Tender Mercies :)

Family!

I JUST WENT TO A BALLET CLASS THIS MORNING!!!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH:)

What a tender mercy from the Lord:) Brother Dijkwel in the Tupelo ward is literally one of the best ballet teachers in the world. They are doing a summer intensive this week and he invited us to come for one class. :D It was so fun:)  Best P-day ever! Sister Crandall is a rock star. She danced with me even though she hasn't danced ballet since the 8th grade. She is amazing. What a selfless servant of the Lord:) It was so fun!!!!:) Does Heavenly Father Love us? Yes he does!!

Sister Crandall is going home this week:( There goes number 4. "Another one bites the dust." Hahaha. I love her and I'm going to miss her so much. You become family with your companions and it's hard to leave them. I'm going to get a new STL, and everyone says she is fabulous. They still haven't told me who it is. I'm another transfer in Tupelo! I'm loving it. What a blessing it is to be here. What are the chances that I come to Tupelo and know some of the members before my first day, (Thank you Sister Wilson and Sister Wittwer) there are so many people willing to hear our message, I've met so many people who have changed my life, and to top it all off, Brother Dijkwel let me take his ballet class! I KNOW MY SAVIOR LOVES ME!

Something else fun that happened this week is we went to Amory to do a blitz! A blitz is where there are 2 sets of missionaries in the area at a time. There are always miracles on blitz days. This time I was with fabulous Sister Castagno, and WE RODE BIKES! I've missed riding a bike so much! It was hot and humid, we were just drenched, but I was so happy! There's nothing like sharing the Gospel while wearing a skirt and riding a bike.:) Just pure joy:) 

On the blitz we saw a man struggling to start his car. He told us that his hood wouldn't come up and he was late for his appointment. I had just told Sister Castagno that I was feeling a miracle coming, (you know when you just feel it?) well here it came. After numerous tries to open the hood, by pulling the lever under the dash, the man couldn't get it. Then as soon as the Sister Missionaries pulled the lever the hood came right up. The Lord works in mysterious ways. We told him more miracles were in store for him:) The Gospel is soooo true!

There was a tornado in Amory today.  Sister Mason and Sister Castagno are all good. I think only a couple of trees fell down. Blessings.

Christine and Shane came to church yesterday! Sister Mason blessed us with an angelic musical number of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". The room was damp with the spirit! Just like the water in the air right before a rain storm in good ole Mississippi! It was perfect for all the investigators at church. The spirit is always the true converting power. ALWAYS!

I love you. Every day I'm learning that our Heavenly Father knows and loves each of us. Every single ity bitty detail he knows, and identifies in all of our tender Mercies. 

Have a great week!

Steadfast in Christ

Love, 

Sister Gibbs

BALLET CLASS!!!with Brother Dijkwel 

Sisters Crandall, Castagno, Gibbs and Mason

 Terrica our brownie miracle

My  Hair!!!!

The Dupree's. A cute couple who let us choose one of their paintings

Traditional star wars pictures at Brother Hoopers

Our ward mission leader loves star wars, so this was 

dessert when we came to his house.

Everlasting Kindness :)

Hey Family,

It was soooooooooooo good to talk to you yesterday! I loved it. Y'all just make me so happy. Y'all are pretty much caught up on the life here in Tupelo so I'll share my study this morning.

3 Nephi 22: 8 and 10

"In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with EVERLASTING KINDNESS will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer."

"For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my KINDNESS shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee."

I prayed to feel of the Savior's true character just before I read those scriptures, and the words that stood out to me were of course, "everlasting kindness." Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are always so kind. They don't see our faults, but our strengths. They know what we can become. I've noticed that the more I know about the Saviors love for me the more I love other people. I was prompted to be more kind this morning. I also felt prompted that if I was kind that I would have greater happiness in my life. The worries can worry by themselves. Most of the fear and worries aren't even real!

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/k-richard-young_kindness-celestial-touchstone/

"A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with God-like thoughts." -K Richard Young-"Kindness: A Celestial Touchstone"

Wow. When I found this talk I was just astounded at how our Heavenly Father always answers our prayers! I have been praying a long time for that quote. As the Savior said, "Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly." Thoughts lead to action.

I love you! Thank you for supporting me on this mission. I can't thank y'all enough. I love you!

Steadfast in Christ

Sister Gibbs

  We are in the Newspaper!!!

 Sister Crandall's last district meeting.

 Only in the South

 We made a gift bag for our investigator Terrica who has M.S. 

She was so excited to get it!

 Sometimes people ride horses instead of driving cars.

 Tommy!!!!!

Door by door: Making the sale to save souls

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Riley Manning in Lifestyle, Religion

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Sasha Vilanova, of Tupelo, greets Sister Crandall and Sister Gibbs, of the Mormon Church, at her door Thursday in Tupelo.

By Riley Manning

Daily Journal

Maybe you know how it is.

