Coming Unto Christ in Arkansas: Neil A. Anderson came to visit.

I got letters from the Christensens today and Adele! And Hermana Macfarlane got a letter too. Today was record breaking! LOL Lorna wrote notes on balloons for me to blow up and read, which was fun. One said: "Wherefore be not weary in well-doing for ye are the foundation of a great work, and out of small things proceedeth that which is great" on one side. The other side says: "Hermana Keller, remember EVERY effort no matter how small, no matter if we think it's successful or not, is noticed by our Father and will bless us and those we serve. Keep at it! <3 U!" The second balloon says: "Hermana Keller! Ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray? PRAY PRAY PRAY. And then the third balloon has a face drawn on it. It was fun to get and really nice to open. Lorna's things in the mail have been really good: enough to make me happy, but not too much so that I'm trunky. I thought when I left that I would just not talk to anyone except for Mom for a year and a half, so it's been nice to realize that people miss me! ha ha

This area is doing good, we're trying to work better with the members this transfer and I think it's really beneficial. Yesterday, Hermana Macfarlane and I felt like we should go to the temple prep class for Sunday School, and that was really good. There are actually quite a few Hermanas in the branch preparing to go to the temple soon and I am wanting to start working with one in particular to help her be ready... and help her family to be ready to get sealed as soon as she goes to the temple.

Hermana Macfarlane is working so hard to finish her mission strong. I hope that one day I can be more like her. She asked me to trim her hair... scary!!!

Because Hermana Macfarlane is a Sister Training Leader (STL), I frequently go on splits with Hermana Thornton, so I just call her my other companion. LOL! My companions and I set some good goals together during weekly planning so that we can be better companions to our companions and be better missionaries too. Yep, it's confusing to know who is with who for me too! LOL!

Hermanas MacFarlane, Brown, Keller, Thornton

Our companionship goals are:

1) Write down a positive thing that our companions do every day. President Wakolo said to notice all the details, so we are going to write down something we like that our companions do every day that we want to start doing/continue doing/be more like them in that way.

2) Question everything they do. Not in the bad way, but in the way that we want to understand why they do things that they do. So that we can be better and learn form their experiences too.

3) Make sure we share our experiences and knowledge to make sure we are equal parts of our companionships.

4) Follow President Wakolo's counsel to have high love with high expectations. We decided that maybe we are using the unusual situation or our quadpanionship as an excuse to be a little more casual when we are not with our real companions. That maybe we have been having a high love, medium expectations for each other. So we want to improve on that.

5) Pray for charity and understanding of our companions every morning and every night. we want to make sure we are helping them feel okay with going home and making that change, so we want to pray for them, and pray to know how we can help them.

6) Start being happier about the weird situation with our companions. I think we've not had the best attitude about the interesting situation and I feel badly that we've been not the best about it. But we are going to be a lot better at that.

I am so excited for these goals. I think this was the best comp inventory that we have ever had.

While I was in Batesville this week (on splits again), we decided to go up to the college and try to find some youth investigators up there. TBH... It was so scary to talk to white people. White people are so much meaner. At least Hispanics pretend to be interested! We were walking around and were not having any success, so we started to walk home.

Not finding people to teach...

But then we decided that we felt like we hadn't gotten anything from spending our time up at the college so we decided to turn around and try for a little longer. So we walked back up the hill and saw three people standing kind of behind a tree. We were like, okay, this is them! Turns out they are band kids so I was cool with them. :) They were nice and kind of nerdy, which was great. One of them seemed fairly interested in letting "us" (cause I was on splits so it won't really be me) come back. Her mom is even a less active member! I am so glad we decided to turn around and try a little bit longer because I really think we found who we needed to find. She said she has friends that live in Utah and that they have gone on missions. I think her missionary friends would be happy that we found her and got her info. I think I would like it if the missionaries in California found Michael, Katie and Alexa, and all of my other friends.

Band geeks are everywhere!

...finding people to teach!

The Relief Society sisters met Zobe this week and they wanted to throw her a baby shower because all her family is in Mexico. But I think she's due at the end of this week so they wanted to do it tonight. She wasn't feeling to well though, so she couldn't come and they just made it a branch FHE instead. I am so impressed at how they were wanting to do that for one non-member neighbor. I really appreciate the branch Relief Society a lot. They're awesome!

President Wakolo announced last week during zone conferences that we are now authorized to use Skype and Facetime! The Spanish Zone had a Skype conference call and it was really cool to see everyone. (Well, about half of everyone). Some people's video wasn't working.

Elder Neil A. Anderson came this week and spoke to the whole mission!!!!! That pretty much never happens because the mission is kinda split into the Little Rock side and the Memphis side. It was so great to have the entire mission together!!!

This was quite a big deal. Elder Anderson was concerned about how much time it would take to gather everyone together and get a decent picture. President Wakolo assured him that we could do it. We had strict instructions to get in our places and be picture-ready from the minute we arrived until the picture was taken. NO GOOFING AROUND! All the missionaries gathered for the picture, then the mission leadership, then President and Sister Wakolo walked in with Elder and Sister Anderson. It was super cool to have everyone there together!
Can you find me???

This is where I'm standing. Now go back to the big picture and you'll find me! :)

I was pretty nervous for Elder Anderson to come because I thought I would feel super guilty and like I'm doing a crappy job as a missionary, but I actually felt pretty good. My main take-away from him was that we need to be more patient with ourselves. Something he said was along the lines of: I've lived 2 more of your lifetimes and I'm still not perfect. I liked the emphasis on the fact that we have some much potential. I have so much potential to be a better person, have more gospel knowledge, etc. and I can't expect to get to my full potential all right now. I'm only 20 years old, but I do need to make sure that I'm trying as hard as I can to be the best I can be right now. It was so good!

He said is that we need to be studying the life of Christ (because we're in the South especially) and we can do that by reading the New Testament. That stuck out to me because at the beginning of my 2nd transfer when I wasn't sleeping well, I got a blessing from Elder Clark. He said that I would start to sleep better if I studied the life of Christ. So I decided to start reading the New Testament every day to do that. So cool to hear that said to me again!

This week, I studied the Atonement. I really like in 2 Nephi 9:26 when it says, "and they are restored to that God who gave them breath", because of the word restored. I think a lot of the time when I think about the Atonement, I just feel a little bad about how imperfect I am and how far I need to go before I can be like our Heavenly Father. But I like the word restored because it implies our potential. It reminds me that our Heavenly Father doesn't see the imperfectness in me he sees my potential and all that I can become. And I really like that!

Love you all!
Hermana Keller

P.S. Since we'd never met a couple of the other Hermanas before the big Mission Conference with Elder Anderson, Hermana Thornton and I decided to text the them to let them know how excited we were to meet them. You know... #hermanasrock...

As soon as we hit send, we realized that we weren't positive if the number we had used was for the Elders or the Hermanas...