WARNING: This letter may contain an explicit MIRACLE!

I really liked my letter to President this week, so here yall go! 

So before I go into the Assistants' email, I have to tell you about the miracle we had this week President! On Friday, during weekly planning Sister Beckert and I were talking about next month's ZTM and since we will have a baptism for February before ZTM and then a very tiny teaching pool containing someone else who has a baptize date for Feb 16th, we decided we needed to set a FINDING SMART goal for the month of February. We talked about how we have been taught to find families with a specific number of how many would be in the family. We thought a family of 4 would be sufficient. We went to the Lord in prayer and 4 didn't feel right, but 3 felt better. So we set a goal to find a family of 3 to find and teach in February and baptism at the beginning of March. We made plans on what we could to accomplish the goal: DETOX ourselves. We would fast for the family of 3 on this next fast Sunday! Perfect! What else? We will go on a mail fast, we won't read our mail until next Monday. WHat else can we do? Continue to be obedient and talk to 25 people, bless homes from 3-5pm, always have it in our prayers. I felt excited, nervous, fearful, but overall I felt the Spirit testify to me that this is what we needed to do. It would be hard but we could do it with Heavenly Father's help. 
After weekly planning we went out to work. Our plans were to check out a lady Sister Smith and I contacted on our exchange. Then we would bless homes on a street near by. The lady wasn't home. So we started walking. We passed a school where children were getting released. We tried talking to parents. We started walking down 15th street. Turns out the road we chose was a road in a gated retirement mobil park. BLAST! Well, we will just push onward and keep going. We continued walking and we see this black guy. A really buff black guy sitting on his porch. I turned to Sister Beckert and said, "There is a guy." She asked, "Do you know him?" I replied, "...no..." and she said, "Well I don't either!" Well perfect Sister, lets go talk to him. I walked down this hill and said something like excuse me Sir, can we share a message with you? He asked about what and we told him about Jesus Christ. We asked him if he had faith in Jesus Christ and he said, "No" we asked what did he have faith in and he replied, "A pistol!" hahaha. We soon started talking to him and his wife came out and we told our purpose and what we did. They asked us all kinds of questions. We asked if we could come back on Sunday and they said yes AND THEY WOULD FEED US! Their names are Carl and Matha. We got Matha's number, it didn't work out. We were nervous. But yesterday we had dinner with them! Amazing! Carl had to leave but Matha stayed around and we talked to her about prayer and the Holy Ghost and committed her to read 3 Nephi 11 and a soft baptism date. She is really excited. We are going back on Tuesday and we have the PERFECT member to go with. Now you might be asking what does this have to do with our goal, I forgot the most important part, her son lives with them. PRESIDENT WE FOUND A FAMILY OF 3!!! (:

From the Assistants' email i like that they said, "Our purpose is not fulfilled in talking to 25 people per day, it is fulfilled in helping others come unto Christ." We are so obsessed with talking to 25 people that we aren't going beyond anything else. We have to understand our calling and most importantly we need to forget our own weaknesses and shortcomings. We need to truly let everything go and do this work. Time is short. The Work is hastening and Christ will be coming. I don't know about you, President, but at judgement I don't want to be standing in front of Heavenly Father at Judgement and asked why didn't I do what he asked of me. He didn't asked me to be perfect, he asked me to work and hard and open my mouth. He would do the rest. 

I think Elder Holland's talk from this last conference is PERFECT. We have been trained in November on what we can do. Jesus Christ is yelling at the mission saying,"FOM Elders and Sisters, why are you here? Why are we back on this same shore, by these same nets, having this same conversation? Wasn't it obvious then and isn't it obvious now that if I want fish, I can get fish? What I need, FOM Elders and Sisters, are disciples—and I need them forever. I need someone to feed my sheep and save my lambs. I need someone to preach my gospel and defend my faith. I need someone who loves me, truly, truly loves me, and loves what our Father in Heaven has commissioned me to do. Ours is not a feeble message. It is not a fleeting task. It is not hapless; it is not hopeless; it is not to be consigned to the ash heap of history. It is the work of Almighty God, and it is to change the world. So, FOM Elders and Sisters, for the second and presumably the last time, I am asking you to leave all this and to go teach and testify, labor and serve loyally until the day in which they will do to you exactly what they did to me."

