I can only come up with so many titles in a year and a half May 15, 2017

The laundromat story continues.. we just gave away a Book of Mormon to a man waiting for his whites to dry. Didn't want to give us his phone number but I'm sure we will see him around someday.

The biggest news of this week is probably that RANDY IS GETTING BAPTIZED. So happy! It was a crazy story. We had a lesson in Bishop Thompson's home with him and his wife and Sister Thompson just straight up invited him to be baptized and he said yes!!! He is on date for June 11th! Sister Fugal and I were in disbelief and had no idea what was going on for half of that lesson but we just let it happen and let them go for it haha so that was awesome! 

An investigator Vicki who I love told us she wants to be baptized really bad because she wants the Holy Ghost but she doesn't want to be because she doesn't want to have to come to church for the rest of her life 😑 we got a little real with her and asked which was more important and she said if she died she would regret not being baptized but at the moment she doesn't regret it.. sometimes it is hard to rationalize with people. We will see what happens.

The main thing I wanted to say is how awesome the Sabbath is. Vicki was talking about how living is killing her. And how exhausting it is to be on the go go go all the time. And her whole thing with not being able to be baptized is that she can't/won't come to church and her whole problem in life is that she NEEDS to come to church. Elder Holland says it best so I'm not gonna say anymore but I love you all. Let us take full advantage of the blessings we have.

xoxo sister madsen

Beautifully busy May 8, 2017

Currently writing this update in a laundromat where this man is talking on his Bluetooth to somebody and he is losing his MIND screaming. It's probably the craziest laundromat I have ever been to. The change machine is weird and sporadically accepts money and last week when I went to pay there were a couple people who started laughing and said it wouldn't work and we tried anyways and used all of our money and the only one it accepted was my 20 dollar bill. But when the people heard the change flowing they started losing their minds and people were coming up and giving me money to give them money and it was hilarious and everyone was laughing. Life is wild

Sister Fugal and I were able to do a lot of things and it was awesome! We found two new investigators and got a couple of our old ones who were progressing to come to church!! For one of them named Kathy sister Fugal had a cool idea to draw out her path of conversion and kind of where we see all of this going. Because our past couple of lessons have been less than fruitful. So it was kind of do or die time where we literally drew it out and said this is what we are shooting for, is this what you want?  And she was like.. yes!!! It was a cool lesson that I have never seen so much immediate change come because of it. She called us the next day and said she read and that she wanted to come to church then we went to her house for another lesson on Saturday and she had cleaned her house!! Which is a big! Deal! She said she has just felt so much better since that lesson and she just feels like everything is so clear and she knows what she wants to do and understands how to do it. She knows it's time to change and it's really cool. It was probably the hardest thing in the world to get her church on Sunday, she had a lot of excuses in the morning, to the point where we showed up to her house in the morning with a bunch of our clothes so she had something to wear. She came to church. It was cool, I was getting mad and kind of over it when we showed up and church started in 15 minutes and she was in the shower but sister Fugal stuck it out and because we waited for her she came to church. It was awesome! She is a little older and for some reason the Peoria chapel is weird and it's hard for me, a youth, to hear. So afterwards Kathy said she was really mad that she couldn't hear because she really wanted to and said she was so mad that she didn't want to stay. A member drove her. We told her that the member was staying for all three hours and she said she would walk. We tried to get her to come to class but she wouldn't and so we said she could sit out in the hall on the couch until church was over but she wouldn't do that either. She literally walked home. Like!! Ok. But she texted us later and said she was sorry for being dramatic. So it's all good.

Another person we were finally able to see was Matt. Who was being taught in November when the Elders were in the area and he was super solid then the area got whitewashed and he sort of disappeared off the face of the earth. But he would randomly come to church. But we could not for the life of us make appts with him that stuck. In the spirit of giving people a vision for himself we decided that since we couldn't get an appt with him we would just have some real talk with him during sacrament and asked him if he wanted to be baptized and he said yes!!! We talked with him for a long time and he just testified of us about how he and his life has changed since he met the missionaries. Just in every aspect. It is so cool SO COOL. He is so solid.

