We did not get an email from Amber last Monday October,1,2012 She resent it today.
My family is very sports oriented
and we love to watch, play, and talk about sports, pretty much any time
of day all year long. We're in the middle of BYU football season, and
my brothers are playing soccer and flag football and of course they play
basketball all year long Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Dedication. Haha,
well even on my mission, I've been thinking about sports, and really
applying the gospel to them really. Lately I've been thinking alot
about sidelines. The first idea goes something like this:
Play hard while you're on/in the field, you never know who's watching you from the sidelines.
I've been thinking about people in my life who probably don't
know how much I watched them from the sidelines. All my cousins who
served missions, and my college friends too, Tessa who I watched drawing
and inspired me to be an artist myself. I even have a bookmark I have
with me out here in Poland that I got from Sister Susan Standefer when I
was in primary. I defintiely watched her from the
sidelines, what an amazing woman. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Jones, I
watched her and wanted to be a teacher. Amber Pickering, and Cheris
Henderson - I think about them alot while I'm on my mission because I
can picture them in my mind's eye with a name tag and a smile just
turning the world upside down with their soul-shaking testimonies!
I think the ones I really learned the most from, though, were
my parents, of course. I can see who I've become because of my
parents. My parents taught me to work hard, to plow through, and to
give it my best shot. In sports and dance and piano I was always
encouraged to practice, practice, practice, and to have confidence in
myself. Dad always taught me I could do what I wanted to with my life,
he taught me to dream. Mom taught me to dream about my family, to love
deeply and unselfishly. My parents are also both firm in their beliefs
and they're rooted, not to be moved. I am learning more than ever out
here playing on this field, how great it is to have those coaches, who
are now on the sidelines watching me play (and cheering me on, rather
than learning from me). I am also grateful that not only could I watch
them play, and have their example of being missionaries when they
were young, but that now I have their full support. I know mom prays
for me multiple times a day, and dad too. I'm so grateful for them.
I'm also grateful for all my friends and cousins who care and cheer for
me too! I got a package from Nephi and Katherine's family recently and
it just made me SO HAPPY! Thanks guys!
There's something else about sidelines that's pretty magical too though, it's the faith that someone is
learning from you as you play. Sometimes we're in the heat of the game
and all we can see is the goal line, the ball, the sweat, the dirt, the
clock, whatever it is. But you really hope that somebody is watching,
learning, growing from you. Sister Folsom and I have been talking alot
about this lately, about how we're asked to have faith that we'll get
baptisms... well Sister Folsom's only seen one which she taught her whole mission.
Yeah, but she's so full of faith that I don't know if there's any room
left! So where is all this hard work of faith going to? The
SIDELINES. Four times in the last little while, people have been
listening when I had no idea they were even there. I was
talking to someone and Hania was listening and then she ended up talking
to Sister Folsom and we got a new investegator off of it! The tramwaj
driver was listening once and waved at us kindly. Another woman was
amazed we'd learned Polish that fast and started talking to us because we were talking to someone else.
Also, who knows how many people sit in on our lessons from the other
side of the veil... and I have to believe that lots of our work lies in
futurity! WE ARE moving mountains, but we just have to have faith
they're moving because we're focused on the ball right now... not on how
many people in the crowd are being inspired in they're own simple ways
to change for the better. It's really a great feeling, to know that
mountains ARE moving, even if we can't see them. I KNOW they are,
because I can feel it. God didn't send us here to fail, so something great has got to be happening.
Point of the sidelines story - KEEP singing, KEEP playing, KEEP
praying because SOMETHING will come of it. Have faith, and someday
we'll see the mountains we've moved and it'll be super beautiful! Some
more stories:
Just
yesterday we were at Park Cytadella, one of my favorite parks, and we
were walking in when Sister Folsom got a phone call so I decided to just
contact on my own for a minute and I saw the cutest little family out
walking in the leaves. Looked like they were searching for
something, I thought perhaps for mushrooms…so I went over, and instead
of just saying something about the gospel right away – like Elder Jensen
talked about the Nike shoes first and then led into the gospel – I
asked first about what they were doing. It ended up being a
really fun conversation especially because even though I told her that
my Polish wasn’t very good, she insisted that it was and that if I could understand what she was saying after only 5 months of learning the language, that was pretty great. Yes, well I prayed for help – that’s the best answer for that one! And
then we got into a little bit of a gospel discussion and then Sister
Folsom came over and helped and we ended up being able to leave her with
a Book of Mormon! She says she doesn’t have time to meet, but Ana was interested, and if she just reads, man, so cool! I
know that even though a lot of the rest of that contacting time felt
pretty slow, that one contact was why we were supposed to be there
yesterday.
Another
one, we were on our way to go tracting in another part of Poznań and
there was a younger college age man coming out of the grocery store and
we contacted him. He was super nice and surprised that we talk about God to people because not very many people do. He
was up for meeting but didn’t have time and I just kept thinking about
what we’d talked about in Zone Conference about how we should try to
teach right NOW, if we can. So I just re-stated that we could teach him right now if he had time, he agreed for us to come back in a ½ hour! So we did! And the lesson was so good, but at the end was the best part. Darek
has had some hard things in his life, and he wants help, but when we
asked him to pray out loud, he didn’t want to, he said he was too
nervous or something… We kept encouraging him for what seemed like at
least 10 minutes, I even prayed once, telling him that my Polish stinks
but I still pray out loud! And then he finally did it! Coolest
thing was, that the beginning of his prayer was really slow and labored
but as soon as he opened his mouth and just took that leap of faith to
pray, it became way easier and the words just flowed from his mouth! HOW AWESOME IS THAT! He prayed to his heavenly father because we’re in Poland! Such a great feeling. He even said afterwards how much better he felt after the prayer and how we were right, it really did get easier as you pray!
A
woman named Eugina said she’s been attending the Catholic Church across
from her house for 30 years and has never felt the way she did when
Sister Folsom quoted the First Vision story. She’s committed to read the book of mormon, and those goosebumps were real.
Karol,
an inactive member we found randomly on a bench my first couple weeks
here has now been at church three weeks in a row and bore his testimony
yesterday. His testimony was much like Darek’s prayer,
opened his mouth and at first it was like, ‘I feel good here, I don’t
have much of a testimony….’ Some soft stuff….but as he bore witness, the
spirit hit him and he was able to testify with great power that this
church is TRUE. And it was AMAZING and I wanted to SHOUT for joy because I felt so utterly HAPPY!
The principle of all this? OPEN YOUR MOUTH. God will fill you with words, God will follow through if you just TRY. Have confidence my little flock, because you CAN do this!
My companion and I are doing great. I am just praying that Sister Folsom is happy all the time and praying that I can act in a way that will help her stay happy. I’m
hoping that she can have a smooth transition to go home –then again if
you are a ‘consecrated missionary’ you are guaranteed to not have a
smooth transition home… so I don’t really know what to pray for… Haha…oh
well, so is life. But we’re really doing great! We even got free pasteries this week, SWEET! Literally!
The
church is SO true, and I'm so grateful for it in my life! I'm so glad
Gregg is serving with me! Lots of love from me to you,
-Sister Amber Allen
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