HAPPY APRIL EVERY ONE! GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! YAY!    3/31/14 

This week has been great. we had some very strange experiences and some great miracles! 

first, THank you Laurie Astle! you are the best thank you for the easter package and letters from JJ. A wonderful surprise!

 On thursday we had some weird things happen. the whole day just didnt feel right and I was struggling and it was weird. anyways we get home about 9:00 and our apartment was unlocked and light was on. and because of everything going on we were spooked. but we checked it out and its all good.  We are pretty sure it is just human error in our lack of attention to details. We had been receiving so many texts and calls from our leaders asking if we were ok, just their following of promptings and so we thought there was something wrong. anyways. the night ended well and we are safe!

On Friday we got up to go and help some less-active members move. they were packing up a uhaul to drive across town to their new place and I just realized how grateful i am for Riley and others in our family that have the ability to pack things so effectively into a truck. (obviously they played a lot of tetris) it was just interesting to see the difference in their family and they way they organize and do things. Made me grateful for ours.

A miralce happened this week. we had a few minutes before an appointment and so we knocked some doors and the 2nd door we knocked on was this girl named Amy. we come to find out that she was a former investigator from a few years ago and she expressed interest. we invited her to come to conference and she said she would. AWESOME! 

then we went to our appointment with Sue. she is amazing! We taught her about recognizing the spirit and how the Holy Ghost works. read a lot of scriptures with her that characterize it so clearly. 

 all i know is the spirit was amazing! I just remember feeling the spirit work through me because i learned SO much in that experience and i felt we taught so clearly. A great lesson and she made us apple pie! my favorite! :) 

Afterwards we got home and we looked through our pile of former investigators. and we couldnt find Amy in there. and then we remembered that we had made another smaller pile of individuals we felt the Lord wanted us to contact in the coming week and Amy was in there. It was amazing. and she is coming to conference! YAY! we are excited. we are praying she will be one of our baptisms this transfer!

Saturday was amazing! i loved womens conference and felt so privledged to be there. I felt like i was with all those women in my life who i love. all my sisters, grandma, aunts, best friends AND NIECE! it was so cool! i loved it! I am so grateful for each of you and the example you are to me. and for the righteous desires you have! i love you! 

We gathered at the rockford stake center and heard from President Evans. He is a very inspired man who talked to us for a short few minutes about the difference between a testimony and conversion. and it went so nicely with the rest of the meeting and broadcast. totally inspired. I loved it. he is a great man. President and sister Evans are in the ward I am serving in and so we get to associate with them a lot. a great treat and wonderful example. 

I loved the emphasis on helping younger sisters transition into Relief Society. and was grateful for those who have helped me to transition. I loved womens conference. the video was my favorite! 

I have heard about the earthquakes! Pretty exciting!   are you on water rationing?  how is that going?  are you safe? 

yesterday we had a presentation on emergency preparedness and I just was grateful for the examples i have of that. I just love you all!  how have you seen blessing for being prepared for emergencies? 

Happy April fools everyone! i hope you all get tricked in some way. its the best... :) 

The gospel is true. i love being a missionary! keep doing what you know you should be doing. and blessings will come! 

"obedience brings blessings, exact obedience brings miracles."

Love from the Midwest,

Sister O'Neil 

3/24/14

It’s a Christmas Miracle

ok, so first of all, I bought a recorder at the beginning of my mission when i was serving with Sister Pankretz, and I have been recording President Fenn, and other people and things since then, as well as funny memories etc. THEN i went and lost my recorder. and it was missing for almost 3 1/2 weeks. I prayed and told everyone here to pray and told everyone in the ward to look for it, because i knew i lost in in someones car or getting out of a car.  of course this whole time i was just sure that it was lost in the snow and then a car rolled over it and now it is just gone. So i was sad because all those memories and messages from President Fenn were gone.  On Friday we had exchanges and the sister training leaders came to our apartment to exchange, and I had been telling Sister Oliphant how excited i was for Exchanges because Miracles happen when we are on exchanges. SURE ENOUGH . MIRACLE happened! EXACTLY one minute after the sisters walked in our door, we recieved a text from sister Sharon Neumann in the ward, asking if we lost our recorder. SHE FOUND IT!! it had been in her car for 3 weeks!  and the weirdest part was that she found it in the crack of the seat and the door on the DRIVERS side of the car. I dont even know how i got over there. We always sit on the right side of the car. It was amazing! The Lord truly cares about the little things. and I am just so grateful that it was found and returned! The church is so true! CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! - now i am going to follow the example of my father and find a way to label it with my name. - i learned that lesson the hard way thinking the whole time "if only i had put my name on it... if only..."  

O'NEIL stencil here i come!  :) 

ok this week we dropped the crazy lady we were teaching. i dont remember if i told you about her. Kelly. She was really resistant to being baptized and she felt forced, don't know why, but she did and said "if you really want me to be baptized then, i can just go down to the baptist church and they can baptize me and not force me to give up my coffee or cigarettes."  so we dropped her, and apologized for making her feel forced. and went on our way. it was hard because she was so close, in some aspects, and i really had to have faith that we would find another person to teach and the spirit just prompted me and comforted me that everything will work out and someone great is going to come into our path that needs the gospel and is ready for it. so on to find that person! 