Exciting things are happening down here in Peoria! Sister Fugal and I are staying busy and on Thursday we didn't even have time to eat lunch and on Friday we may have been spotted eating Chick-fil-A on the curbside a block from our next appointment (we can't eat in the car ;) but it's been fun! I've missed being able to spend time finding people but luckily we were able to squeeze time in to do it this week! 

Excited for this next transfer. 

ALSO having a vision and goals for yourself can change your life. A member shared a cool story that I don't have time to type but this missionary would just pray and ask "what do you want me to do now" and miracles HAPPEN.

love you 

Proverbs 29:18

🌪Sister Madsen🌪

 May 8 at 3:39 PM

The trio and Randy

I have come of age

Live tweet 

Do you ever just see breakfast food and cry??

And then there were two May 1, 2017

Well transfers have come and Sister Morales is leaving Sister Fugal

and I to fend or ourselves here in Peoria. Some exciting things have

been happening in the Ward that I think are really going to help us work

better with the members here.

A lot has happened this week with us, but not so much with our

investigators, progression wise. So we might have to give them a break

for awhile

A potential new investigator of ours named Steve Bible Bashed me over

the phone the other day and it was bad.  He said a lot of

not nice or appropriate things as well as all the other things we hear

all the time. But something must have been going on that day because I

was SO MAD hahaha. It's hard not to fight back when people are calling

you a brainwashed idiot who hasn't read a real bible. Ok.. I'm getting

annoyed just typing this. That part wasn't really a big deal.. but

just a lot of other stuff he said on top of that. It was just dumb.

Sometimes when we talk to people it's as if we are to blame for all of

the worlds problems and even problems within religion and things like

that.  But that happened and I just told him to call us when his heart

was ready to listen and he  said fine and hung up.

Other things that happened were that it was Sister Morales Birthday!!!

We made her some cookies. And she got two cakes from members and she

is LEAVING THEM HERE because of transfers. Sister Fugal and I are

going to need to start mixing up our morning workout routine haha.

ANOTHER THING THAT HAPPENED. I almost forgot. The elders had a baptism

this week and a lot of other missionaries came down for it. Including

the Freeport Elders. And Brother Mulnix the Ward mission leader drove

them!!! So I got to see him and it made my day. Someone said a joke

during the baptism and I heard this cackle that I KNEW was familiar

and I looked around and he was there!! It was so fun to see him again.

He cracks me up.

Randy is doing good. Praying on his own. No one knows what

specifically triggered it but it suddenly just clicked in his head.

Patience..

This is a bad and non uplifting email and I am sorry. I'm in the war

chapters in Alma and you know how that goes....

But there was something cool that I realized while reading about the

stripling warriors. In Alma 56:46 it talks about this big war that is

going on and how the stripling warriors had never fought before in

their lives. But they weren't afraid. For TWO reasons. #1 they knew

and had faith that God would deliver them. #2 they were more worried

about their fathers liberty than their own lives.

Basically what I am trying to say is that faith and charity overcome fear.

Very cool

Bye

Sister Madsen

The wifi struggle..
my mission plant is dying in case anyone wanted to know

"Let me tell you a story you little millennials" April 24th 2017

An 77 year old woman said this to us before she told us about how she tried to get married to get out of the army. And the only reason she was even in the army was because someone told her not to do it. 

Anyways.

This week my dear friend Dea got baptized!!!! She is from way back in Freeport times. I'm sure I've talked about her but she is another one of Judy's daughters and is about to graduate high school! I've been lucky enough to be able to stay in contact with her and a couple weeks ago after conference she emailed me and told me she was going to get baptized!!!! I kid you not I fell to the floor. The whole time I was there I hoped she was going to get baptized. She comes to church every week for with her family and has been through all of the lessons, she was just "window shopping" as her and her mom said haha. BUT a couple of days before I left Freeport, on Christmas, Judy told me that Dea had been talking a little bit about baptism and I was freaking out. I left a couple of days later but I KNEW that I would for sure be back in Freeport someday for her baptism. And then I get this email from her and I just lost my mind and started freaking out because I was so excited to be able to go see her and the kids and just be back in Freeport, the promised land. The land that I love.