As I look at the calendar and see the days go by so fast, I am terrified of March. I knew it all would come to an end of being a set apart representative of the Lord. I don't want to waste a single minute. I don't want to waste another feeling on "discouragement and self-doubt" or even "lacked confidence, we were afraid of failure and sometimes we couldn't honestly say that we had given our all at the end of the day." We cant fail if we get out and work and do all we can to do this work. And finally if missionaries remember this part, "There is no one that is more interested in our success than Heavenly Father himself. We have not been asked to be perfect missionaries, if Heavenly Father wanted perfect missionaries then He would get them, but He trusts us to do this work because He knows we can." Heavenly Father called US to the FOM AT THIS TIME for a SPECIFIC REASON. If we question our "success" and "why are we here?" Then we question Heavenly Father. WE CANT FAIL IN THIS WORK! Its a perfect work, and its perfect Gospel. We only fail if we don't get out and give it our best.

Wow, I think I burnt a hole in this keyboard. So I will end it there.
Thanks for all you do!
love, Sister Ploth

The mission is going through some ups and downs. We aren't seeing the success we would like and because of that we are all "depressed". Finding that family of 3 this past weekend, really helped me feel the Spirit again. Sister Beckert and I are working hard. We don't know why people don't want to to listen but we wont quit. We are having a baptism this weekend! Jan is ready and so excited. Her interview is for Wednesday morning. We are defiantly seeing miracles and things are going great! Some days are harder than others but thats okay. Heavenly Father loves us and wont let us fail. 

I love you all and I appreciate the love and support!

pic 1: Sister Kinkade and Brother Sprouge got me DDP Caffeine free for my birthday! They accidentally got reg dr pepper so they returned it and got this.

pic 2: on Thursday I hit 500 days! WOW! We biked on beach side. 

love always,

Sister Ploth

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Perfect, Redeem, and Preach.

Hello All! Another crazy week here in Daytona. Crazy good! We had a lot of trials but nothing like a good bottle of repentance and pushing forward. I realized this week (maybe again) that we need to know these bad weeks to know the good. The Elders reminded me that prophets have bad weeks. Look at Moses and when we brought down the commandments, they were worshipping a gold calf, talk about a bad week! haha

We biked a lot. I ate a lot. Burning off those calories is awesome, eating them back, not so awesome. We met some pretty sweet people, people that could be prepared for the Gospel. Our biggest obstacle is not letting people TALK AT US. haha. One lady was concerned that we were too far from our mothers. It was very sweet.

Jan is doing awesome. She came to church. She is reading like crazy. She caught the "bug". haha. We were suppose to teach her yesterday but she wasn't feeling well. We will plan her baptism this next Friday and I am not as stressed. She is so prepared that we don't need to teach her every little thing. We could just show her where it is, she will read and teach it herself. 

Denie also came to church. She is great. We found out she doesn't like like sitting down to read The Book of Mormon but she is more than happy to listen to it, so we gave it to her on CD! We are going down to Orlando this week so we are going to get her the kids version. 

I went on exchanges with a new missionary. It was her 2nd week out. She was so talkative. haha. It was funny to see where she is at. I learned that I am not screwing up my area but I am just over stressed. I sure did miss Sister Beckert. It was nice to have her back. 

We had a meeting with the stake leadership, missionary leaderships, and the full time missionaries. Every day I am learning how important the members are in this work. We have a three fold mission: perfect the saints, redeem the dead, and preach the gospel! All three are important and are a responsibility of everyone. I have also learned that members have the same fears we do as missionaries and are job is to BUILD THEIR FAITH! And how do we build the faith! Teach the doctrine! We have the restored Gospel and what a gift so why not share it! 

Oh scary thought! I had a dream this past week that we were door knocking and all the houses were abandoned and had eviction notices on the doors!! aaaahhhhh!!

Well I hope yall have a great week! Don't forget to pray for missionary opportunities! The missionaries in your area need your help!

love always,

Sister Ploth

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Heyoooo!

Hello Everyone!!

