Hello member missionaries!

I AM THE MOST BLESSED MISSIONARY IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD!!!! DO YOU KNOW WHY?!?!  I get to LIVE the 2 best mission movies ever, “The RM and “The Best 2 Years.”  I got to open a new area called Pella, Iowa!!! It’s about 1 hour Southwest from Des Moines.  This town’s theme is “A Touch of Holland.”  This week is “Tulip Time” and there will be thousands of tulips everywhere with a TON of visitors!!  Can’t wait to street contact!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 (So that’s why it’s like The Best 2 Years for the Holland tulip area).  And It’s like I’m living the “RM” because I’m sleeping on food storage!!! haha I’ll have to show you pictures…Isn’t that AWESOME?!!!  We moved in with a member who is ON FIRE with missionary work! Seriously.  She has taken us to just about everyone she knows so we can meet and teach them.  😀

My new companion is so adorable!  Her name is Sis. Cannon and I get to train her, but she’s so prepared that she’s training me!!! We both have a ton in common: Our first names are Stephanie, Same height, same hair length, excitable personalities, plays clarinet, she loves nature, 25 mins from Salt Lake (Bountiful and So. Jordan), and we both LOVE Thomas O’ Mally from Aristocats.  We’ve already made up quite a few missionary songs too!!  😀  So we are seriously happy that we get to work together!!! 🙂 🙂

The first night she got here, we didn’t realize the lights of our car weren’t on….and we got pulled over!! hahah!  Can you imagine how nervous my companion must’ve been??!   The police officer pulled up and said, “What are you two up to tonight?” And Sis. Cannon says, “We’re just Proselyting”  And the officers eyes got really big and said, “Prosa WHAT?!” and I was like, “WE’RE MISSIONARIES!!!” And he said, “Oooooh okay.  Well just making sure you two were safe!”  Oh wow!  We were laughing so hard the whole way home, and still! 🙂

We really had to trust in the Lord’s timing this week.  We hadn’t even un-packed our suitcases until after church yesterday because we had some Young Women from the Des Moines Stake come and shadow us for the whole weekend. 🙂 They were set apart to be mini-missionaries for the weekend. We were blind leading the blind….literally!  My new companion had never knocked doors before, and she took someone out to knock doors for about 2 hours!  We had some neat successes and we’re positive that the area will start to pick up soon. 🙂

The branch here is TINY!  There’s probably only about 50 strong members…and probablly only 10 houses are in our area of the mission.  But church was so good.  I’m so glad that I feel that my work is needed here.  We will most definitely need a lot of prayers. 🙂  I miss my old area, but the excitement of the new area is really helping! 🙂  I just love being able to work wherever is needed. 🙂 

I learned a really important lesson this week!  In Preach My Gospel under the faith category in Christlike Attributes it says when you have faith, you are confident that God loves you.  I have a testimony that God WANTS you to KNOW that you Love Him.  Don’t be bashful about it!  Don’t try and feel like you don’t deserve His love because you aren’t perfect.  How do you think your best friend would feel if you just gave him/her your most prized possesions and you said, “hm…I still don’t think you love me?”  We can show our gratittude to our Heavenly Father by acknowledging his love. 🙂  I am so thankful that He loves each and everyone of you reading this post, and I know that He loves me as well! 🙂  He’s spoiling me, in fact….

I’m going to need to get a bigger cup, because my cup is running over… 😉

Love you all so much! Thank you for your fervant prayers!! 🙂

Sister Tobias 🙂 🙂 🙂