April 1, 2013

To answer your questions in order, our mission has certain days set aside to go to the temple together. It's not very often, but the temples we go to are smaller so they dont rent out clothes and I don't want to have to borrow temple clothes from members. The Monticello, Utah temple is in an area in our mission, but that is pretty far away from us here in Flagstaff and neighboring zones, so our President allows for us to temporarily leave the mission slightly so that we can go to the Snowflake, Arizona temple which is really close and just barely outside of our mission. I think that is the one I will likely go to in the near future. We are moving along in the 12-Week program really fast. We're supposed to be in week 4, and we could be in probably week 8 by now, but we just used the time as added companionship study and pull it out on occasion. Most of the stuff it asks for me to start doing I've been doing since my first couple of days. I know it's inspired, and it is helpful, but sometimes I feel like it wasn't made for me. But I do take it seriously and I appreciate the added help that it gives me. Every Tuesday we spend a few hours helping at the Food Bank. Usually we box stuff up, but last week, Sister Harrah and I were on the front desk computers making accounts for people and learning the system so that they can keep track of people coming in and keep track of their inventory. It was pretty fun! We were working a lot faster than the people who normally sit at the computers so we made it so they ran out of stuff for us to do. They are playing conference, all sessions, at the institute building, so we will be watching it with the wards. I don't know what the other missionaries will be doing, maybe watching it at their ward buildings. Hopefully we can get one or two of our new investigators to come, but one of our investigators accepted an invitation to be baptized on the 13th! So he should be there with us too! I don't know what else we're going to do those days. I won't know until we plan for it the day before. We might have some lessons, some visits, and maybe even some tracting. I like that you send me spiritual thoughts with ever letter. It makes me want to share one with you! I was going to write this in a letter to Kelly, but I guess I will send it to you. Just tell her this is for her! At the MTC, one day, I was inspired to write these words and forgot about it until I was reading through my thoughts journal. I couldn't believe this came from my own mind! But anyway, this is what I thought of and I don't know what we were doing or learning about, but I had this thought on March 2nd: "When we lived in the Spirit World, we lived with God. Now we have physical bodies and are physically separated from Him. In order to know Him and to feel of His presence is to access our spiritual half." I guess I've been thinking a lot about our latent traits from God. I know that there are things we need to develop in this life to be more Christlike, but I wonder how many of those traits were ours in the pre-existence. It really changes my perspective on what my potential actually is. I don't know, that might be blaspheme, I just thought it was interesting. I want to say something crazy for April Fool's Day, but then you wouldn't know if I were serious for a week and that wouldn't be very nice of me. So, Happy April Fool's Day! If that's something to celebrate.... Love you! -Sister Tolley Oh! P.S. I wanted to share with Vic: Victoria! I was reading the Book of Mormon during my personal scripture study, and I read this verse that I thought you might think was as funny as I do. 2Nephi18:19 says, "And when they shall say unto you: Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto WIZARDS THAT PEEP AND MUTTER--sould not a people seek unto their God for the living to hear from the dead?" I don't know why but when I read the peep and mutter part I thought you might think that was funny :)