So here I am starting week 2 of transfer #12. Time is going be super crazy. My new companion, Sister Beckert is pretty much amazing. She is from Arizona and is hilarious. She always has me cracking up. She has a brother serving a mission right now, so its cool to hear about all that. 

So what happened this week?

Well I am a Grandma of 2 new Sisters! So awesome. These new sisters are cute and ready to work. I am excited for Sister Kerns and Dunford. Sister Crookston took us down to transfers. I love transfers because you get to see a bunch of missionaries. I got to talk to Sister Wilks and that was great. I am sad I dont have her address. she helped me a lot with some concerns I was having. She is my SISTER of course. When we got back to the area, I showed Sister Beckert around and we went to some members. Specifically to follow up with some referrals. The Roberts had a friend at church and we went to see if she want to learn more. Well, yesterday we taught her and committed her to baptism for Feb 2nd! WOOT! Sister Michelle Roberts gasped, I think she was in shock. She currently has a son serving in Utah so we hope she writes him about it to him and he responds, "yeah mom, its what we do" But the lady's name is Jane and she is super cool. She is a psychiatric nurse, drives a harley, speaks spanish, and loves the Book of mormon. she is ready to go! 

Denie likes Sister Beckert. woo. Denie's family wanted her to set her baptismal date back and she said "NO!" so yay! She is doing great. She came to church and so do her less active friend and we are going over there this week to eat and teach. Pretty sweet.

We have been working lots of finding. Sister Beckert is really good at blessing homes and I am good at street contacting so hopefully we can trade off on our talents. Hopefully I will be a door knocking champ. CROSSES FINGERS!

Man oh man.....I am running out of things to say. Sorry!! The Book of Mormon is true! When we sin it affects everyone, not just us. We can repent. Christ lives! I love being a missionary!!

Have a great week!

love, Sister Ploth

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MR.WASHIDI ALLAMU

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Just do it!

Hello All!!

 

A new year and a new transfer! Big news: Sister Dunford is leaving Daytona Beach and going to Oviedo to open an area and train. Sister Kerns is training as well. So in Missionary lingo, I will be a grandma! Very exciting. The Durr line lives on!!

 

My new companion is Sister Beckert. I was able to spend a few hours with her and Sister Poulsen on Friday when the trainers meeting went on. They planned so I didnt get to do any work with them but I am excited. it seems like everything is in a rut. We are going through investigators like there is no tomorrow. People seem to be intersted but then they relaize the work involved in salvation and they say, oh no thank you. and then we say, "NEVA DOW!" hahaha a catchy phrase from Elder Shelley.

 

We had a recent convert girl move from jacksonville to here. She is from China! She is really cute and excited. When we asked her how she came to know that the gospel was true from a non christian background her response was, "No man with little education can write this. I read it and i felt the spirit." so sweet! She is going to Emery Riddle and has a double major of areospace and mathematics. oh man, right? HEADACHE!

 

We contacted 25 people on Saturday! it was awesome. we talked to EVERYONE! We are really focused on finding lately. I can only pray the Lord will lead us to someone that is prepared. We have a few potentials. I was reading this morning in Moses chapter 6 where Enoch is called (i beleive its different enoch then what other people would think..) and he is like "Uhm....I dont know if I can do this Heavenly Father. I am just kind of average, nothing special. Are you sure?" this is something I often think but then Heavenly Father has this amazing response he says

 

 31 And when Enoch had heard these words, he ^abowed himself to the earth, before the Lord, and spake before the Lord, saying: ^bWhy is it that I have found favor in thy sight, and am but a lad, and all the people ^chate me; for I am ^dslow of speech; wherefore am I thy servant?

 32 And the Lord said unto Enoch: Go forth and do as I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee. Open thy ^amouth, and it shall be filled, and I will give thee utterance, for all flesh is in my hands, and I will do as seemeth me good.

 33 Say unto this people: ^aChoose ye ^bthis day, to serve the Lord God who made you.

 34 Behold my ^aSpirit is upon you, wherefore all thy words will I justify; and the ^bmountains shall flee before you, and the ^crivers shall turn from their course; and thou shalt abide in me, and I in you; therefore ^dwalk with me.

 35 And the Lord spake unto Enoch, and said unto him: Anoint thine eyes with ^aclay, and wash them, and thou shalt see. And he did so.