So this week was a little emotional because I didn't get to go.

We had permission from the president to go, all we needed was to find a ride. And we did, we found a couple, but something came up one after another and all the people we had asked ended up not being able to take us and we just weren't able to find anyone.

Friday night came around and I just cried and cried. It was pretty embarrassing. But my companions are just the sweetest and helped me to feel better. I was just laying on my bed with my blankets over my face crying and my hand was sticking out and Sister a Fugal kept putting cookies in it. She cracks me up I love her. I'm not sure why Heavenly Father didn't think I should go to Freeport, I've been trying to think of some crazy miracle or person that we needed to meet that happened but nothing has really stuck out or been made known to me. Someday I'll find out.

Some other things that happened this week is our investigator Randy realized he has a testimony of prayer!! Hopefully. He has been investigating since November I believe and just has a hard time understanding the basics. Right now it's prayer. And it's pretty much everything about it. Why we pray, what to say, when to pray, who we are praying to, receiving answers, all of it. We teach him twice a week and every lesson we have taught him since I have been here has ended up being about prayer. To do the math that is 10 lessons about prayer OK.. you can only teach so many lessons about prayer. And we think he understands and then the next lesson we will go back and follow up and he will bring up the same concerns and then we try and figure out a new way to teach him about prayer. This is uncharitable but I was at my whits end this week and was probably going to lose it if we had to teach about prayer one more time. I can't remember how we got on to the topic but Randy said that when things get hard at work he says a prayer and asks God to help calm him down and it works.  Wait what..? I asked him how long he had been doing this and he said since the missionaries had taught him how. WHAT. We had no idea. And I guess he had no idea really either. After talking with him and answering a couple of questions he was able to realize that he in fact does have a testimony about prayer. So that was cool. 

Other things have happened this week, as they do every week. But this email is crazy long already. 

Love you all 

Bye

Sister Madsen 

Jesus is...April 17, 2017

Who is Jesus to you?

Happy Easter

Sister Madsen

Ok one more picture. Exchanges this week with The Sister Kelsey
Jardine from The Lone Peak High School. Can't beat tracting in the
rain!

Very big THANK YOU to Doria Whitley for sending pictures!! We love bonus pictures.

And we talk of Christ April 10, 2017

This week was very good! I had some ideas of what I wanted to tell you this week but I am having a hard time remembering so please bear with me if this email seems to be all over the place. I think mostly what I wanted to talk about is being an instrument in the hands of God. They talk a lot about it in the scriptures and how that is when the people feel the most joy. So this week I tried to make that the thing that I desired most and it has been awesome!! I realized that if that is my biggest desire and focus then it is a lot easier to do things that may be difficult to do. If I hesitate I ask my self "will this be something that can help Heavenly Father" and then it is a lot easier to do it! So that is cool. We have a lot of investigators that I'm not sure how to help. A lot of them are progressing very slowly. Very slowly. And one of them almost wanted to give up. And outside of lessons with her I haven't been very charitable towards her and thinking she has been really lazy. So when she told us she didn't want to meet with us anymore I should have been kind of relieved but I could feel the spirit pretty much saying "what would Jesus do?" And I knew he wouldn't give up on her. And I told her that as representatives of Jesus Christ we wouldn't give up on her either. It ended up being a really great lesson and she opened up to us a lot about how for the most part she doesn't really understand a lot of what we are talking about during lessons. Which is GREAT to know. We are going to go back at a different angle that will,

