So Worth the Bloody Ankles

Well hello everyone!! 

Another week come and gone and my goodness what a wonderful week this last one has been. 

I met all the newbees in my District. They're all cool. We continue to meet with Becky, she is slowly but surely learning and coming closer to Christ. But the main event of last week was meeting a girl named Candace and her husband, Errington. 

Sister Robison and I had prepped for the day and started walking out with a purpose to see a bunch of people we'd planned on seeing. We're about a mile from our house. We've trudged through swampy grass, Sister Robison had been bitten by several ants and slowly my shoes had eroded holes into my heels. I was in a lot of pain so wonderful Sis. Robison traded shoes with me and we made the trek back home to take care of our bites and cuts. We looked completely redidulous limping and trudging our way back to the house. We drove over to Walgreens to get some bandaids and the lady at the register (Candace) asked what LDS people believe in. We were so taken back that she asked us so we set up an appointment with her to teach her the next day. 

We met up at McDonalds and taught her the Restoration. She was soaking it all up and was so amazed that we had a living prophet and that the Book of Mormon is testimonies of prophets in America. We gave her a Book of Mormon and invited her to church. She ended up texting us later that day telling us that she had told her husband, Errington, all about our church and hee had down loaded the LDS app onto is phone and was already on chapter 4 in the Book of Mormon!!! WHAT!!! Miracle!! We met up with them at a resturaunt to eat dinner and answer any of their questions. It was the most natural meeting I've ever had with anyone. They're both so cool and really love what we have to say about our church. And, they came to church the next day!! And even cooler, two little girls got baptized after church and they both stayed to watch. Errington told us that he loved how organized our church is and that if Candace has work off that they will definitely be back!! Keep them in ya'lls prayers that she'll be off work and that they'll come back! 

It was such a miracle meeting them, and I honestly don't even feel like it's me teaching them. The Spirit is real. The Church is true. I love my Savior. And I love you all. 

Ya'll have a blessed week. 

Love, Sister Mason 

Kiss My Grits!

Hey Ya'll 

Good News! We got Transfer Calls this past Saturday and Sister Robison's staying for another transfer!! Whoo! And, today makes my 2 month mark for being out on a mission! Not very long, I know, but still exciting! We are saying goodbye to one of my dear, beautiful, and awesome STL's though. Sister Drummond's leaving Tupelo. She gave me her mermaid sweater as a departing gift. I love it.

A lot of really cool things happened this past week! I tried grits (hence, one of the reasons for the title) They were pretty good. 

But, that's not the cool part! First story: We were out tracting a while back and met a lady named Mitzy. Well, a few days later we get a referral for a guy named Mike Walden saying he wanted a Book of Mormon. We go to the address and realize it's Mitzy's house and Mike is her husband! We meet him, sit down to give a lesson and he tells us all about how he had searched for Joseph Smith on the internet and found all of his information on LDS.org. This amazing man knows Joseph Smith to a T! He started watching the Joseph Smith movie and was so impressed that he requested for a Book of Mormon. What's so crazy is that when we had first met Mitzy we'd asked if her husband would like to join. She'd gone to the back room to ask and came back saying that he was watching the news. Meeting him he told us that he actually hadn't been watching the news, but listening to our lesson and reading the Book of Mormon online. When we gave him an actual copy his face lit up. We visited him again this past week and asked him if he'd had a chance to read any of it and he told us that he'd read the first three chapters and thought it was awesome! Miracle!!! 

Second story: We were tracting on this back woods kind of area called Tschudi Rd. and saw this cute little green house. The lady that lived there is named Becky, she let us, we got to know her and Sister Robison and I invited her to be baptized. She grew up Baptist but has been attending the Pentecostal church down the road from her house for 2 years. She said that she enjoys the beliefs in God that they share, but a lot of things don't make sense to her like speaking in tongues and how they shout. So, we provided the information of the restored gospel of our Savior, Jesus Christ, to her and told her that we have a different way to receive the Holy Ghost and how wonderful this gospel is and that it will bless her life. She was really touched and expressed that desire to find her purpose here on earth and grow closer to her Heavenly Father. We showed her the movie 'Finding Faith in Christ' and it put us all in tears. I am so excited to keep teaching her and Mike and Mitzy! 

