Temple Pdayyy

Heyyyy friends and fam! Here's some highlights from my week! I hope yall enjoy and dont be shy to send me an email😁

January 22, 26

I did my first exchange!

I was with Sister Fowles in my area and it was fun! During our daily planning, sister fowles said our goal for finding people that day should be 4 and I was like “😮 Um okay I guess🤷‍♀️”. And I didnt know how we were going to reach such a large goal because ive never found 4 people in one day, but we did! 

We picked up Allen, the philosophy guy; someone we met knocking, someone we met zillow finding, and someone we met secret shopper finding. I was quite shocked that we actually hit that number! Unfortunately, we dropped all of them for various reasons but we did everything in our power to find people to teach and it worked! Sister finch and I got celebratory Crumbl the next day to celebrate.

Also random thought, at dinner, a lot of people tend to ask where my name comes from and I mention Iran and how my grandpa came to America and that leads into me telling about how my dad ended up serving a mission. People think that story is really cool and I love that I get to talk about my dad almost everyday because of it.

January 23, 26

I started working on the newsletter! 

I got permission from sister Clawson a week or two ago to work on the February newsletter for my mission and Im super excited! I wrote down what elements I need to have contained in the newsletter and now im working on the structure of the newsletter before I start asking for pictures. (Written day of lol)

We had a lesson with a girl who we ended up dropping but we are having dinner with her on the 30th now😭

Then we went to dinner w the Kearns and their daughter. After dinner I found out im not allowed to pet dogs😭😭😭😭 I have to make so many sacrifices.

January 24, 26

It's been snowing a decent amount! Nothing crazy in terms of Colorado, but I am cold! In terms of layers on my bottom half: I have thermal underwear, thermals, and fleece lined pants😵‍💫 And I still manage to be a little cold. For reference, it was a low of 5 degrees and a high of 22.

After the stopby and caffinating ourselves, we went to DC and Elder Tompson shared a cool poem about a man in a hole. The man in the poem tries to get himself out and makes a ladder with stuff in his hole but its still not tall enough. Jesus shows up and pulls this man out of the hole with a rope after he gets to the top of his ladder. Jesus then told him to “feed my sheep” and he notices the thousands of holes with people that need help! It leaves of with us assuming he helps those people. I liked it because its a good analogy for grace. The length of the rope or the specific depth of the holes aren't mentioned but everytime Jesus can help us out.

He also shared some story about when a lady prayed to recieve prompting from the spirit and he encouraged people to pray for their own promptings to act on. I want to do that!

Then we had lunch, and I got mail and from Kelsey! 

She gave me photos of Jesus from her own collection😭 Shes so sweet for that. And she wrote me a letter!! She added at the bottom ‘ps sorry for the dried glue, its from hanging them up on my wall’😭😭 It means so much more knowing they are hers.

We had dinner with the bishops wife. The bishop was out because of a funeral today. We talked about how sister finch wanted a nativity scene and turquoise jewelry while on her mission and the wife said she would look into those things for sister finch! She recently got some jewelery so she plans to call that same jeweler for sister finch and then she knows of a store in castle rock (thats outside of our mission) that sells christmas things year round so she said shes going to see if they sell nativity scenes! She said since her kids are out of the house, she needs someone elses kids to take care of so shes super happy to do it😭 Shes so sweet

We also shared a president Holland talk about a bishop and his wife and their sacrifices they both make for the sake of others in the ward. It's called Called to Serve and I think it was given in like 2002. It's a super good talk if yall wanna read/listen to it. But basically we used the story from that talk to express our appreciation for her and the sacrifice she makes for others especially since it frequently goes unspoken.

After dinner we knocked a little bit around doing zillow finding (find recently bought houses on zillow and knock on their doors to invite them to church), then we went to target to do secret shopper finding! 

This is a new thing to me but its literally going INSIDE target and talking to people while avoiding workers. It lowkey makes me feel like a sleuth avoiding the workers but its kinda fun! People dont seem to be in a rush while they're inside compared to in the parking lot and we've been able to get a few NPTs doing this method! Tonight, we were able to get 2 NPTs in the parking lot after doing secret shopper finding. Unfortunately they are in our STLs area but esta bien (its okay).

After that we had a zone call where a pair of elders had matching gingerbread onsies and black beanies (they looked like fortnite characters) and we talked about the miracles we saw this week then we prayed for all of the friends we are teaching to help them get to church tomorrow. 