 hopefully help her. Anyways we have had a great and super busy week in the trio. We are talking 4-5 appts a day. Some fell through but we have still been busy. So Sunday was very nice. We didn't have any appointments and we were able to share the #princeofpeace video with so many people!!! It was so cool. Everyone has had really positive responses. One man even told us about when he was a missionary for his church and he said something I thought was interesting. When he went out he met all sorts of different people. But the majority of the time it didn't matter who he met, if he asked if they could pray for that person they generally said yes. And I just think that is so cool because that has been more of a focus lately, praying with people and I nick that is awesome!! He was really nice. We met another lady named Cathy and showed her the video and for whatever reason the spirit was just very strong in her home as we were showing it to her. And she teared up and thanked us a couple of times. And that the video had given her a lot of peace that she didn't know she needed. She was so happy that we came over. 

These past couple of weeks I feel like we have been running into a lot of people who aren't really satisfied with the church they are at. As well as some who weren't so satisfied when they were coming to our church. But the reasons lately all seem to be the same. And is is that too many people are talking to much about themselves or other people or things and not enough about Jesus Christ. Or what He said and did, or how we can have a better relationship with Him. It's too much of all this other stuff. I went in to church and have gone in to teaching appointments with a very different attitude since. Always making sure I tie everything back to the Savior. And how we can better have a personal relationship with Him. I have felt so much love for Him this past week as I have been seeking to be more connect with Him and doing and saying things that are about Him. Easter is on Sunday. 

Sister Madsen 

Also please excuse any confusion or typing errors that may be in this email. I burned my thumb about an hour ago while making some tortillas.

Sister Fugal and I had a mac & cheese cooking competition. Captured by sister Morales #trio

It got.. heated 

You can still be cool, and be tight with the Lord April 3, 2017

A man who we are teaching who is thinking about being baptized but

also thinking about being a preacher said this to us last week.

I'm trying to think of cool things that happened this week but I

didn't even have time to write in my journal at all so I can't

remember anything that happened. Write in your journal people

Conference was great!

Being in a trio is still fun so that's good. Teaching is a bit tricky

but we are getting there.

The first couple days of this week were a rollercoaster but in the end

I am just grateful to be a missionary, and to be able to serve for as

long as I get to. As it is getting close to the end I started freaking

out a bit but it has only motivated me to work harder and go more

crazy talking to everyone we see and being bold.

But I am grateful for my companions. It is obvious to see the

different strengths each of us have and how we help each other.

Yesterday we went to visit some people that missionaries had been

teaching a long time ago. They all had moved but as we were driving

away to go see another person and I pointed out this really fat beagle

and sister Fugal slammed on the breaks and pulled over and said we

should go talk to the person who owns the beagle and we did and her

name was Diana and she is a high school English teacher and she is

great. GREAT. She was telling us how her job is her mission field as

she helps these young people. It was just a really cool experience.

She accepted a Book of Mormon but seemed a little hesitant so I don't

know what will happen, but it's just cool to be a missionary. You get

to meet so many people and feel the spirit all the time and study the

scriptures for fun and WATCH PEOPLE BECOME DIFFERENT PEOPLE. It's

cool.

I don't remember what talk but I'm pretty sure this was a quote within

the talk someone said but it was my favorite part of general

conference. The context of it was Heavenly Father talking to each of

us and welcoming us into His fold.. or something along those lines.

Anyways the quote was "come as you are but don't plan to stay as you

are" and I love that. On my mission I have definitely DEFINITELY

experienced repentance. And I have a testimony that we can change and

that we are supposed to change. Heavenly Father isn't satisfied with

who we are even when we may be. He knows we can always be better and

that is why there will always be challenges and trials and chastening.

Because he loves us.

I can't look at all my notes right now but from memory I would say

that my favorite talk was probably Elder Renlund's. I loved how he

said we should treat others the way Christ would, and then actually

explained what that means.

I also loved the one by Elder Choi about looking up and not around you.

Have a good week!

Sister Madsen

There are some future Mormons living in our apartment building
And this is the only other picture I took this week. I will repent and
channel my inner sister Dimond next week and be better