Doubt not, but be Believing {11.24.14}

Family!

SO MUCH to be grateful for this Thanksgiving season. Wow. Let me share just one experience with you that has made my heart brim with gratitude.

Sister Huber and I have been teaching Greg since the first night we were together (a little before for her). He is one of the most sincere people I've ever taught and we both have grown to care about him very much. As we've taught him, he's struggled with accepting the Book of Mormon because he's been very devoted to the Bible all of his life, but he has sensed the goodness of the Gospel and has sincerely sought answers. 2 Saturdays ago Greg agreed to join us at a baptism! However, he called us a few hours before and informed us he wouldn't be at the baptism or at church the next day. He told us a lot had changed since the night before (when we had an awesome lesson) and he realized he just couldn't accept the Book of Mormon. We were heart broken. He is so sweet and felt so bad and told us that we could come over one last time to talk.

As you can imagine, we prayed our little hearts out to know what to share with him. It was put on both of our hearts to talk to Greg about fasting. Interesting.... The inspiration was pretty clear though, so we decided that is what we would do. Just before we went into Greg's appointment, I had the thought to bring my hymn book. When we got there I asked if we could start with a hymn, something we had never done with him before. I flipped through and stopped at Nearer My God to Thee. As we sang, Greg's eyes filled with tears. The Spirit was so strong. We proceeded to talk to him about fasting and acted like he had never said anything about not meeting anymore. He readily agreed to fast for an answer! He texted us the next day and told us he studied fasting and prayer on lds.organd felt prepared for his fast. We all fasted together the next day. The following evening we visited Greg and he shared his fasting experience with us and informed us that he received the clear answer that he needs to be baptized in December! He said that everything changed when we sang the hymn. That was one of the few times in his life he can remember feeling the Spirit so strongly and the hymn we chose happened to be one of his favorites from childhood. He concluded after the hymn that nothing that made him feel so good could be from the devil, so it must be from God. This led him to have an open heart during his fast. Wow. Greg went from dropping us on Saturday to telling us he wants to be baptized on Friday.
After sacrament on Sunday, he met with our Bishop. Our bishop is amazing and took him on a behind the scenes tour down into the font (we had no idea this was going to happen but were thrilled). As we talked with Bishop after church he told us that Greg is without a doubt converted and they had a wonderful meeting. He then proceeded to tell our entire ward council how sincere Greg is and that he will be a wonderful member of the congregation he would like them all to get to know. The ward was a buzz with this news because SO MANY of them have been involved in teaching him.

I am just so filled with gratitude and love for our Heavenly Father. He truly can change hearts and works mighty miracles according to our faith. In my Book of Mormon reading this morning I read this:
 19 And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.
 20 And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.
 21 Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth.
27 O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need. Doubt not, but be believing, and begin as in times of old, and come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him.

Miracles haven't ceased! DOUBT NOT, BUT BE BELIEVING.

I know that my Redeemer lives and that He works miracles in my life each and every day. For that, my heart is filled with Thanksgiving!

I am so grateful for a loving family who not only support me and my testimony, but strengthen my by your own. I love you more than you know!

Can't wait to hear about what you're grateful for this Thanksgiving! :)
xoxox
Sister Rolfe

Pictures:

Our dishwasher exploded!

We got stuck in the mud by a scary forest and members had to come dig us out!

My camera died and I lost the charger so these are the only pictures for the week :(

Faith Like the Ancients and a Winter Wonderland {11.17.14}

Good morning from SNOWY Ohio!

We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland! Let the snowy adventures begin :)

This week was another revelation-filled one! I have so many stories for you, but I really want to tell you about Thursday because we spent the day with a General Authority! Wilford Andersen did a mission tour with us this week and it was amazing. Here are a few things that stood out to me.... 

I have learned on my mission that if you go to any meeting with a question it will become a revelatory experience. So, one of my questions for this meeting was, "How can I better understand and apply the atonement in my life?" I received an answer in one simple sentence that changed my life, "If you have felt the Spirit today, that is evidence the atonement is working in your life."

Wow! How powerful is that??

- You can't teach POWERFULLY what you don't believe PASSIONATELY

- Those who repent daily are those who have the most power daily

- Conversion is the result of accepting Christ's attributes into my character (I would encourage all of you to study gifts of the Spirit this week!)

- It's not enough to understand the Doctrine of Christ, we must LIVE it and FEEL it changing our own lives

- In what patterns am I showing strong faith and a firm mind? (We must pattern our lives after Christ's.. We become like Christ by doing the things He did)

- Every missionary is sent to a MISSION PRESIDENT, not a mission. **I STRONGLY agree with this!!

- We kindle faith by sharing ours! Your testimony with be built the fastest by using it to build other's. 