January 25, 26

Today was a busy day!!

We left the apt at 8:25am i think and did a stopby for a referral we received the night prior 

The grandpa answered and said he would tell his grandson we were here because he was sleeping

We taught the yw lesson for the Pinery ward and it left lowkey awkward😭 We planned our lesson on Saturday and maybe we could've planned it better I guess but no one wanted to pay attention bruh. We taught about Adam and Eve and how agency relates to missionary work.

After church, we drove to Boulder (for reference, Parker is the southern most part of the mission, and Boulder is the northern most) so it was a long drive! We got there with plenty of time tho! Sister finch was able to reunite with her friend Lucy who got baptized today! She got her super sweet gifts and Lucy is so lucky to have sister finch as her missionary! But yea she was able to like talk about where to go to get into the font, where to put her stuff in the bathroom and whatnot. I helped out by taking pictures for all the missionaries and Lucy and then I followed sister finch around haha. 

After the baptism we were able to gather for a fat minute which was nice! I got to talk to sister Barenaba and her comp whos been here waiting for her visa to go to Japan! Super cool gals

I also was able to like talk to Lucy or at least see her personality and shes so sweet, and so Gen Z haha.

Once gathering time was over, we had to drive sister finch's former comp back to her comp and it took a long time because we had to wait since sister Merrill had a baptism to go to! So we watched two people get baptized then dipped to move her stuff from our car to her car while the new converts were getting dressed after being dunked🌊 

Then we had the longest car ride of my mission so far😭

Because of actively falling snow, bad drivers, and a few wrong turns, it ended up being a two hour drive from Arvada back to Parker!! 

We made the best of it though by doing a stopby for a referral we got on the road THEN we went secret shopper finding at Target, taught someone (an NPT), then drove to walmart to do even more secret shopper finding. While we were there, we got yet ANOTHER referral! Turns out tho, it was a dot that the STLs sent to us and 4 days late😭 Like bruh. We texted and will make plans to contact her tomorrow 

Oh yea and we took our dinner from 8:30pm to 9pm! It was a long, but enjoyable day! Minus the long drive times, I hope sundays are always as filled with this kind of fun stuff!

January 26, 26

I rlly like the scripture Omni 1:26 and its like the date! So yall should read it

Today was good! I got to work on the newsletter, and we finished weekly planning! This transfer, we have been really bad at doing our weekly planning but we did it all today! We planned for our dots (one green dot and 4 yellows😭), then we filled in our week with finding time. We have been filtering through people really fast which is good! But we need to find more people even faster! 

We had a super cool dinner tonight!!

Brother bashaw served his mission in Germany, 40 years after ww2 so he told us he taught a lot of former nazis😬 He said he served on the western side of the iron curtain (the non communist side), and he had some crazy stories. He said he had experiences where these former nazis would tell him the things they did while nazis then asked if they would make it to heaven. How does a 19 yr old answer that question?? How does anyone answer that question?? Idk how he did but I bet it was hard. 

He also told us about how the church was the first establishment to own private property on the communist side of Germany.

Members would get permission to go to the Switzerland temple and they always came back after their temple trip. The government asked why they always came back, because commonly people would always escape since communism is terrible; but they replied that if they escaped, no one else would be able to go to the temple. This lead to the government being like ‘oh, why dont you just build a temple here?’. The german people didnt realize that was an option and after Thomas s Monson got involved, he explained to communist Germany that we only build temples on property we own. So after legal stuff, the church was able to build a temple in communist germany!

I think thats a pretty neat story about how the Lord hastens His work despite any possible human setbacks.

After our dinner, we stopped by sister George who actually followed through on our invitation to pray for missionary experiences! Shes a quiet but very sweet older lady who asked for a book of mormon from us so she could give it to a store clerk she talked to. She told us shes really nervous but Im so proud of her that shes doing it anyway!

Then we went knocking at an apartment complex for the rest of the night and places flyers on doors when they didnt answer.

Oh also there was one guy who answered the door and we asked to share a scripture with him and he bashed us lol.

Us: *shares scripture (ether 12:27 btw)*

Him: who wrote that

Us: a prophet

Him: how do you know hes a prophet?

Us: he was called of God

Him: how do you know he was called of God?

Us: how do you know Moses was called of God?

