Sister Ashlyn Biggs: called to serve the Lord in the Canada Vancouver mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

April 09, 2013


Well hello there everybody who is not in the amazing country of Canada!! :) Ok...that came out wrong...hello everybody :) I hope all is well with you guys! I love you all and pray for you often!!

Well, what a week. I suppose I should start with how AWESOME General Conferece was!!!!! What a blessing it is to be able to hear from these incredible men twice a year!! My heart aches knowing that not everybody watches it or will watch it. I wish that that was the ONLY thing on tv at the time!! We watched it down at the church since Canada cannot get it on tv. It was so awesome...and guess what? Noreen came and watched!!!! For about 5 years missionaries have been trying to get her to come to the church. And she finally came! Hooray!!!! We are meeting with her after this to see how she liked it. I certainly hope she was able to get an answer about the Book of Mormon.

I could go on and on about specific talks that I liked and different thigns, but that would just take up my entire email time! :) So I guess I will just mention Elder Scott's talk and how much that impacted me. Isn't it awesome how different talks affect different people in different ways? Fascinating :) I had quite a few questions going into conference that I was trying to get answers to. Well, Elder Scott happened to answer almost all of them! He gave me so much comfort and strength just listening to him. How grateful I am for modern day Apostles and Prophets!!!

So Sister Okano and I are trying something new that has taken a lot of faith. We are teaching quite a few people at this time, and we are very grateful for it. However, we are starting to realize that maybe we are teaching some people who are not necessarily truth seekers. If we were to not spend that time teaching them, then we would be able to have more time finding others who ARE truth seekers. Well, we thought that the best way to do this would be to be BOLD! SO we have been. We are bringing up baptism in every single lesson, which makes it very simple for us to be able to find out through the Spirit who are truth seekers and who are not. Yesterday Sister Okano was able to be very bold with one of our investigators. She said "Patt, The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints is the only church on earth with the same Priesthood authority that Jesus Christ had". Wow! Talk about following the Spirit! Although Patt disagreed, we were able to decipher through some of the things she said and we felt very strongly that we should put her in a reflecting pool. Later in the lesson she gave us the name of her son who lives in Ontario, and told us he was searching for truth at this time. So perhaps we were led to Patt just to get her son's name so we could send missionaries there! How interesting how the Lord works!

We visited Amanda again yesterday. Guess what? She hasn't smoked in over a month!!! She is doing so amazing! AND she said she talked to her boss and convinced her to hire another staff member so that she could have Sundays off and come to church. UM....what just happened? Oh, a miracle. That's right. The Lord is so amazing! The truth of the Gospel has such an impact on people when they embrace its teachings!! I am so excited for her!!!

We met up with a farmer, Allen last week. We were kind of nervous because we have asked him a few times to meet with us, but he keeps declining. The Spirit told us to keep trying, so we did. Finally he set up an appointment. We get there and he is this huge first nations man with tatoos everywhere and a lot of peircings. I will admit, I was a little nervous. But oh how grateful I am for what the Spirit can do for us! He was probably the most humble man I have ever spoken to. He has 4 children, all of which he loves so dearly. The way he talks about them melts my heart everytime I think about it. I was able to get just a small glimpse of how Heavenly Father felt about him. I felt such a DEEP love for him when we left. I didn't want to leave because I just wanted to stay there and continue talking to him. He thoroughly enjoyed speaking with us and asked us to come back and teach him more about the church. Gladly!! It just goes to show that prejudgements never do any good. I didn't know I could have such an instant love for somebody in that manner, but the Lord can do all things. We are meeting with him again tomorrow!!

I just wish I could tell each of you every single thing that I experience throughout the week. But unfortunately, time does not allow. I just want each of you who are mission age to take this into consideration as you prepare or consider going on a mission. I have one piece of advice for you - GO!!! That's all. I hope that is clear enough for you. Please go on a mission if you are thinking about it. The Lord so desperately needs people to spread His Gospel. And He blesses you in incredible ways if we do so in this capacity.

I love how much my mission has taught me to be selfless. I did not realize before my mission how selfish I was! I prayed for myself constantly without thinking of others. Sometimes now I forget to pray for myself, besides repenting for all the dumb things I have done :) It is incredible to be able to be so devoted to helping others. I am SO worried about so many other people that I just want Heavenly Father to help them!! I realize I certainly need His help to teach them though. But I love having my prayers focused entirely on other people. I feel like I get so much more out of them!!! What a blessing!!

The challenge for this week is this - I challenge each of you to watch or read at least 3 general conference talks this week. I also challenge you to keep this up until next conference comes!! Before my mission, I was able to listen to conference on my iPhone all throughout work. That is 8 hours of conference a day, and I could not be happier about it. I can honestly say that that is one of the reasons I am here on a mission. We need to take advantage of this incredible technology the Lord has provided for us.

Well, I love each of you ever so much. I think of each of you often and hope that all is going well wherever you are at this point in your life. This Gospel is true. Jesus Christ's Gospel HAS been restored on the earth through a living prophet, and will never again be taken away. I hope and pray that each of you will do your part to come to this same knowledge. I love you, and I will talk to you next week!!

Love,

Sister Biggs

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