Sister Bliss's Mission to the OCM: 7/13/20 - "Jesus Christ is basically a superhero."

Happy Monday friends and family!

The "Field Trip" Version:

I've been in quarantine more days than I have left until I get home; minor updates about quarantine; we lost most of our friends to pass offs, being dropped, and just not being able to contact people; Sister Levitt's cool conversation story; what we do to stay entertained; comparison is not part of missionary work; Jesus Christ is basically a superhero

The Full Version:

As of today I officially have 107 days until I come home. Which means I have officially been in quarantine more days than I have left of my mission. That's so crazy.

Updates on quarantine:

We're starting to get the okay to do group service projects. We haven't heard a lot about it yet, but it's exciting to hear! Our churches are also starting to open up finally. They're only allowed 25 people per meeting, so it's a slow step, and it also means we may not get to go as missionaries, but it's still exciting. And at least in Xenia we get to go to members homes on Sunday to take the sacrament, so we'll be good either way.

Updates on those we're teaching:

We can't get a hold of a third of the people we know.

The other third have dropped us

And the last third we've passed over to their rightful areas.

On Saturday we officially passed David, our friend who's on date, over to the Missionaries in Kansas. He's being well taken care of, and we're super excited to see how things go with him.

Now our goal is to find new people to teach. But we just found out that we're actually not allowed to Facebook tract, which is basically the only way missionaries have been finding people to teach lately (RIP to finding new friends). So now we're going to have to get creative with the things we're doing to find new people! But that's alright, we're getting used to being flexible with missionary work, so nothing's stopping us!

We do get to teach an amazing recent convert in Xenia named Marissa. My friend, Sister Gallup from the MTC, found her when she served here a year ago. She found her because she felt prompted to go out into the middle of nowhere and ran across Marissa right as she was pulling up to her house. She quickly accepted the gospel and she's super strong now. We love her and really enjoy teaching her the new member lessons.

We had a meeting with Sister Leavitt in the ward who shared the COOLEST conversion story with us this weekend. She always felt that there was something missing as she went to churc vhf and read the Bible. When someone gave her a Book of Mormon she immediately felt like she'd been handed the missing piece, and she stayed up all night reading the whole thing. She was a much better story teller, but she's going to make a video of her story and let us post it to Facebook, so hopefully y'all can see it there cause she's such a good story teller and her story is amazing, so it's the perfect mix!

We have been told that we need to find ways to have fun while in quarantine so we can stay sane. This is what we choose to do:

-We all recently discovered just how white our legs are, so we sit outside during companion study and try to make them a little let blinding.

-We currently have three bikes, so we went for a long bike ride yesterday for exercise and I'm kind of obsessed with bikes now because they're so fun! I can definitely see why people move to Milford (my area many transfers back) just to be near the bike trail there. Also, I still have not gotten a picture with me on a bike, so I may just get home with no proof that I ever rode a bike on my mission.

-My companions and I have a competition going on where we take creepy stalker photos of each other and by the end of the week the losers have to buy the winner lunch. The winner will be the one with the best stalker photos on their phone. I'll keep y'all updated when I win

We had a Sunday devotional for the mission and the woman who talked to us reminded us that we cannot find success in comparison. Speaking specifically to us as missionaries, she reminded us that it doesn't matter what success your parents or friends had on their mission, and it doesn't matter if another district in your mission is having more success than you. We are all on the same team and as long as we are doing what we can, God is accepting of that. The field may not feel "white, all ready to harvest", but because of COVID-19 it certainly has been leveled and plowed.

🧡

DOUBT your DOUBTS

QUESTION your QUESTIONS

FEAR your FEARS

🧡

We were having a lesson with a member and her kids and we asked them about Jesus Christ and one of them responded "Jesus Christ is basically a superhero." which immediately reminded me of a picture of Jesus Christ and the avengers that I included below! As a big fan of not necessarily just Marvel, but of all superheros, I really loved this. How often do we watch movies of superheros and think about how cool they are and how cool it'd be to have their powers? In comparison, how often do we look at Christ and his atonement and think of him as a superhero? He took upon himself every pain, sorrow, sickness, sin, and tragedy that every person who had ever lived or will ever live would ever experience. He bled from every pore, gave his life as a sacrifice, and rose from the grave three days later. He did all of that so that we could experience happiness in this life and be able to return to him and our Heavenly Father again one day. That is greater than any super power or any super hero I've ever seen on TV.

I hope you all have an amazing week!

Love,

Sister Bliss

PICTURES!

*The missing picture from my last weekly that I tried to include of me and Sister Lamarche having Lee's for lunch of the 4th of July

*XENIA