Him: how do you know Moses was called of God?

And then he asked about archeological evidence for the book of mormon and claimed theres evidence that points to it not being true (old argument) but yea we wrapped that conversation up really quickly and moved on with our night

January 27, 26

We went to the dentist to check on my tooth but the pain eventually just went away

The doctor told me I mustve gotten food lodged in between my upper left teeth and it started to irritate my gums

So it was an appointment for no reason

We had a phone call lesson with Dassy!

We met her at target and shes super elect! She was texting all day and we asked questions to her over text to get to know her and she was SO responsive! She would text us back within like 2 minutes.

We taught her resto and shes so elect😭 She comes from a Jewish background but also has some kind of knowledge of Catholicism too so we had to explain who Jesus is but she already kinda knew. I got to explain tho that the original purpose of yom kippur was the day of atonement, a day of repenting. And how that event related back to Jesus Christs atonement! I felt super smart and she understood it! She also didnt know what was baptism which I thought was interesting. Unfortunately though, after we got her address after the lesson we learned she is outside of our zone😭 But we live with the YSA sisters who are over YSA people in Parker and Parker South so we can still check up on her through the YSA sisters!

January 28, 26

Let me tell you about the basher we ran into today✨️

So our first stop while zillow finding was this guy. We tell him what church we are apart of then she gets wide eyed and goes “Ohhhhh!” And he proceeds to tell us how hes from Mesa, Arizona and that his house is in the shadow of a temple and that Mesa is more member dense than Provo, Utah. He then tells us that he is an atheist and cant believe in our religion because he only looks at facts and that our legacy is the mountain meadows massacre and Joseph Smith losing the 116 pages. Here is a link for anyone who wants to know the church's stance on the mountain meadows massacre: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/mountain-meadows-massacre?lang=eng 

But yea like its not a good thing that happened but the basher was saying that Brigham Young caused this to happen (false) and that we are bad people for not openly saying the people involved are going to H E double hockey sticks. I didnt do a very good job as a missionary because I kinda added to his lecture which made us stand there longer and also I looked bashy back to him which is not good.

My toxic trait is that I lowkey enjoy bashers lol. 

Like I KNOW the church is true and its just funny to see them get so passionate about how the church isn't true. Theres this meme of a lion yelling at a monkey with a smug look on its face, and I feel like that monkey whenever we come across a basher.

After dinner with a member, we had dessert as a zone with our stake president! The service missionaries in our area were also invited which was cool. One girl was serving in Brazil but had to come home because of a foot injury. She asked if I know someone named Avery Moye, and I do!! I went to FSY with her and her sister Addison! She thought it was out of left field to ask that but I literally know Avery which is so crazy to me!

At the stake presidents house, we also were given stickers that say “Choose to Love” which is a reference to Matthew 22:36-40. The stake president told us that after he was called, him and his councilors wanted to come up with a slogan for their stake to rally behind and that was it! So yea they gave us stickers to remember that and I immediately put it up on my waterborne because I love a good sticker😁

I also learned recently that missionaries cant pet animals (which makes sense), and im so sad about it😭 I literally love cats and dogs so much😭 its hard enough not being able to hug people, not being able to hold babies, and now this😭 The worst part is that the stake president had the cutest dog who would walk up to us wanting to be petted but I couldnt!😭 So I hope you all know how much being obedient to missionary standards are because I'm willing to not pet a dog for Jesus.

January 29, 26

Temple Pday!

We left at 8am to go to the 9:30am endowment session.

It was so nice to go to the temple because thats was the first time I felt like I needed to go. Previously, I would go because its fun or because my ward or family was going but it was honestly so nice. After the endowment session, I felt like how I feel after a nice long hot shower. Just clean and refreshed.

When we got there though, we ran into the senior missionaries in sister Finchs last area! The Holmes are super nice and sister finch absolutely LOVES them. Since we were there with them and another pair of sisters in the temple, they invited us out to lunch! 

Elder Holmes is a funny guy and has a lot of questions. I loved seeing how much he cares to get to know the missionaries. 

Anywho, now I'm home with my belly full of Mexican food and my plans for the rest of the day are call my parents, go to a member dinner, and probly go secret shopper finding.

Talk to yall in 4 days, love ya!

Sister Moghimi

1250 Main Street, Broomfield, CO

https://photos.app.goo.gl/K8riSQGsCa65xx9u6