Quarantine day #45,
Ahhh! We had some neat miracles this week! But to start off, I wanted to give an update about Randall. If any of you remember, a few months ago I mentioned this man named Randal who we found through a complete miracle. He was blind but immediately started listening to the Book of Mormon, he started progressing really quickly, but Sister Morales and I felt prompted to pass him off to the Elders because we felt he would progress better with them. Well, he was on date to be baptized and would have been if not for COVID-19. But he's still progressing really well and has been listening to talks from this last General Conference with one of the members! I'm still so sad we're not teaching him, but it's fun to hear that he's doing so well.
Other updates:
Nathan, the dishwasher guy, didn't accept our invitation to learn more, but he said he's going to read the Book of Mormon and let us know what he thinks. We've been in semi contact with him, and he gave us a recipe for Bulgogi (shoutout to my friend Sierra who introduced me to Korean food and got me obsessed with Beef Bulgogi!). So this week I made both Pork and Chicken Bulgogi and it was SO GOOD! I made an entire meal from it, so look below to see a picture of the glorious meal I made this week!
Our lesson with Terri, the woman we called who asked if she could see her family and friends again one day, went so well! At one point she asked if she would recognize her family after she died. We explained that we will be the same people after this life as we are during this life, and we shared Alma 34:34 with her and compared it to her question: "Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." She was so cute and got so excited when we answered that for her!
FUN MIRACLE STORY TIME! (I say as if I haven't just listed a bunch of other miracles. But this one's extra special)
The short story is that before my mission I was running a Tumblr account in which I posted scriptures and quotes from our church leaders. Right before leaving I set it up to post on Christmas and let my followers know my mission email if they wanted to reach out. I didn't think anything would come of it, but I decided to do it anyway just in case. I did in fact end up getting two emails, and one of them was from a girl named Emily who couldn't meet with the missionaries but really wanted to so she reached out to me for help and advice when she ran across my post. After talking back and forth for quite some time, we finally coordinated a time to have a lesson with her because she really wants to learn more. That time is TONIGHT! I'm so excited, and it has been super special to me to experience this miracle that started even before my official mission began.
We had interviews with President Ensign this week through phone calls, which was really nice to have! He has great hopes that we'll be able to start having District Councils in person sometime in May and Zone Conferences in person again sometime in June, so my fingers are crossed! In the meantime, we're starting to use Facebook as a finding tool a lot more. So if any of you aren't friends with my mission Facebook, please go add me and feel free to share anything I post if you'd like. We're still in the process of figuring out what kind of stuff they want us to be posting, but pretty soon we'll have a pretty solid Facebook page for the Stake in our area run by the Missionaries (us!) that I look forward to. While we're starting to get the hang of things, missionary work inside is still so different than it was outside. This is a new challenge for missionary work indeed, but it's an exciting time to be serving the Lord!
After General Conference, Sister Ensign issued a competition to all of the missionaries and invited us to memorize the new proclamation, "The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ", before she did. I originally worked really hard to memorize it, but I had to write it all on paper because I couldn't print it off, but I eventually memorized it all about a week ago, only to find out that I missed two entire paragraphs of the proclamation and had to rememorize it all. But I finally succeeded at memorizing it all this week and got to pass it off for Sister Ensign!
I hope all of your quarantines have been going well! Quarantine continues to stay exciting here! Here are some other random fun tidbits from these last few weeks:
- Every Wednesday morning we get to have a missionary institute from a Bishop in one of the wards who used to teach institute. It has been really fun because it's like taking an institute class, but he compares everything to how we can help the people we're teaching.
-Church has recently consisted of joining a zoom call as a Relief Society so we can continue to have lessons. We're hoping soon to have a schedule of zoom calls for Sunday. What are the rest of you doing for church? (this also applies for my friends of other faiths). What fun ways have you found to keep members from church together?
-We've started a scripture study with the young women and it has been so much fun to stay in touch and study with them. The young women in this ward are so spiritually strong and are such a great example to me! The Elders also put together a "District Council" for anyone who recently got back from a mission or is preparing for a mission, and that has also been lots of fun. We've been holding that twice a week and one person gives a training each time on missionary work, but relates it in a way that we can use it in regular life as well.
- I know a lot of people have been curious if we can get outside at all, so I'm letting you know that the answer is yes. We leave our apartment for at least an hour a day to just get outside and exercise. We especially love walking to a nearby Catholic cemetery during our exercise because it's one of the biggest cemeteries I've ever seen and it's beautiful, with everything from family tombs (is that what you'd even call them?), to big monuments, to a lake for a natural burial (we're not certain exactly what that means...but the lake was pretty). We also leave to go to companionship study outside sometimes and try to find any reason to not be inside. We simply have to stay away from people we run across. Or we just talk to them while they're sitting on their porch so we can start teaching them I guess.
- A couple days ago we called a member and Sister Coleman introduced herself at one point, but she accidentally introduced herself by her first name and neither of us noticed until the very end when we were saying by and he responded with "By Camille!".... It was SO FUNNY
I love you all and hope you're all safe and healthy!
Love,
Sister Bliss
PICTURES!
*Our gourmet chicken Bulgogi meal. Of you want the recipe let me know. It was amazing!
*Pictures of us with a Miamisburg sign and another sign that talked about being closed "until hibernation is over"
*Our neighbor Steve. He walked out of the elevator with this wig and we DIED! He and his wife often bring us food so we don't starve 
They're the cutest
*I finally got a picture with our apartment building. You see that giant high rise building? Yeah, I life on the 5th floor
*Shoutout to my amazing family members who have been sending me cards and packages. I promise I'm going to send you thank yous. But here's a beautiful picture of us doing some face masks we got 
*A member in the ward decided to bring us pizza, easter candy, salad, apples, oranges, some fancy lemon soda, and Graeter's ice cream 