Now, after having such an amazing week and finding out that Sis. Robison is staying, the Adversary has been really working on the both of us. He's been trying to get us down and feeling like we aren't good missionaries, inadequacy etc. This weekend I've missed my family more than anything, I made several mistakes and had to learn some hard lessons. So, of course the devil's gonna try to get me down!! But, as real as the adversary is so is my Heavenly Father, and He will pull me through anything! I've been telling Lucifer to Kiss my grits! "Get thee hence Satan!" He has no power over me! I'm a daughter of the Almighty God, and He's called me to the work! The same goes for all of you. Satan's going to try and stop you from being successful because he knows what you are capable of in furthering the work of our Heavenly Father in bringing His children back on the path of righteousness. Of course he doesn't want that! He wants us all to be miserable and to suffer and burn in hell like he will. Tell him to leave you alone! The Lord will give you strength in all things. I can testify of that. 

I love you all, and I mean that. Individually. You are all such amazing examples to me. I hope your week is fantastic and that you stay strong in the Spirit of the Lord. With Christ all things are possible. And I leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. 

Love, Sister Michaela Mason 

Go Go Power Rangers!

I apologize everyone!  I'm a little late on posting this letter :( 

Well hey everybody!
This is the last week before transfers and I am praying and keeping my fingers crossed that they won't take wonderful Sister Robison away from me! I love her too much!
This past week was crazy. Lots of really strange things happened, one of them including our church building flooding. We were having interviews with our Mission President, President Hanks and our District Meeting. While in the middle of this meeting our zone leader stopped in the middle of his sentance and said, looking out in the hallway "There is a lot of water out there!!" One of the rooms had a pipe explode in the ceiling and water was pouring out of it like a water fall and a river was slowly making its way down the hall. Everybody spent the next hour and a half trying to stop the pipe, calling for help, and scooping up at least four inches of water. It was insane!
Aside from the crazies, our zone's come up with a new challenge called the Hour of Power. Every day from 5-6:00 we are supposed to invite as many people as we can to baptism. Sister Robison and I really haven't had any chances to ask our investigators if they'll be baptized, we've had several meetings fall through this week. So, we decided to invite anyway! It was an incredibly cold night in Amory. We were tracting around this neighborhood. Either no one was home or they weren't interested. We got a text from our zone leaders saying "Hour of Power!! Go go power rangers! Invite as many as you can!" So, we decided that the next door we'd knock on we'd invite that person to be baptized. We knocked on the door, a man answered. We smiled our little numb cheeks off and said "Hi! we're sister missionaries in the area and we were wondering if you'd like to be baptized!" He told us that he was already baptized and a member of some other faith. We continue to the next house and did the same thing and got shot down again. The last house we knocked on we actually didn't feel prompted to invite them to baptism, but they let us in! Her name's Mitzy. She says she is a non-denominational Baptist (believes you don't need an organized religion, but attends a baptist church). She is just the sweetest thing and really enjoys our visits! Moral of the story: you may not get people baptized as soon as you'd like, but with love and patience you will get in someones door, it just takes a little guts, spunk and moxie. The people that shot our bapt. invites will come to know the truth!
Our visits with Bernita have gone really well. We continue to get to know the family-they are all so wonderful! She's actually started to read the Book of Mormon and really wants to recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost! Which is AWESOME and can totally happen!
I also got to go on my first exchange with our lovely STL's! It was a blast! We tracted around some appartments, ran into a lot of Asians that couldn't speak english but they wished us "many blessings and good luck all year." We ate at a chinese buffet. When we were done with our meal we waited for 20 minutes to receive our ticket. When our waiter finally came over he told us that "our friend" had already paid for our lunch and we were free to go. WHAT!! So that was a little blessing.
I have nothing else to report. But, I hope ya'll know that you're amazing and I love ya'll to death! And just like our Asian friends say "I wish you many blessings and good luck all year!" God be with you.
Love, Sister Michaela Mason 

2K15

Happy New Year Ya'll!! 

So crazy that 2014 has already come and gone! I hope that ya'll had a great New Years celebration and things didn't get too crazy. 

This past week sure has been just one of those emotional and hard but wonderful and spiritual weeks. Sister Robison and I have seen many miracles that helped us get through. 