So! The Lord uses us in HIS way, we have to be dedicated. This week relaized that we werent as dedicated as we thought we were. We thought we could do what was asked of us, like contacting 25 people but we didnt KNOW and we didnt show the lord our faith. We have to step into that darkness, steo off that cliff, we just have to do it. THEN after the trials we get the blessings. You might be asking, why do i keep "relaizing" this. I am not sure. Good thing for repentance.

My birthday was good. Nothing special. Just another day. We set a baptismal date. Pretty sweet. Sister Kinkade, Frost, and the Sprouges fed us dinner and got me little gifts and even bought dr pepper but accidentaly got the caffeine one, so they are going to exchange it. haha. We played a round of uno as well. The Elders got me disney chapstick. haha. and sister dunford got me chapstick for my collection. haha I am reallllllyyyyy going to miss her.

Now, off to make this the best 1st week!!

all my love,

sister ploth.

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Happy New Year: Look Not Behind Thee

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR! HELLO EVERYONE!

 
I hope you had a great Christmas and you are just excited for this new year as I am. This week Sister Dunford and I came across a video on Mormon channel about the New Year and how we cannot look back. It is compared to Lot and his family, how Lot's wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. This past year has been amazing because I have been able to serve Jesus Christ and His people. I have made some mistakes but I know through repentance and goal setting, I can make this New Year even better than last year. I am so blessed to have spent a whole calendar year in the Lord's vineyard. I wouldn't trade it for anything! Look Not Behind Thee-- if the link doesn't work then type into the search engine "New Years"


This week President asked us to talk about our contacting, He was challenged us to, "  I am asking each of you to commit to contacting 25 people a day and to teach when you find and to find when you teach.  I want you to set a goal and be accountable to accomplish this goal.  Some of you will find you are able to find more, other will have to set their goal lower and work towards the goal of 25." So here is my reply to it: We have great desires to contact 25 people a day. We are becoming more aware of people and even riding our bikes more. I think to accomplish this goal, we need to be out more, not using the car as an excuse. We have set a goal to contact 10 people a day, which we have done two times but we are always looking to go over. What we count as a contact is talking to someone, telling them who we are and what we do (teaching a principle or so), and inviting them to listen more or blessing them. Not everyone says yes but we have a few return appointments. Overall our goal for the month of January is to contact a 100 people. We know with faith, prayer, and repentance that we can go beyond that goal.
Faith to find: I know the more people we talk to, the more we will find and the more we include Heavenly Father and the Spirit in the finding process we will be successful. It seems like a lot of time, we pray to be led to those that are prepared and we don't listen to the Spirit. I have a great example of finding, it comes from an email I got this past week from my step dad about my little brother, "Yesterday, Kai could not find his scriptures to go to church. Kai has a lot of faith you know. He prayed to heavenly father and then went right to his scriptures, brought them to me, and holding them out to me said "Heavenly Father works fast.'" A simple story but we know that, if like my brother, we pray and GO and not wait we will be led to people who are prepared, just how my brother was able to find his scriptures. It is amazing how we can understand things more clearly, when we trust Heavenly Father to lead us, Jesus Christ to enable us with His atonement, and the Holy Ghost to fill our mouths. The Godhead is a great team!
Overall, I need to get over my fear, something I am constantly working on, and really believe in my purpose and who I represent. I KNOW we can be lead to people who are prepared. I have seen it happen. In accounting this morning, we learned from Elder Finke if plans and back up plans don't work out then we need to repent and listen for the Spirit. He will guide us.

 

Our Christmas was good. Skyping everyone was so great! It was amazing to see how all my younger siblings are much bigger than me, well not Kai, at least not yet. (:

Christmas day we went to the Harris'. Opened stockings and ate a delicious breakfast. later we went out to dinner with Grandpa and the Elders to the Country Club, sounds classy but it isn't. Its like a Denny's haha but we loved being with Grandpa. We stopped by Gwen's, she gave us some Jamaican food which we ate for lunch last week. It was so good! Then we went caroling with the Elders and the Harris Family to some home bound members. It was so great! I loved it. It really helped me not miss home and think about all the family traditions but focus on the true meaning of Christ. To think we get all caught up with that stuff but we are here because of Jesus Christ and because of Him we can return to our Heavenly Father WITH OUR FAMILIES! So sweet!

