June 27, 2011

Hello Everyone!
Another glorious week in the vineyard! I have really had my eyes opened to the potential of this area and the love of the Lord for the people here. The new Elders (Taveras and Davis) know they are on a search and rescue mission and I can honestly say are 'anxiously engaged in a good cause' here in St. Petersburg.
I feel more in-line with the Spirit and it's promptings today than I did yesterday. Isn't it interesting how that happens? I felt a fire inside my very first day here; as if my testimony would burst out of me. I thought there was no way I could have more, because it just wouldn't fit. I was wrong. I realized why as I read the talk given by Elder Cecil O Samuelson, "...teaching someone else what we know strengthens our own testimony as we build that of another. When you give someone money or food, you will have less. However, when you share your testimony, it strengthens and increases for both the bearer and the hearer."
What a unique thing that is, to have more testimony when you give it away. That is how I feel. I have a greater testimony of this work and this gospel today than I did yesterday. Amazing. And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I will have more and will be even stronger tomorrow. I am so glad to be a missionary and to share my testimony every day! All I want to do is give it away, to anyone who will stand still long enough to hear it!
I often think of all of you back home. I pray for you each night and long for your safety. I pray we will each continue to develop a stronger relationship with our Heavenly Father because I KNOW he loves and cares about each of us individually. I am so grateful I have that knowledge. Sometimes I feel like my actual calling as a missionary is to remind people they are children of God and that they are truly loved by Him. Life is different when you truly know that. It’s better.
Today, we are only having half a P-Day. We are going back to work at 12:00. That’s because we are going to take from 12-6 this Wednesday to go to the Tampa Bay Rays vs. Cincinnati Reds baseball game! Hermana Dollahite really wanted to take me to a baseball game for my half-birthday, and she got special permission from our mission president to do it! I am SO EXCITED!!!!
For those who know me well, you know that a baseball game is the best possible present/activity possible! Next week I’ll have some pictures of us at the game.
I love you all so much. Thank you for being exactly who you are. All I can say is that I love you. And I also feel promted to say that if there is anything bothering you, worrying you, or holding you back, give it to the Lord. He knows what to do with it, and there is no one who will be able to help you more. I gained a real testimony of that myself this past week.
Love you all,
Hermana Levanger

June 20, 2011

Hello Everyone!,
Yeah! I get to stay here in St. Petersburg with Hermana Dollahite for another transfer!!!! It is unusual to have sister missionaries together for more than two transfers, but there are some exciting extenuating circumstances involved...We are getting Spanish Elders to help us out! I am so excited! President Summerhays transferred two Elders here to work with us in our same geographic area. We are truly going to be doing missionary work as it has never been done before. It is unheard of to not have defined lines for areas, and to have missionaries actively working together and putting the needs of the people above competition for baptisms and numbers. This area is truly ready to catch on fire, and the four of us are going to do just that. I am so excited! 
   I am so proud of the work the Lord has allowed to happen here over the last twelve weeks. We have only had one baptism, but the change is so much greater than that. I look back on our little branch twelve weeks ago and I would have described it as stressed and tired (and those are probably generous adjectives!). Today, the Lord is doing miracles here. We have had the privilege of teaching in member's homes 76 times in the last six weeks (Trust me when I tell you we do NOT have 76 members!). We have had 45 lessons taught with a member present.
The Lord is turning this branch around. It is slowly but surely turning from tired and stressed to being energized. The members of the branch are working WITH us, and coming to church more regularly. The size of our branch is substantially larger, not in new members, but in people who have come back to the church. We are working with several part-member families, and ALL of our pending baptisms will be either completing or adding to part-member families.
   We are so excited to be members of this branch and to be working with the people here. It is a true honor and blessing to be able to stay here for at least one more six-week transfer period. I am so excited, humbled, and honored to be a part of this new way of looking at and doing missionary work. The work of the Lord 'will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent' and it is indeed here in St. Petersburg, Florida. I challenge each of you to look for missionary experiences in your lives today. I promise you the Lord will qualify you and allow you to see miracles you wouldn't DREAM of.
I love you all,
Hermana Levanger

