visit our mission for a mission tour. The mission leadership also decided to implement a higher bar for us to reach so we can be better and do better. One of these rules is: the only music we are allowed to listen to is hymns and primary songs sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. That's it. This hurts very much, but I can just so thankful I don't have to make that three hour drive up the mountains with that rule, I would definitely fall asleep and die. So our mission is having an adjustment! We are also reading the Book of Mormon as a mission, marking all the references to Jesus Christ, before the end of the year. So we are busy busy busy! All the missionaries are working hard, and we love this work!

On Saturday we had a crazy service project for our investigator Sharon- almost all the Elders we had collected to come cancelled last minute or didn't know. Those of us who came worked hard to clean out her garage of boxes, organize it (somewhat) and have a yard sale - at the same time. Basically it was contained chaos. We even had members of the yard come and help! But we had hundreds of boxes collected over dozens of years full of all sorts of things. We threw a lot of things away (secretly) , and we wanted to take the items that didn't sell in the yard sale to charity- but she wouldn't. So after all day of work, we packed her garage full of boxes again. That was a really rough day, let me tell you!
We will continue to try to teach her the lessons, but we can't continue to help her with her boxes if we are unable to make progress. So, we'll see what happens this week!

We are still striving to find more people to visit, more people to teach. This week was rough, but this next week is going to be awesome! I can already tell :)

I love you all! My hope is that you will all live worthy to enter a temple of the Lord and make promises to Him there that will bless you and your family for all of this life, and for eternity! Always point yourself towards the temple!

Love you!
Love, Sister Hailey Brown


(photo from lds.org of the Phoenix temple)   :)



photos of mission tour







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