- When the Spirit leaves, so does desire. We must have DAILY spiritual experiences. Where are your desires? The judgement will be about desires. This life is about learning to desire what is right. Do you desire to go to the temple? Do you desire to keep the sabbath day holy? Do you desire to do your visiting and home teaching? Do you desire to read your scriptures every day? Desire comes through the Spirit!

- Don't be concerned about imperfection, be grateful for the atonement!

- The sacrament is the great ordinance of enduring to the end. We must be reborn each time we take the sacrament (d&c 50:24) Don't take the sacrament robotically.. come to sacrament with faith and repentance in your heart.

- Faith requires work! Live, pray, and work for the Spirit!

I hope you could feel even a small portion of the Spirit as you read through these scattered notes of an inspired general authority of the Lord! :)

As I'm sure you can tell, he talked a lot about faith. We have to actively work for it and seek to increase it.. it isn't something we just have. I encourage each of you to take a minute to think about faith building patterns in your life and patterns you can change to increase your faith. Obviously, being a missionary, my life is centered on these patterns right now, but a few that I have incorporated by choice are.... reading conference talks while I work out, listening to talks by general authorities while I get ready, reading the Book of Mormon during lunch and before bed, writing in my journal every night, and acting on generous promptings throughout the day. Try one out! The more you incorporate the Spirit into your day, the better it will go. I PROMISE.

Okay, time for a story! So, last week our bishop's wife called us and told us someone had called her asking for materials about the church. She asked that they would just be sent in the mail. So, we put together a package and sent it off. Over the course of the next week we received FOUR media referrals for her so we decided we better just go visit! She was SO excited to see us! We taught her the restoration and the next day she came to a baptism with us in Eastgate and LOVE IT. In the car, she asked the member who was with us how she could teach her son (who is 1) about the Book of Mormon. Then she told us she bought the book, "Mormonism for Dummies." Who is this girl?! We are seeing her again tonight! Keep her in your prayers!! :) 

I love you all so very much!!

xoxoxox

Sister Rolfe

Pictures:

Skittle bowling with our district!

My wonderful mission parents!

Surprise, I was transferred to China! Just kidding, our exchange student investigator had a cultural night.

SNOW!

Cousin Time!

Sister Rolfe and her cousin Sister Ryan who is in her same mission. 

GRACE {11.10.14}

This week was all about GRACE. If you haven't had a chance to read the definition of grace in the Bible dictionary recently, I would encourage you to take a quick look at it.
A couple things that stand out to me about grace are that it comes into play when we are doing ALL we can and that it is an enabling power.

Now with that in mind let me tell you about a few experiences this week in mighty Milford.

First of all, the work is without a doubt hastening! Whew. I feel like I'm living in fast forward sometimes. Throughout my mission I've felt the urgency of the work, but since I've been here I feel like it's been taken up 5 notches. It's exciting! :)

Thursday-- had to get an oil change and felt impressed to spend our waiting time calling members to come teaching with us Saturday and getting our day planned out. We even planned a split... something I've only done a handful of times on my mission!

Friday-- Great day, lots of miracles, lost our phone. Searched high and low, prayed, did it all, but no such luck.

Saturday-- phoneless and it's our super jam packed day of member involvement. We left the house at 10:30 and didn't get home until 9 that night and all of the hours in between were what can only be called GRACE. From 12-4 we had back to back member present lessons AND our split! Woo! We were able to teach 5 member present lessons in less than four hours... with no way to get a hold of our investigators or members! Luckily, Heavenly Father already had worked everything out for us and because we had set everything up Thursday it all worked out-- thanks to the help of our wonderful members!! (who probably think we're crazy now). We were literally running from one appointment to the next, having our members call each other in between to tell the next one that we were on our way :) We had a spare 5 minutes at some point in the day and ran into Kroger to use the restroom and... there was Christmas music playing!! Our first listening of the season and it just happened to be Run, Run Rudolph... very fitting :) Heavenly Father definitely has a sense of humor! Anyway, this was probably the most exciting/stressful/exhausting/successful day of my mission.

Sunday-- Realized that somewhere amidst all of the craziness Saturday we misplaced our area book and ward roster. That is NOT good. Oh and we're still without a phone. So now we had no way to call or contact anyone and no addresses to put in our GPS. I'm telling you, Satan is tricky and will go to great lengths to stop us, BUT God is always more powerful and we ended up having another very successful, grace filled day. Nothing is going to stop the work from progressing in the Mighty Milford ward!! :)

Rewinding one more time to Thursday.. we had a zone conference in Eastgate (!!!) and talked all about living outside our comfort zones. We talked about the difference between making sacrifices and living a consecrated life. Here's the thing, you can make a sacrifice without consecrating yourself to God but you can't consecrate your life without making sacrificing. It's like living the higher law in a way. Anyway, it just really changed my perspective and helped me realize some changes I can make to be a better servant of the Lord. I would encourage each of you to consider studying it this week. Here's a great talk to get you started :)
https://www.lds.org/church/news/bishop-causse-help-missionaries-elevate-personal-consecration?lang=eng

I love each and every one of you so very, very much. I know you will witness grace in your lives each day as you consecrate yourselves to our Father in Heaven.
xoxoxox
Sister Rolfe

Journeyed through the hills and a cemetary and felt like we were traveling to Narnia to meet a new family to teach and find Ol Ray, the creator of Ol Ryas bbq sauce :)

All of the missionaries serving in the Cincy East stake!