New Years Eve was especially hard. We received a call from one of our investigators telling us to not visit him anymore. That broke our hearts. Right after that we walked down the street to visit one of our other investigators and got into a friendly/non-heated bible bash with them. The Spirit wasn't there as we were trying to answer all of these questions they were throwing at us and jumping from one subject to the other. We ended up just sitting on the couch listening as they argued between each other about their different faiths and our faith and...yeah. It wasn't what we needed or wanted. We went home and packed up, we'd be spending the night in Tupelo, and we both just cried. But, we pulled ourselves together and felt that we ought to go visit a recent convert before we left to Tupelo. As we were walking there we saw a group of black boys on their bikes outside their house and a woman, assuming to be their mother, on the front porch talking to them. Sis. Robison stopped and asked if we should talk to them. So, we did. We walked right up and told them who we were and she said we could come in and teach them more about Jesus. This little family turned out to be the answer to our tearful prayers!! Her name's Bernita (the R is silent and you actually pronounce her name Bonita) She has a daughter in college and three boys: Jay, Bishop, and Zion. She invited us over on New Years day to teach them again. We popped by and that's where we met her husband Caesar. He let us in and told us that Bernita wasn't feeling well. We explained to him our purpose as missionaries and were getting to know him and his background when Bernita came out to join our conversation. We taught them the Restoration and explained the importance of the Book of Mormon. We left two copies with them and encouraged them to read the first chapter and pray about it. They invited us over again! This last visit we had with them we read the first chapter of 1 Nephi and explained even more about the Book of Mormon. Caesar told us that at first he hadn't been very interested in reading but after us explaining it's importance and that it's another testament of Jesus Christ, he told us he was actually really interested in reading it. And Bernita told us that since it was another testament of Jesus Christ and that it was recordings from prophets in America there is no way that this book can't be true because God loves all His children and He's not just going to send the gospel to Jerusalem!! Miracle!!! They are our little diamonds in the rough!! And, they offered for us to try chitlins! If any of you don't know what that is just think pig intestines. Cuz that's what they are. They weren't too bad. They were kind of chewy and tasted like chicken at first. But after you swallow it and get that after taste.....it tastes like you would imagine intestines to taste like. Lives up to its name. So gross. It was awesome.

We had zone conference this past week, it was awesome!! I walked away so full of the Spirit and ready to take on life! 

The day before zone conference my comp. and I had felt prompted to go tracting down this specific street we were driving by. We got out and knocked on several doors of people that were busy at the time but told us to come back. So, after zone conference we went back to that street to follow up with all of those people. Not one person was home or they didn't answer their door. We did see a guy we'd taught out on his front porch but Sis. Robison said she didn't feel like we needed to talk to him yet. We turned around and I saw a woman standing on her front porch with her two little girls. I asked if we should go talk to her. It had been raining most of the morning so walking up to her we started the conversation with how crazy the weather had been. She told us there was fixin' to be a tornado coming our way. We asked her about the two little girls and she ended up pouring her heart out to us for the next hour with her whole life story. Her name's Lori and she has gone through some really tough things these past couple of years. It was honestly another miracle because she really did just open up to us and tell us everything. After she finished her story we were all in tears and my comp. and I couldn't help but hug her. We hadn't even tell her who we were, our names, that we were missionaries, nothing. But I felt like I was talking to a best friend that I'd known for a long time. We're visiting her again tonight. 

After that it started raining again, really hard. Things were getting scary, and we had an emergency text from the Tupelo Elders telling all missionaries to get to their homes. The South has a lot of tornadoes. You know that it's tornado weather when it rains a lot but it's warm outside, when it looks like it should be freezing. The clouds start moving really fast and cold fronts hit and mix with the warm air and that creates a tornado. That's what the weather had been like all day, so Sis. Robison and I were stuck inside for the rest of the night praying that a tornado wouldn't hit. God is extremely mindful of His children and thankfully we did not receive any news of a tornado warning. 

I hope ya'll know that I have a firm testimony of this gospel. Our Heavenly Father's love for us is unconditional and there's no way we'll ever be able to comprehend it in this life. This is a time for trials and our faith is going to be tested. But, I know that if we are doing everything we can to keep hold to the iron rod and follow down the path our Savior's set up for us, there is no way we will ever fail. With Christ all things are made possible and I am so grateful for His love and the sacrifice He was willing to make for us. I know that this gospel is true. I have seen the hand of God in my life and felt His love in my darkest hours and hardest trials. Even when I fail Him, He still loves me. 

I love you all so much. Thank you for your prayers and the love you have always given me. God bless you all. 

love, Sister Michaela Nicole Mason