It’s a middle-of-the-week night and one of your children needs help with their homework, perhaps another is crying. You or your spouse is trying to whip up something to eat while the other is trying to get another child dressed for a little league game that starts in 10 minutes.

Then comes a knock at the door, someone asking, “Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord Jesus Christ?” Or, “Do you know where you’ll spend eternity?”

“Timing is a big part of it,” said sister Abby Gibbs, a Mormon and Utah native. “If people are busy, we ask to come back later.”

Gibbs is serving her customary, but not required, two-year mission, and has been in Tupelo since the middle of January. Door-to-door ministry is a hallmark of evangelical denominations, but with other cultures filtering into the area, along with a changing landscape of faith at large, evangelists never know what they’re going to get when they knock.

Going off script

Elders Austin Turley, originally from Las Vegas, and AJ Yergensen, from Utah, are another pair of Mormon missionaries serving in Tupelo.

“The first door of the day is always the hardest,” Yergensen said. “After that, it gets easier. You get into a rhythm.”

“Once I knocked and someone inside said, ‘Come in,’ and when I did, they were in the middle of doing some drugs,” Turley said. “They were friendly, which is maybe natural under those circumstances. But it’s hard for the spirit to work under conditions like that.”

The crux of mission work, Turley said, is discernment and trust. Missionaries don’t have a quota of houses they have to hit in an allotted time, but they try to visit as many as possible. Each day, he said, he and his partner missionary pray about which neighborhood to start with.

“We try to feel out the person to know about what to talk about,” said Sister Jessica Crandall, another Mormon missionary in Tupelo, but originally from Washington state. “If we see they have lots of kids, we ask, ‘Have you ever wondered if you’ll be with your family in the afterlife?’ If they say they are people of no certain faith, we might ask them if there are any questions they have. Sometimes we might start with a statement of purpose, you know, who we are and what we do.”

Tim Alexander, minister of education at Harrisburg Baptist Church, heads the church’s door-to-door ministry. Each Tuesday, between 30 and 50 Harrisburg members spend a few hours spreading the good news. Ministers go through a 12-session training program, eight of which take place in a classroom, while the other four are practice runs; ministering under various situations enacted by other Harrisburg members.

“It’s a good opportunity to meet people where they’re at,” Alexander said. “Sometimes it’s not even people in houses, it’s folks standing on the corner. As Baptists, we believe in divine appointments, God putting us in the right place at the right time.”

Their general outline hits the high points of forgiveness, being saved, and heaven, and uses a few go-to scripture verses.

“But we don’t fire into that right off,” said Harrisburg member Kathryn Walden. “It’s far more important to create a relationship, a bond, with who we’re talking to. It’s more about having a regular conversation than having something memorized.”

The Mormons agreed.

“The biggest thing we can do is show people we’re not robots,” Turley said. “We had lives before our mission, and by sharing our own experiences, we can relate with others.

While those they visit may not be familiar with the finer points of Mormonism, most of them are somewhat familiar with the process of a two-year mission.

“Most people know we’ve sacrificed a lot,” Gibbs said. “There are people we’ve met, and we came away knowing we were supposed to meet. That’s what we pray for every day, knowing who to talk to and what to talk about.”

Measuring success

When selling a product, cars, for instance, effectiveness can usually be reduced to a numbers game. A salesman who closes the deal eight out of 10 times, for instance, may regard himself as successful.

But salvation works a little differently. It’s not just the few years’ investment in a car at stake, but eternity.

John Simmons, a Harrisburg layman, said, though, that God works in mysterious ways. An encounter that might not seem to have gone well may be a seed that comes to beautiful fruition in a span of years if not decades.

“When we visit someone, we don’t know exactly what we’ve accomplished this side of heaven,” he said. “Door-to-door ministering is how we obey the great commission in the Bible, to go out and spread the word about eternity. It’s also important to understand, the results of what we do are not something we’re responsible for. God gets that credit.”

Crandall also said that a missionary’s job is simply to present and inform people on the gospel. The terms of what “success” means can be a little fuzzier than the ratio of souls lost and souls saved.

“Sometimes people get heated about it, but we’re here to teach, not argue. If there’s contention, there is no spirit,” Crandall said. “There’s a saying, ‘A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.’”

At the end of the day, Turley said, much of the responsibility lies with the person to whom they’re talking.

“Of course you worry you’re bothering people, until you realize nothing is more important in their lives than getting to know Christ,” he said. “We have confidence in what we’re doing, otherwise we wouldn’t leave our families. Hopefully, people see that and say, ‘What do you have that I don’t?’ But people have their own decisions to make. For us, our task is to make sure they know the offer of salvation is always on the table.”

riley.manning@journalinc.com

We are in the Lee County Daily Journal!!

Hey Family,

Thanks for talking to me on Mother’s Day...not! Just kidding I can't wait to talk to you next week. Hope y'all are doing well and can't wait to see your beautiful and handsome faces!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MOM! I have the best mom in the world!!!!!! Thanks for loving me and for making me limeade in the summer, making me laugh and for being my hero. What a blessing it is to have a mom! Mother's day on the mission is so great. All the missionaries especially the Elders are just giddy to talk to their moms! It's great the whole world turns into little kids on Mother’s day. I LOVE YOU MOM! Be looking for something in the mail!

This week Elder Turley, Elder Yergensen, Sister Crandall, and I got interviewed by the County Daily Journal! It was pretty neat. The man who interviewed us was writing an article about door to door proselyting. It's going to be published on Saturday. The craziest question he asked us was if we ever walk into any uncomfortable situations behind the door we are knocking, so it wasn't bad at all. The answer to that question in Southern tones is "MMMMhhhmmm." We didn't tell him the really crazy ones, but I think my craziest one was a woman recovering after a gastric bypass surgery and she wanted to show us her scar. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Any who, we were all a little apprehensive about what he was going to ask us, but the spirit was there guiding our words. We will send you the article. It should be pretty cool. We feel pretty famous now:)

This week was my official hump day of being in the field! I've been in the South for 9 months!!!!!! This is crazy. It goes by so fast! I've got a lot to do.

On Monday we had a return appointment with Terrica. How we found Terrica was pretty hilarious. Way back yonder Sister Crandall and I weren't feeling very well so we went home to grab a bite to eat. As we looked in the cupboards for food we saw a brownie mix, and decided to make some for the bishop. As we gathered the ingredients the only thing we were missing was a pan to cook them in. So we do like missionaries and tract to find a brownie pan, while sharing the Gospel. #faithtofindabrowniepanandbaptisms After knocking about 10 doors finally someone had one they were willing to share. We made the brownies and then gave the sweet lady her brownie pan back with a brownie on it. We asked if we could share a message with her and she said absolutely. On Monday, when we went to teach her, she said that her friends told her that she had just been swindled by the Mormons. Guess what? She boldly defended us saying,

"Those girls meant no harm so I'm sure there message means no harm. They were just sweet girls who needed a brownie pan and I'm not afraid to hear their message!"

No act of service is too small right? She loved the Restoration and wants to learn more. The Lord sure does work in mysterious ways:)

I love y'all and am so grateful for you:)

Have a blessed week!

Steadfast in Christ

Love, Sister Gibbs

Zone Activity

 Tupelo South Zone

 Sand Volleyball

 Sister Mason and Sister Crandall

 The beautiful Latoya

The elders rewarded us with ice cream, and we were 

trying to fast dry the no bake cookies.

 Catfish and Spaghetti!

May the 4th be with you

The Force is strong with this one.

 Happy Mother's Day!!!

We got Sunshine in our Souls:)

Hey Family,

The weather here in Mississippi is fabulous! It's been warm, but not too humid all week long:)

How are you? It sounds like a lot of you are traveling and walking where Jesus walked:) Don't worry friends, Mom and Dad get to walk where He walked, but we get to walk as He walked:) Just kidding my parents are the most Christ-like people I know!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALYSSA!:) How was it?

One of the principles of the Gospel that has given me more power than anything else is that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and that all of his children are good at heart. Of course, we have to choose to be good, but the sacred divine nature of each of us is a direct result of the Father we came from and the brother who is walking with us. I know that to be true with my whole heart. I cannot express how grateful I am to know I am a daughter of a Heavenly Father who loves us.

"We love him, because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Our Lesson went well with Christine and Shane this week. Shane is the one who has been reading the Book of Mormon nonstop since we met him. We answered his questions about Grace, Gods, and Joseph Smith. This weekend they weren't at church because they went to Chatenooga, Alabama to pray in the "mountains":) Shane has served in marines so he has a strong connection to the outdoors and feels that's where he will get his answer. Talk about real intent! We are so excited to hear how it went:)

Shane pulled us aside before the lesson and expressed his concerns an ended with "Please prove me wrong." He is amazing and will receive his answer soon.

Well it's been an awesome week:) We have a zone activity today. We are stoked!!!

Have a good week!

Steadfast in Christ
Love, Sister Gibbs

Sister Crandall and I got lost in the country on our way to the Starkville exchange:) 

Our GPS took us out in the boonies. Got to love off roadin' in Mississippi!

Cassie and Chase are family of the Thorderson’s and have 

helped us out a ton. They went back to Utah this week.

Pool party times! Shane is the one all the way to the left who isn't smiling, 

and Christine is the cute one near the right with the purple sweatshirt.

 Have a blessed week! From Crandaddy and Gibby!

 There were tea candle bags lining the roads that got hit by the tornado last year.

 The Willard kids baptism

 We are singing the star spangled banner into our glow flags.

 Sister Crandall, Sister Gibbs, Sister Thompson and Sorensen 

 Waiting for interviews and trying to be healthy all at once