 

Denie has set her baptism date for Feb 16th. We are excited. She is more confident. Our teaching pool is down but we have some good prospects. Guess we will be biking like mad men this week! The more we talk,  the more we find, the more we teach!

 

I hope yall have a great week! thanks for the cards and packages. i will send out thank yous, it will just be a little slow! hahaha

 

see ya in 2013!!

 

Love always,.

Sister Ploth.

 

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Knowest thou the acondescension of God?I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! 

Well I am glad that y'all made it through the end of the world! We were defiantly anticipating when it would all happen but the work went onward. (:  We had our Christmas Devotional in Lake Mary this week which was amazing. We learned all about the condescension of Christ found in 1 Nephi 11 12-27 (which you can click on that and learn more). It was way powerful. What a blessing to be out in Lord's vineyard during this Christmas Season. Sometimes we get wrapped up in traditions and all the good things about Christmas like gift giving and being with our families but I have loved just focusing on the Savior. I have learned a lot about my Savior. I remember last year thinking how weird everything is and how next year would be closer to home and here it is, a blink of an eye! Life in the mission field is amazing. I am so grateful to be serving the people of Daytona, they don't always want it, but I have learned to look at people as Children of God, my Spiritual Brothers and Sisters. And to give everything for Christ at the same time? Man! I am the luckiest girl in the world! I learned a lot in accounting this morning to Elder Shelley and Elder Norman. I learned about sacrifice. When they were first talking about sacrifice I thought of physical things, like, "Sweet! I wont write any more letters, more nap time for me!" haha but they said, "No Sister. Attitudes and behaviors" They pointed out last transfer at week 5 we were very successful because we were URGENT. I must confess, I don't always have an attitude of urgency. I just want to get things done and count down the time where I can eat or go to bed. Unfortunately, that isn't how it works. I am here to work and I need to, work the hardest. So I plan to sacrifice my bad attitude and repent for my un-urgency. Its amazing what you can learn from other missionaries. One of my fears is coming home and being the same and everyone being like, "Wow, that's it?" haha. 

So we had a funny experience last night. We were asked by Bishop Crookston to check on some new move ins from this past year. There have been 71! wow! So we went to one last night. Our instructions were just to see if they lived there and if they needed anything. Here is how the experience went.

Sisters: knock knock

Lady: Yes?

Sisters: Is this the ____ residence?

Lady: Yes...?

Sisters: Hi! We are the Sisters from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and we just wanted to....

Lady: UM! We are ATHEISTS.....THANK YOU! slam. 

We didn't know whether to say Merry Christmas or not. We didn't want to offend her. also, they had a christmas tree. Hello lady, why the heck do you celebrate Christmas. We will pray for that family though. It was just so funny. 

Our biggest Christmas adventure will be....we are going to go with some members and the Elders and we are going to be SINGING TELEGRAMS for the homebound members that cant come to church. haha we are pretty excited. It will be cool. ALSO! Anyone remember Michael Rossi? Well he came to church on Sunday with his sister. She is home from BYU for Christmas. We are going to go teach him this week. Hopefully it will be good. The Elders just baptized this cool 19 year old kid, Mick, who is going to help us. He is going to be a legit friend for Michael. We hope we can see whats up. 

Denie is great. We just got done teaching her right before this. (attached pictures are of us and Denie and then us and Brother Staley. She got us some presents. Oh and her mom did too)

Her baptism date is for this Saturday but she is still praying about things. She is an amazing lady and we love her. Brother Staley got her scriptures for her birthday and she was excited for them. hahaha. So keep her in your prayers!! (:

Oh and last miracle! We met a guy named Bob a few weeks ago and we gave him a book of Mormon. He told us to give him 2 weeks. We went back and we never got into contact with him. Well we finally did and he had read the BOM TWICE!! It was amazing. He isn't converted t it but he has a lot of questions. We are going to try to bring the Singlers with us, the perfect members to see him this week. 

I hope yall have a very Merry Christmas!! I am excited to talk to the family! woot!!

love always, 

Sister Ploth. 

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