Book of Mormon Stories

January 27, 2014
 I am so incredibly frustrated with my Internet right now I can’t even think of what to write. So, that’s fun! Gotta love Jungle Interent, I’ve been waiting an hour for the page to load and it still hasn’t loaded, and my times almost up so I’m just writing in Word to copy and paste later but I still don’t know what you all said to me so I don’t know what to write… Okay, I just bet I’ll give some random thoughts then.


This week was a pretty big eye opener for me. Training my companion, who is new the church, has been a good experience. I had lots of things that I didn’t think would be a problem for me on the mission. I mean, I never thought I would have to explain to my companion that she can’t drink hot tea or that her clothes have to cover her Garments and things like that. And, I’ll be honest, I’m not always as patient as I should be, but I usually do a pretty good job of not showing my frustration. Anyway, I think that she sensed a little bit of my frustration after one of the lessons because she never says anything when we start talking about the Book of Mormon and she gets really really tense and the investigators look at her like she’s crazy.

Anyway, as we started walking home she asked me if she could tell me something and I told her of course and she said “I’ve never actually read the Book of Mormon.” I was super surprised because usually it’s a requirement to fill out your papers, and then you normally read it again in the MTC. She told me about how her Bishop never asked her about it and she tried to read it in the MTC but she got bored or confused and started over again or stopped trying.

 Anyway, she just started telling me about the things that she understood about it (most of them came from the movie the Testaments) and she said from what she understood the Book starts in 1 Nephi when Christ dies in Jerusalem and Jacob is when He appears in America. I explained her how it starts in the Old Testament times and explained how there is Jacob son of Lehi and Jacob son of Ammaron and which one is in the movie and all that stuff. It was cool to really go so deep into the Book of Mormon (since we NEVER go into that much detail with investigators) and strengthen my Testimony more and more of such a life changing book.

 We went and visited some members this week that are preparing to go through the temple. Can I just say that the members here are amazing? Our ward is super tiny, but somehow we have seven missionaries out in the field, most of them are new converts with absolutely nothing.

Anyway, this family has two missionaries out in the field, one son and one daughter. The daughter has been sick and I listened as her mom just cried and cried and talked about how incredibly worried she is for her but she doesn’t ever let her daughter know she’s worried because she knows that she’s where she needs to be. It touched my heart a lot. I realized how amazing Missionary Parents are. I think that the only thing harder than leaving everything behind to teach the Gospel in a foreign land is watching your kid going out and doing it. It made me think a lot about the amazing parents that I have that support me completely in being here even though I am sure they sometimes feel just like that sister that we visited.

 We had some great lessons this week. We have a family that I just love SO much that is going to get Married and Baptized this week and I am so excited! I just love giving these people all that I have.

 I love you so much!

 Have a great week. Hermana Simonson