Week 37: I Met Zero Famous People This Week
Dear Loves Ones,
My mom and her friend Michelle met on their high school cheer squad. My mom grew up to marry a used car dealer. Michelle married Jon Schmidt. There are some perks to being married to a famous concert pianist, like being invited to speak at a women's conference in Kansas. The conference just happened to be near where Fia lives. Michelle's on this newsletter, so she's been following updates on Fia's story.
On Friday I got an email from my mom informing me of Michelle's plan to get Fia a free ticket to the conference the day of. I worried Fia would be overwhelmed at the last minute offer, especially because it was coming from a random stranger over FB messenger, but she went and she took notes in the little journal my mom shipped to me as a baptism gift! It thrills me that I've been able to make other people fall in love with Fia over email. She also, in that same 48 hours, got to go to the temple for the first time!
We got her started on family history in the days leading up to her baptism and she was excited to get all her family to follow her. Her living family is pretty anti-Christian on Earth, but I hope the dead ones are softening in the Spirit World and will one day accept what Fia has done for them. She does have one nice relative I'm really excited about. Her twin sister died three years ago. Now, she has a chance to accept the gospel just like her sister here on Earth!
A lady I toured at the visitors' center this week served a mission in Ecudaor in 1975. She has kept in touch with people she served with for 44 years, and now that they're dedicating a temple in her mission, they're going back together for it. I admire that loyalty and longevity. I haven't struck up a bond with other missionaries like that yet, but I'm determined to stay in Fia's life for the rest of her life.
Also: While Michelle was in town, she decided to swing by the visitors' center to see me and I WASN'T THERE. She brought her pack of famous friends with her, too, and the sisters who met them were all, "Jon Schmidt's wife and a guy in Nashville Tribute Band and Sistas in Zion and a church historian and a lady who does the Come Follow Me podcast all came in today. You missed it."
Grrr. I'm gone one day and I miss everything.
In the tour, I sometimes choose to talk about Vienna Jaques instead of the heroic Rollins sisters. Like the Rollins girls, she saved pages of the Book of Commandments. Vienna is one of the two women mentioned by name in the Doctrine and Covenants (Emma Smith is the other). You can find Vienna in section 90, where she is told to come to Zion and promised an inheritance in it. It bothered me a lot that the Lord told her she'd get that but then she got chased out of Jackson County with the rest of the Saints and never got to settle here. It reminded me uncomfortably of all the times I had spiritual experiences pointing me towards going on a mission and then got rejected again.
But then I read more of her story. She was a nurse in Zion's Camp, the fighting force marched down to Missouri from Kirtland and sought to reclaim what had been lost. She stayed faithful in Nauvoo and joined on the trek west to Utah, where she settled down in the Salt Lake 12th ward-and received an inheritance. She got her Zion promise. It just didn't come in Missouri.
I'm learning that when something troubles me about church history or my own life, the answer isn't to ignore it, to retreat back to the things that are easy to believe, or to do some kind of mental gymnastics to reconcile things on my own. It's further study. History always yields up its answers.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
P.S.: I'm building a meme stash and would love your help. Send missionary memes, Christian memes, or just plain funny memes. Thank you!
My mom and her friend Michelle met on their high school cheer squad. My mom grew up to marry a used car dealer. Michelle married Jon Schmidt. There are some perks to being married to a famous concert pianist, like being invited to speak at a women's conference in Kansas. The conference just happened to be near where Fia lives. Michelle's on this newsletter, so she's been following updates on Fia's story.
On Friday I got an email from my mom informing me of Michelle's plan to get Fia a free ticket to the conference the day of. I worried Fia would be overwhelmed at the last minute offer, especially because it was coming from a random stranger over FB messenger, but she went and she took notes in the little journal my mom shipped to me as a baptism gift! It thrills me that I've been able to make other people fall in love with Fia over email. She also, in that same 48 hours, got to go to the temple for the first time!
We got her started on family history in the days leading up to her baptism and she was excited to get all her family to follow her. Her living family is pretty anti-Christian on Earth, but I hope the dead ones are softening in the Spirit World and will one day accept what Fia has done for them. She does have one nice relative I'm really excited about. Her twin sister died three years ago. Now, she has a chance to accept the gospel just like her sister here on Earth!
A lady I toured at the visitors' center this week served a mission in Ecudaor in 1975. She has kept in touch with people she served with for 44 years, and now that they're dedicating a temple in her mission, they're going back together for it. I admire that loyalty and longevity. I haven't struck up a bond with other missionaries like that yet, but I'm determined to stay in Fia's life for the rest of her life.
Also: While Michelle was in town, she decided to swing by the visitors' center to see me and I WASN'T THERE. She brought her pack of famous friends with her, too, and the sisters who met them were all, "Jon Schmidt's wife and a guy in Nashville Tribute Band and Sistas in Zion and a church historian and a lady who does the Come Follow Me podcast all came in today. You missed it."
Grrr. I'm gone one day and I miss everything.
In the tour, I sometimes choose to talk about Vienna Jaques instead of the heroic Rollins sisters. Like the Rollins girls, she saved pages of the Book of Commandments. Vienna is one of the two women mentioned by name in the Doctrine and Covenants (Emma Smith is the other). You can find Vienna in section 90, where she is told to come to Zion and promised an inheritance in it. It bothered me a lot that the Lord told her she'd get that but then she got chased out of Jackson County with the rest of the Saints and never got to settle here. It reminded me uncomfortably of all the times I had spiritual experiences pointing me towards going on a mission and then got rejected again.
But then I read more of her story. She was a nurse in Zion's Camp, the fighting force marched down to Missouri from Kirtland and sought to reclaim what had been lost. She stayed faithful in Nauvoo and joined on the trek west to Utah, where she settled down in the Salt Lake 12th ward-and received an inheritance. She got her Zion promise. It just didn't come in Missouri.
I'm learning that when something troubles me about church history or my own life, the answer isn't to ignore it, to retreat back to the things that are easy to believe, or to do some kind of mental gymnastics to reconcile things on my own. It's further study. History always yields up its answers.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
P.S.: I'm building a meme stash and would love your help. Send missionary memes, Christian memes, or just plain funny memes. Thank you!
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