Week 5- ONE MONTH DOWN!

Well everybody, on Friday I reached my one month mark! It simultaneously feels like it's been a week and also a year--it's like I'm in a time warp. I can't believe I have only been in the field two weeks.  It feels like I've already learned the equivalent of a college semester. It can be easy to feel like i'm just doing the same things every day just plugging along but I am working on making it more exciting!

We're not quite to our busy season yet, so there's a decent amount of down time waiting for tours where we get a chance to study which I LOVE. I never thought i'd like spending so much time reading scriptures and church history but it's great. 

Sister Ramos and I with an awesome member Michael

One amazing thing I'd like to share with you is how much deeper of an appreciation I've gained of the gospel and the Book of Mormon. Telling all these crazy stories of how difficult the experiences Joseph Smith went through were or how time consuming the Book of Mormon publication process was just fills me with love for it and makes me treasure all the knowledge and peace that I've been given through it. We had a training all day yesterday about how to give tours as a story and we tried it for the first time today and it was AMAZING! Telling the story and doing it as they are standing exactly where it happened is fantastic and the spirit is so strong. I get to tell and testify of Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith in the VERY AIRSPACE that he appeared. And tell how Joseph Smith buried the plates under the bricks in a fireplace while touching those very same bricks. UGH I love it. I will never take the knowledge I have of the gospel for granted ever again! 

A beautiful tree at the Whitmer Farm :)

Another fun thing I have started doing this week is restarting personal progress! I did it once as a 13 yo and almost again before I turned 18 but I never really got as much out of it as I could have so I wanted to do it again. I've been learning SO MUCH about faith this week! And I've also gotten to relate it back to Joseph Smith. Joseph could have stopped where a lot of us do at reading James 1:5 and having faith that God really could speak to us. But he went further than that, and acted on that Faith, and THAT's where the miracle happened! It requires action and an act of agency on our part and then we are given so many blessings! I invite all of you to find something in your daily scripture study that invites you to action and then DO IT!

Have a great week and read the Book of Mormon! It's awesome!

Love, Sister Potts

FUN FACTS

1. While the Smith log home is a replica on the original foundation, the other home (The Frame Home) is 85% original! Like same doors and bricks and everything it's so awesome.

2. Mary Whitmer hosted Joseph and Oliver and later Emma at her home while they were finishing the translation and she already had 8 kids! So to thank her for the increased burden she was taking on Moroni actually appeared to her and showed her the plates!

3. Edward Partridge once went to the Smith Farm in Palmyra to meet them only to be told that they had already moved out. As he walked through, and saw all of their hard work and beautiful property they had given up, he knew that they wouldn't have left it all if the work they were doing wasn't true so he asked to be baptized as soon as he caught up with the family!

4. E.B. Grandin (the Book of Mormon publisher) was born within a few months of Joseph, died within a few months of Joseph, and had some other crazy similarities. They also both had devoted wives who outlived them by 30 years.

5. Joseph Smith received the golden plates from the Hill Cumorah on September 22 1927 and on the way back they were attacked twice and one attack even dislocated his thumb!

From my companion--this is our story right now: