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Week 81 - Just One More Step

Kaselehlie Maing Ko!

Well, it's my last time emailing home as a missionary. I hope you're all really excited to see me in a few days, because I'm so excited to see all of you! My mission has been so long, short, hard, fun, terrible, and awesome. I'm definitely returning as a very very different person, but a lot of me is still the same. It'll be so neat to see, hear, feel and think about so many things that I remember, but have forgotten. A whole new culture has become a part of who I am, that many things from who I was have been long buried and untouched for a while. I'm excited to watch you all bring it all back out of me :)

If you've been reading my emails from being a missionary in the Micronesia Guam Mission, maybe you've noticed that life out here hasn't exactly been sunshine and daisies for the past year and a half. I've gone through some pretty difficult times and there have been many things I really haven't enjoyed. But I learned that the gospel gives us joy. People don't give us joy, missions don't give us joy, food doesn't give us joy, work doesn't even give us joy. But the gospel, the idea that our older brother Jesus Christ, paid the price for all our weaknesses and faults and mistakes, and that through him, we are reconciled from our wrong doings to something greater, is what gives us really good joy. Sometimes we access that gospel through people, missions, food (maybe?), and work. And THAT (the gospel) is the very thing that makes those things joyful :)

So, no. My mission wasn't very fun most of the time. It was actually really really hard and I didn't 'enjoy' as much as I would have liked to. Sometimes it really just wasn't fun. BUT, I did find GREAT joy in seeing the Saviors gentle hand in my life. I came to know Him better through the things I experienced and I really learned what it feels like to be healed by Him. What a great reason to serve a mission!! I did it!! I really really did it! And you know what, missions are so different for every person. So just because my mission wasn't fun, doesn't mean yours will be terrible. Just because I learned "x" on my mission, doesn't mean you will too.

But hey, I actually did have some really fun times as a missionary and I got to experience some pretty great things. I lived on an island for 18 months!!! I know a foreign language or two! And I know more about who Jesus Christ is! What a great thing!

Thank you all for you're love and support as I've been serving the Lord. I hope to see you soon!!! I'm 'dying' in the mission. (To 'Die' Is to go home) But hopefully I go out like Alma 62:37.

Love you!! See you soon!
Sister Felt

That was a little longer than I thought it was gonna be. Well, last the best of all I guess!

Saipan Sisters

Personal study at the beach on Saipan

Painting rocks with a little girl who got baptized the next day

Just a fun selfie in the palace of Sister Bagacina and Sister Hyatt

Saipan Zone

Week 80 - Deaf & Mute on Saipan

Eeeeeevvvvery week is a new stinkin' adventure in Micronesia. Hoooolly goodness.

A car on Palau. Haha!

Scary Chuukese lady if I ever saw one.
This is what I walked into in the Sisters apartment on Saipan. :)
I love Sister Petrus!!

After we emailed from Kosrae on Monday last week, I began to feel a little feverish. It escalated pretty rapidly and I was dead weight for the rest of the proselyting evening. Luckily though we just had a ward party that started late and ended late, so I just found a place to camp out at the chapel and slugged it out there for the rest of the night.

Here's birthday breakfast on the beach last Monday on
Kosrae for Sister Bundy. Fun stuff!

All the missionaries on Kosrae!! This is in the airport before we went to Guam for MLC.

The plane ride back to Guam on Tuesday froze me right cold, and that left me without hearing in one ear and I lost my voice. BUT I did share a cool book I found with the man seated next to me. The book was about the religious history of the native Americans and they even managed to record some of Christs literal words in the book. Pretty neat. :) The spirit testifies of truth and this man felt it as I shared the Book of Mormon with him.

Church with the Philipinas on Guam. :) Dededo Ward!
(btw this is where the Yigo temple will be)

A glimpse of the mission home. :)

We had MLC on Thursday and Guam Zone Conference on Saturday. Maybe you cant necessarily teach an old dog new tricks, but old timers need to be reminded of the basics just as much as new ones do. Of course there was lots of new things I learned, but it's neat to hear the things I heard at the beginning of my mission, but now with a deeper understanding of it all. And now I understand more of why my mission president shares it all with us.

Guam Missionaries at MLC. I guess I'm a Guam missionary now? :)

Me and my old new missionary, Sister Schow, both at MLC!!

Pics from MLC - January 2019

Guam Zone - Zone Conference January 2019

So ya, that was my day and my week and my life story. Had a good flight to Saipan this morning. Today was the first day I've been able to talk in a while. I went to the doctor on Friday and got antibiotics and all sorts of other good drugs for my ear infection/sinus infection/laryngitis. I also got a priesthood blessing from President Poston on Thursday and they let me pick when I wanted to fly to Saipan. I had the faith I'd be better by today, and I am! I'll fly back to Guam next Monday morning and email you from there. Love you all! I'm proud to represent God's church.

This is how I bore my departing testimony in the Guam zone conference. :)
I had all the sisters each read a scripture for me because I couldn't speak.

Love,
Sister Felt