Jenessa - Week 23- Me "23" WHOA!!

Hello Everybody-

Oh my goodness. Life is just absolutely incredible and miracles are
happening all over the place! I don't know what I have done to deserve
such incredible blessings from The Lord, but I am incredibly grateful
for His goodness and love that I feel every single day!

I turned 23 this week! How crazy is that! An elder posted on my
facebook wall "And Sister Heckel began to wax old"....made me laugh
HAHA! I love being on a mission. I didn't get anything for my
birthday, but honestly.....I just love what I am doing here and I
couldn't ask to be in a better place on my birthday. It has been a
wonderful and very fulfilling week!

In church yesterday one of the speakers shared a quote from a
billboard he read while he was driving around town the other day and
it said "Humility is an illusive thing, once you think you have it,
it's gone!" Isn't that so true! Lol :)

Missions are such a funny thing. I honestly have net some of the
nicest people, who are so incredibly crazy, but I love he with all of
my heart. We go I to places as a missionary that I would never walk I
to as a "normal person" and we find amazing people who are just
craving the Gospel!

This weeks letter will be a little shorter then last week, cause I
have some things i need to get done today, but I hope you enjoyed last
weeks letter and all the pictures that i sent :-)

I had a miracle happen to me while I was on Facebook this week! Oh my
goodness! It is just so amazing. I have been praying that something
would work out on Facebook and I would be able to teach someone, and
then out of the blue earlier this week this lady messaged me and said
that she liked the things that I posted on my Facebook and wanted to
become friends. I friended her and we started getting into a gospel
discussion, she lived in Utah for a while and has many questions that
she wants answered. I have been able to teach her the first lesson and
invite her to read from the Book of Mormon (even though she has a
little bit before) and pray about it. We will be talking about the
Plan of Salvation this week. She is so sweet and I am loving teaching
her online. The Lord has truly prepared a way to get the message of
the Gospel to everyone all over the world....who would of thought that
i would serve in Jacksonville, FL and be teaching someone who is in
Lubbock, Texas?? How cool!!

I have also been able to pick up another gator online this week, her
name is Tresonda. I met her once in Normandy and she is such a
spiritual giant, it's incredible, she just needs to be lead in the
right direction, to the truth. I was able to spear my testimony of the
Book of Mormon and invited her to read and pray. She ended up not
answering really quickly and I was worried, but after about five
minutes she came on and said she was sorry, she had been sharing our
conversation with her husband and they said they would both watch the
Mormon message I had sent them and that they would pray about it. She
doesn't currently have a Book of Mormon, but we are working on that!
Yay! :)

There was also this gentleman who messaged, who is not currently my
friend on facebook yet, that just had questions about how you would
help a way ward member come back into activity after having walked
away because he felt let down by God after fasting for 3 days for the
health of a certain woman in his life and then she died a week later.
It was such a sad thing that he wrote me, but I feel so blessed to be
able to bring him some hope and joy, to find those answers and renew
his testimony!

We have worked really hard to work with our ward and find all those
less actives and have had great success this week. If I wrote down
every experience for you, it would take all day long and unfortunately
I don't have that kind of time, but we did have one particularly
spiritual experience with this one less active woman who is a single
mom, trying to quit smoking, and come back to church. We talked about
the Atonement and the questions that she has had about understanding
how the Savior could truly understand her heartbreak and it was so
beautiful and we felt the Spirit so strongly. She has such an amazing
"matter of fact" outlook on life. I love her so much and look forward
to helping her one step at a time to one day make it to the temple!
Love her!

We had three trade off's again this week. One of them was our own
trade off though with the Sister Training Coordinators. It was
wonderful and great to talk to another Sister and not be the one
working to help and uplift the entire time. Being a Sister Leader is
wonderful, but it can be exhausting haha! I love it! :-)

We had an interesting experience at the beginning of this week while I
was on a trade off here in our area with Sister Major. We came across
these two guys that were helping a less active renovate his bathroom.
We started talking about the Gospel and they weren't incredibly
receptive, but they were all about talking about Jesus and the last
days. Holy wow. This one guy Jason, worked on the Chip that is now put
into animals and things to track them, and he pulled himself off of
the project because of what they were planning on doing with it and
what they labeled it as, because he is very much a God fearing man.
His dad was a preacher and he knows from the bible the talk about "the
mark of the beast." Well.....he talked to us about how the serial
number or identification number for this particular microchip is "666"
and the goal with this chip is to have it be implanted into babies so
that you can track your children, just in case they get lost or
kidnapped or what not, but he talked about how it can and they want it
to be used for so much more. It will be able to have all your medical
records, as well as track your health, what you eat, etc.....It also
has the capability to have your bank account info so that you can scan
that to buy your groceries (no more credit cards) and all this crazy
business. He talked about how it is already out there. It is already
being used. It is not being mandated, but he know that there are
people who already have it implanted in their hand. Right now it is
just being used for health reasons, cause it would not go over well
for them to all of a sudden tell everyone that they need to get this
chip in their hand...no that wouldn't go over well at all. But they
are doing this by degrees. Now they are working on making it so that
you have to use your finger prints with your credit card, and then
they have other things in place so that slowly people will warm up to
this idea. Isn't that crazy! He told all of his children that he
doesn't want them to have any children!! He said that as much as he
wants Grandchildren, he didn't want them bringing children into this
crazy world. That part made me sad, because he doesn't see that this
is a glorious time to be a live, as long as you have the Gospel of
Jesus Christ in your life. We know that we will be ok. Everything is
going to happen like it will happen, but we know that The Lord is by
our side! No fear, just faith!

Anyways....I thought that was crazy, to actually meet someone like
that and then right after that we got on facebook and this lady was
writing all about the mark of the beast from Revelations in the Bible.
Weird! I'll post the screen shot of that comment i read. It was very
interesting.

Please dont freak out. This is just a part of living in the last days.
This only means that the Savior is closer to coming....HOW EXCITING!!
No wonder the missionary force is needing to be so much larger and the
word of The Lord needs to get out to all the earth even more and
faster now then it ever has before!!!

We had some amazing experiences and met some amazing people this week.
:-) We have a very full week full of appointments. I love having
appointments!! We are teaching a bunch of people right now and I love
it! We have an FHE at a non members home, Alice, tomorrow. This is so
funny. She is not even a member of the church, but we are having an
FHE in her home and she has invited 2 of her neighbor families for
this. WHAT?? We can't get very many members to do this and Alice, who
isn't even a member yet and will probably not be for a little while
cause she needs a very solid witness, but she is doing this all the
same!! Isn't that incredible. If she can do this, ANY MEMBER FAMILY
CAN!! :-) Go be a member missionary this week!!

Johnathan, who I have talked about before. Is still progressing
towards baptism on April 20th. We are excited for him. He couldn't
come to church this sunday because he is not currently on medication
for his narcalepsy and so its kinda scary for him to be out in public,
mostly for other people's sake. He has to be off of it for a bit so
that they can do another sleeping test, but once he is back on some
medication he will be coming to church. He loves everything that we
have to share with him and we have challenged him to involve his wife
in his Book of Mormon study and he accepted the challenge. Should be
great! Love bringing FAMILIES into the Gospel....because that is truly
what it is all about!!

One last thing before I go.....I GET TO GO TO THE TEMPLE!!!  YAY!! :-)
I get to go to Orlando with another group of Missionaries and
President and Sister Craig to do an endowment session in the Orlando
Temple! I am so excited! :-) OH MY GOODNESS! I love the temple! :-)
I'll get to tell you all about the experience next week!!

Have a fantastic week everybody!!

Love you!
Sister Heckel