5-20-12 Blessed to Get Voice Back

I CALL ON WEDNESDAY!!!!!!!!!!! BLOOODALOOODALOOOP!!!!! K. So plan on 7:30-9:30 oclockish utah time... so that's 6:30 vegas time!
Happy Birthday EMMA DONG!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!! you're FOUR TEE TEEEN YEARS!!!! Write me a letter you shtoopid kid! its my birthday gift to me! I'm so.. happay!!

So my voice has been going in and out this past week, and Saturday night - my voice gave out completely. I was a mute. Consider me little mermaid. But I knew that God would restore in in time and I wasn't really worried about it. That night we were practicing our song for sacrament meeting that we were assigned to sing cuz we're leaving.  We sang it to our teacher Bro Widtfeldt, and of course - since I had no voice, i couldn't really sing. But it was beautiful. We sang the words of "O My Father" to the tune of "Come Thou Fount", with the last verse of Come tho fount. The spirit was so strong and tears just streamed down my face. After, with tears in his eyes, Bro Widtfeldt turned to me and said "I heard your voice, Sister Jeppsen." It was so powerful. 

Well the district was praying for my voice that it would return and before sacrament meeting, Elders McGoffin and Bergman gave me a blessing. It was still gone by the time sacrament meeting started. After we sang,  the bishop called me to give a talk. It was incredible. I stood up and started speaking! I bore testimony about the power of the priesthood. It is God's authority, God's power given to man! What an incredible gift! Without it, there would be no church. God surely does bless, seal, and heal us with this magnificent gift.

The Stevens sent me a present!!! They are so sweet. And as did Lexi and Melniff :) What wonderful friends I have. I got to hang out with Lex all day yesterday at lunch and dinner and then I saw Melissa as we were both leaving the temple this morning! What tender mercies. I love them so much and I'm so excited for them

Our district is so united in love.

OK I feel like my hand can never write as fast as I'd like. We had so many incredible devotionals yesterday. We watched Elder Bednar's Christmas MTC devotional on the Character of Christ. Oh how I wish these devotionals were available to the public. It was soooo amazing. He talked about how if we learn the character (moral qualities strongly developed, strictly displayed and consistently lived) of Christ, if we, through His Atonement become like him, we will truly become like Him. The one character attribute he focused on was the Christ always turns OUT in compassion and love, while the natural man would turn IN. You never once find the Savior turning inward. He always turns out. He went through example after example in the New Testament. Here's some: when Christ had fasted 40 days, imagine just how weak He was, and Satan came to tempt Him - which all temptations were to betray His divine nature and character, to turn inward. But Christ didn't and Matthew 4:11 JST footnote, in the midst of His own adversity, the angels didn't come to the Savior, but He sent angels to minister to John because He knew he was in prison!! Or even the after suffering in the garden, after being left alone by Peter James and John, after being betrayed with a kiss, what does He do? He heals the man whose ear is chopped off! And there are so many more. So how do we put off the natural man? How do we become a saint? Through the Atonment of Christ. In the strength of the Lord, testimony becomes coversion, the natural man becomes a saint, we turn from inward to outward. 

So really cool experience - Bro Widtfeldt has been pretending to be his friend Joe (a nonmember with whom he's never shared the gospel with). We were reading 1 Nephi 4 together as a district, specifically to meet the needs of Bro W. Oh how strong the Spirit was. We committed him to invite Joe (whom we have come to love and truly and deeply care about) to have the missionary discussion by August 31st. I also committed everyone to pray and to fast for Joe, to pool our faith together, that he might accept the gospel. Really powerful experiecne. One after another.

Cool thing Bro Bush taught us, that I really like, is that whenever you are praying with more than one person, as a congregation as a family or whatever, it is easy to zone out or get distracted when you're not the one saying the prayer.  But instead - focus on the prayer and imagine adding all your faith into the pool that whatever it is that they are praying for, that God will answer, will bless us. Cool thought.

I love you guys!!! With all my heart.

Love love love!

God Speed

Sister Jeppsen