June 13, 2011

Hello Everyone!
I have little to report from the field this week. We filled the role of 'Seed Planters' rather than 'Harvest Reapers.’ That’s ok though. That role needs to be done as well. Did you know that it takes an average of seven contacts with the Church for someone to take the steps necessary to truly investigate and get a testimony of it? I used to think it was so hard to give away a Book of Mormon. Now, I realize the giving is easy. It’s convincing them that they HAVE to read it if they really want to know if it is true or not that is hard. I do know this though: those who read the Book of Mormon prayerfully KNOW that it is true.
  This past month my mission has been reading the Book of Mormon together. We started reading it on April 6th, the day Joseph Smith started translating. We were supposed to finish June 30th, the day he finished, but I finished yesterday before church. As we read the Book of Mormon, we used a blue and a red pencil to mark the Requirements in Red and the Blessings of following them in Blue. Wow, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of promised blessings if we simply follow the commandments we have been given.
  Today, In addition to mentioning the blessings promised in the Book of Mormon, I also want to say what a special blessing the Lord gave me personally in my companion, Hermana Dollahite. This Friday is her birthday. As missionaries, we will probably sing, and then just keep going on with our day. But I wish the world could know that it really is a special day. The above picture is of Sister Dollahite, Itzel (who is studying the gospel) and me.
You’ve heard the phrase, 'you don't get to choose your family, but you do have to love them anyway.' Well, let me just tell you all that you also DO NOT get to choose your companion in the mission field. You are ASSIGNED someone to live with seven days a week, 24 hours a day. You teach with them, share a tiny apartment with them, and you must remain within sight and sound of them at all times (only exception being bathroom!). I thought this would be hard, if not impossible for me. But, I had a true desire to serve God, and I put my faith in Him. I know that God loves me because he gave me Hermana Dollahite.
Like I said, you don't get to choose your companion, but the bond you form with your companion is more like family than anything else. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember that I have only known Hermana Dollahite for eleven weeks, because she has been more like family and sister than a friend or a companion.
We have transfers this next week and we may not be together after that. It is so weird that these relationships out here as missionaries are so transitory. Who knows? Maybe we will get to be together for one more six week stretch. I do know that I have met a true and beloved daughter of God, and she has been a true blessing and tender mercy of the Lord for my first two transfers. She truly loves and cares for everyone. She is perpetually happy (which does occasionally get on my nerves!) And she absolutely refuses to say anything negative about anyone. When I try to serve her, I do the obvious things like make food, or pick-up, or something like that.  When she serves it is in the way Christ would, by listening with openness and acceptance for exactly who you are, and an empathy that is truly selfless and un-judging. I know that being a missionary changes you, and I hope that when I have only six months left (the time Hermana Dollahite has left) that I am half the missionary she is.
  I love being a missionary, I love the Book of Mormon, I love this gospel, and I know it is true with everything that I am. I hope that my words can ring as true on paper as I feel them in my heart. I truly love each of you, and I pray for you every night. Have a wonderful week, and see if you can't find someone around you to lift up and make their day a little brighter, I know you will be blessed for it.
Love you all,
Hermana Levanger

June 6, 2011

Hello Everyone,
I don't have very much time to write today. Sorry! But I did want to send a picture of our cockroach! Yesterday morning, Sunday, we said our morning prayers and I went into the bathroom to take a shower. Little did I know I was not the only one in there! There was a GIGANTIC cockroach crawling around on the ceiling and walls! I started yelling and screaming for Hermana Dollahite to come look too.
I know what you are thinking: I am always the brave one who kills the spiders and other crawly things. Well...I have no response, except that it was so big! Hermana Dollahite was not about to kill it, so I grabbed the air freshener from the toilet and climbed up on the counter to hit and hopefully kill it.
I don't know if I am the only one who didn't know this, but cockroaches have WINGS!!!!!! It flew at me and I swear it was baring its scary fangs or whatever it has too! So I jumped/fell off the counter and of course it decided to land on the floor and attack me! I was jumping like a lunatic trying not to let it get on me. Meanwhile, I am yelping and screaming and Hermana Dollahite is screaming and laughing at me! Finally, I decide the air freshener is a TERRIBLE weapon and take the gigantic and (key word) LONG broom out of Hermana Dollahite's hands.
Meanwhile, the cockroach has climbed under a bathroom towel. I started pounding away at it as hard as I can! I lift up the towel and it falls out. I think, “Oh good, its dead. Yeah!” Then it starts twitching! Let’s just say after a few more screams and beatings from the broom, and based on the guts spread on the floor, it was dead. And I was close to a heart attack!
What must our neighbors think of us? (This all happened at about 6:40 AM.) Based on her laughter, this had to be one of the most hilarious things that ever happened to Hermana Dollahite. She took to calling me the Cockroach Killer for a few hours and her stomach hurt from laughing so hard...serves her right. Anyway, it was pretty funny. And now I am very much on guard when I go into the bathroom by myself. What an adventure it was!
Love you all,
Hermana Levanger
PS We cleaned the bathroom floor with bleach!