Dearest Family and Friends,
As you can tell from the subject, this is going to be a very exciting letter!! I hope that this letter finds all of you well and happy!! I pray for you daily and I love you all so much!!
Fun things:
*We go to the Nats game this Friday!!! Our mission and another mission are going to the game, so it is going to be so exciting! We are all wearing our proselyting clothes so that will also be great! If they show the game on TV look for me in the stands!
*As of this week, I will have been in Arlington for 2 months!! Time has flown by so much! A mission time is so different. The days are very long, but the weeks fly by! I love this area so much. The people are my favorite part about the mission! We meet people from everywhere here, and hand out copies of the Book of Mormon in so many different languages! We also get to practice our Spanish a lot here which is so much fun! This is the greatest thing I have ever done in my life. It is also the hardest thing, but I just continue to be happy.
*The 40 Day fast is also concluding this week. I am so grateful for this opportunity I had, and I want to continue this pattern of living. I love my Heavenly Father so much and my Savior Jesus Christ. I am so excited for the glorious homecoming that I will have with them one day and that we will have as a family. The mission has shown me how blessed I have been my life, and you all are truly one of my greatest blessings!
Now here are the last seven days of my life:
Monday - That evening we did a lot of street contacting! We went over to a park where a lot of Hispanic people play soccer, so we got to use a lot of Spanish. It was so much fun! We even had a lesson with a man named Lewis!
Tuesday - Another quote from my journal: "Today was an over the top fantastic day." I loved this day! It was one of those days where I didn't want to stop working for anything. We went street contacting by the Pentagon City Mall and met a really nice girl named Crystal. We also met a nice man who only spoke Spanish, and we taught him (well he read the passages) the Book of Mormon lesson. He was amazing! We then met a boy from China and we gave him a Chinese Book of Mormon and had a short lesson with him. After dinner, we went street contacting again and immediately met a man from Ethiopia named Charlie. We had a lesson with him outside of our church and gave him an Amharic Book of Mormon! That evening, we saw an investigator in the parking lot, Jacob, and talked to him for a bit. This was truly an answer to prayers!! It was just a phenomenal day!
Wednesday - A very odd day! We went street contacting down one of the main streets around12:00pm and met a lot of very interesting people. We met one man named Frank and he seemed very nice at first. We told him that we testified of Jesus Christ and then he got very intense and said, "Jesus Christ is coming back with a vengeance." We continued on and then he kept going on about how Jesus Christ is very very angry and how we need to all pray very hard so that we can be saved. He then said, "Let's pray now," and then he started saying the Lord's Prayer. After he finished that, he stood up really quickly and suddenly hugged Sister O! He then came to hug me and I kind of resisted nicely and said that I couldn't hug him, or something like that. The experience reminded me of Ashley's experience with meeting the lady in the park who warned her about the volcano erupting in Yellowstone. Later that day we went street contacting and parked in a parking garage, that cost $6 for one hour of parking! We definitely learned our lesson to not park there again, but I guess it was fun to have a metropolitan experience like that, because only in D.C. would you find $6 parking!
Thursday- I thought that one of our investigators was dropping us that day, and I got really really sad. It honestly felt the way that it feels when a boy breaks up with you, and I ached for her so much. You just grow to love them far more than you realize, and I yearn for her to have all the blessing that Heavenly Father has in store for her. The investigator was Keren, our Jewish Investigator, and she had been progressing so much! On Friday night we found out that Rosh Hashanah lasted for 3 days, and we thought it was only on Wednesday. We thought she wasn't responding to us because she was upset or didn't want to meet with us, so we were so glad to find out that she was celebrating the Jewish Holy Days. She has Yom Kippur this Friday andSaturday, and she said that she would then start studying with us after that again!
When I was feeling sad for her, and feeling like I had failed her, I thought about Jacob 5, where the Lord says, "What more could I have done for my vineyard?" I know that the Lord weeps with us when we weep, and aches when we ache. I know without a doubt that He lives, for I have felt Him take away my burdens. I am so grateful that I am getting this opportunity to come to know Him so much more.
Despite being sad, we actually had great day today, full of a lot of member visits. We also met a lot of great people street contacting including Leo, Leonard and Vania (a woman from Italy)! We made return appointments with two of them!!
Friday - Weekly Planning--very long. I struggled with the length of weekly planning a lot on Friday, and started to get very antsy. My companion then said, "Didn't you plan all the time when you were home?" This reminded me of what you said before I came on my mission Dad, when I was getting really antsy during one of our Sunday night planning sessions. You asked what I was going to do when I had to plan with a companion. I need to be better at being patient during these long planning sessions, and I should've been better trained with all the Sunday planning we did as a family!
After weekly planning we went street contacting, and we met a man named Adam, whom had a lesson with and a man from Nepal named Bipin, who we also had a lesson with. He was so nice and just such a cute little man!
Saturday - Lots more street contacting!! We met a man from Morocco named Abe and gave him a French Book of Mormon. We then saw sweet Alma Jones, did more street contacting and then saw Jacob again in the parking lot!!
Sunday - A top notch day! Church was so great, and I feel like I am really getting to know the members here. They are really great to us, and really willing to help and go out and work with us. We also got a new ward mission leader, which was exciting. He seems like he will be really great and involved in the work!
After church we had a lesson with Sandra and Ignacio and their children. We taught the Plan of Salvation using visual aides, to make it more fun for their two kids. Sandra read the Book of Mormon and said it was amazing!! That's one of the sweetest things to hear as a missionary!! We then had dinner with the stake patriarch, and they were a really nice family. They were difficult to read, and couldn't really understand why my companion was vegetarian and the conversation seemed to focus on that a lot. They were very kind though and sweet to feed us! We then went street contacting and guess who we ran into...Keren and Bobby!!! (Our Jewish investigator and her husband!) It was such a tender mercy!! We were talking to someone, when we turned around and they were standing there, waiting to talk to us! We walked with them back to their apartment, and visited with them for a little there! It was amazing how the Lord just put them in our path, and it was such a blessing! Keren talked a lot more about the Jewish Holy Days and about her faith, and it was so fascinating to hear! They are both amazing people, who I want so much for you to all meet one day!!!
I hope that you all have a great day and week! I truly do love you, and I will continue to work to give the Lord my all, for Him and for you!! I love my Heavenly Father and I know that He is there. I will continue to pray for you and pray for your strength in all that you're going through! I am going to leave you with what Mom left me with: "Trust in the Lord."
Love you all!!
Sister Chelsea Marie Akin
P.S. - I am always up for vegetarian and gluten free recipes (my companion is both), i.e. bean enchiladas, black bean burgers, taco soup, anything! I am also always up for new workouts (they can include dumbbells!) Thank you!
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