We had two really amazing lessons with Sue.  Sue is SO prepared for the gospel. it is amazing. we shared with her the plan of salvation and then later this week the Restoration DVD and the spirit was so strong in both lessons. her son is a recent convert in this ward and so engaged in sharing the gospel. it is awesome! so he was excited last night when we told him that his mom agreed to be BAPTIZED!! when she comes to know these things are true. WOOT!! so exciting. we are helping her to identify the Holy Ghosts promptings and feelings, telling her that this is true.  she has concerns about temple marriage and the idea that she could not be there when Tim gets married (hes not engaged, but wants to be married someday), BUT when she becomes a member she wont have to worry about all of that! because she can go! and understand! Woot!   it is so wonderful! 

Things are going well. I love this work. and i love being a missionary!  I know the lord is in the details of our lives! 

GENERAL CONFERENCE!! next week!!  so exciting!  you should each invite a non member to come over to your house to watch a session of general conference with you. The spirit will be strong, and they will hear the message they need to hear for this time in their life!  isn't it just amazing that we have prophets and apostles today that give us council specific for the next 6 months, and for our lives. They have been taught by the Lord the things we need to hear to be prepared for the next few months of our lives, and we get to listen to what they have to say. It is amazing! I love the gospel. I love the Lord.  HALLELUJAH!! 

love you lots!  Sister O'Neil 

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!                                                3/17/14

What a great week I had! There are so many little things, and big things, that made this week amazing!  

on Tuesday we received a call telling us that we were asked to go to the temple on Saturday. THE BEST NEWS EVER!  we were told earlier this month of the temple policy that we would not be allowed to go to the temple unless we were in a different zone than i am now, and so we didnt think we would be allowed until we were transferred into one of those zones. So we went on saturday! it was SO AMAZING!! we got there SUPER early so we did initiatories for an hour and that was great! my first experience doing those since my own. Great! and then the session! AMAZING!! so grateful for the insights i gained and the amazing experience the temple really is  

Tender mercy happened at the temple. Earlier this week I had a memory come to mind of an experience I had with my MTC companion, and then I thought of how much I missed her because she was transferred into the Chicago mission. The thought left me and I just knew in my heart that it would be fine because I would see here after the mission and we could catch up then. As we came out of the session and were getting ready to leave a sister asked me, " are you sister O'Neil?" I said yes. And then she said " Sister Hone Is looking for you." she was there! My good friend and fellow missionary and first companion, Sister Hone! It truly was such a tender mercy from God and an answer to my prayer, that I almost didn't realize I had offered. The Lord is in the details of our lives. He cares about us and wants us to have those experiences that bless us. It was just so wonderful because the last time I had been to the temple was when I was with her in the MTC and I just feel that everything had come full circle and I felt ready to keep going. I feel refreshed, stimulated and enlivened and ready to keep moving forward.  I love the temple and I am so amazed how much I learned from the new video.  Such a blessing. I am just so grateful and I know the church is soooo true.

Transfers came and are leaving tomorrow. Sister Oliphant and I are staying together another transfer and we are excited! We work well together and have a lot of similarities. We are excited and have set great goals!

Amazing things are going to happen in this mission this year.I am excited to be a part of these miracles and the many MANY baptisms we are going to see. -record breaking!  i am excited. We had a zone training meeting on friday that really uplifted all of us. And i just feel so privileged to be here. i just cant get over that feeling. i love it.  my favorite quote from that meeting: " God didn't send losers to this mission. He sent spiritual giants." - President Fenn.  

The MOON has been so beautiful every evening. and we had the opportunity to see a few sun rises this week - i mean we are up for them every morning we just dont get to see them.  anyways just beautiful.  

Pi day was great! we had pizza and we made a delicious apple pie! it was SO GOOD!! - i love apple pie! 

the Hermanas that we car share with slept over on friday night so we could go to the temple together.  Haha a really funny experience happened I want to share with you. We all were in bed at 10:30. And I feel asleep really fast, I think we all did, we were pretty tired, and had an early morning. Anyways then at about 1:30 I wake up to find Hermana Brown (she is the really funny one that reminds me of Chelsea) sleep talking. She was kneeling on the ground facing me and she was teaching us a lesson. I woke up thinking there was something wrong and i felt worried, but then as I sat and listened she said something like " ok, well we are going to pray now." And then went right into praying in her high pitched prayer voice, thanking Heavenly Father for the wonderful lesson we had.  At that early hour I didn't really realize what was going on so I just went back to sleep.  On the morning when we woke up. Hermana Estrada told us about a dream she had that Hermana brown was teaching and I said, " no! That really happened! I woke up!" Haha it was so funny. Hermana brown is so funny and she was freaked out that she did that. And then she told us about other experiences she has had talking and walking In her sleep. She is so funny! I just love those Hermanas!   

It was a great week! now to press forward and see the miracles begin! I love this work and i am so happy to be a part of this mission!         love you all!    Sister O'Neil    p.s. HILI! happy BIRFTDAY!! love you!! 29 woot woot!!! :)