Bro. Blackham met us after the conference to give us priesthood blessings. So grateful for him!

Ran into my good friend morgan rupp at church yesterday and got to hear her AMAZING farewell talk!

All You Need is a Little Faith {11.3.14}

Good morning from.......

OHIO!!!
That's right, I'm back in the promised land of Ohio! Even in the Cincinnati East stake-- the stake Eastgate is in! My area actually connects the edge of Eastgate.... Sister Fox and I accidentally ate in my new area once :) So that's just crazy! I'm so grateful, though, to finish my mission where I started it. There is just nowhere quite like Cincy East :) Oh, my new ward is Milford by the way! It's a pretty small ward, but the members are amazing. The first night I was here was the Halloween party so I was able to meet a lot of the members, but now I know them as "the basketball player" or "the polar bear." :) 

My companion is the wonderful Sister Huber from Amarillo Texas. She just finished her training and has been on her mission for 3 months! So, this is her first area and I am her second companion :) She is an AMAZING cello player and an even more amazing missionary. Seriously, she has so much faith and I am so grateful that she is my companion! We have already seen SO MANY miracles here in Milford and are planning on seeing many, many more. Get excited for Milford Miracles to come! 

Now, let me back track a bit to transfer meeting. Being doubled out was a HUGE SHOCK. When we got to the transfer meeting we quickly found out that basically everything and everyone in the mission was being switched up. It was the biggest transfer meeting I've been to! Many areas were doubled out and a lot of them were closed. It was crazy! 

It's been amazing to see in just a week how obvious it is that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I've already come to see that being in Milford was definitely an answer to many prayers. One of the first days I was here, I read this talk and it changed my life. Check it out!
http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=131

My faith is increasing every day! Let me share a couple miracles with you...

        One day we ended up getting home for lunch a lot later than planned. While there, there was a knock at the door-- which basically never happens as a missionary. Sister Huber answered and it was a chinese delivery guy. He asked if we were 1204, but our number 1202 is written pretty large and clear on our door. As he walked off, Sis Huber noticed he had taken one of the Mormon.org cards off our door. She told me and we ran after him out into the hall. He turned around and I realized I had no idea what we were planning on saying. So, I said something really smooth like, "So, you're delivering chinese food?" Yes, 16 months into it and I'm still an awkward missionary! It's fine. 

He responded and I don't even know what happened next, except that Heavenly Father stepped in and gave us the RIGHT words to say and he ended up becoming a new investigator! Woo! How often can missionaries say their new investigators knocked on THEIR door? :)

     President Porter issued us a promise at transfer meeting that if we would go through our area books, we would find someone who was prepared to be baptized by the end of this week. So, we have been going through our area book like crazy and seeing SO MANY miracles. One happened just yesterday after church. We didn't know where to go so we prayed about it and both had the same name come to our mind. We went and no one was home, but we knew God brought us to that area for a reason so we decided to walk down their street. We ended up meeting two new investigators-- both who have families! God is so good. I could literally go on and on about the daily and hourly tender mercies. Sister Huber is pretty new to the area and pretty new to her mission and I am obviously brand new to the area so we have just been completely relying on Heavenly Father and He is making things happen left and right.
And that, my friends, is my testimony for the week. RELY ON HIM. Don't doubt Him!! He really does know the bigger picture. Act on the smallest prompting. If you're like me, you probably won't even know if it's a prompting, but if it's good or just not bad, then go for it! The more you do, the more often they will come and the stronger they will become. I know that miracles occur when we exercise a little faith and move forward, even if we don't know what the outcome will be (1 nephi 4:6). God's power is limitless! 

I also want you all to know that I have a testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It's REAL. And it's not just for our sins and mistakes. It's for our weaknesses, short comings, pain, sickness, and just downright hard days. The beginning of this week was a bit of a rough one with so much change amidst other personal trials, but I made a choice to have Faith in Jesus Christ. As I turned to Him not doubting, but trusting, He turned me heartache into joy. I know that He knows and loves us perfectly.  

I love you all more than than you know!
xoxoxox
Sister Rolfe 

      

  

Pictures:

Saying goodbye in Hebron :(

You think I would have seen this while I was in Kentucky ;)

Halloween! Our wonderful members brought us dinner and treats because we had to stay in for the night!