Sister Walles' last email

Sister Walles writes her last email from her mission.  She titles it, "I LOVE LITHUANIA"  This section tells of her experiences with Kayleigh.   

After my training ended I was blessed with the opportunity to serve with Sister Jerman. Along with a new companion, we were asked and assigned to open a new area for sisters in Klaipeda. I felt inadequate in opening Klaipeda, knowing that my language skills were not the best, and I wasn’t sure of, how strong my desire to do missionary work really was. Needless to say I was sort of lazy, while being in a trio was easy... because my two companions were more than eager to carry on the work for me. I knew that serving in Klaipeda would be much different. Sister Jerman taught me the principle of Diligence, we worked hard together. I remember coming home so tired I would sit down and fall asleep immediately only to have Sister Jerman wake me up so we could plan for the next day. The first week was great full of excitement and new adventures but by week two I could honestly say I was frustrated, We didn’t have any investigators and all we ever did was go outside for nine hours of the day, all the day long being constantly rejected. I felt that my testimony was weakening. OneSunday morning at church a member approached me and asked me how I was doing, In broken Lithuanian I tired to explain that I was tired but still good (Which might not have been the complete truth, I Was sad) The member seeing through my facade, smiled and sat me down and asked me what I had studied that morning, I repeated the best I could about my scripture study then I asked what they had studied that week. The member opened up his scriptures and told me a story from the new testament, About Christ being rejected by his own. He looked me in the face as My eyes filled with tears, he took my hand and said, “It is hard to be rejected, but remember that the Savior felt all of this as well, he is proud of the work you are doing.” With that he patted my hand then got up went to Sacrament meeting. This was one of the first times in my life I took the sacrament sincerely thanking my savior for staying by my side in my time of need and thanking him for the member who reached out to me for but a small moment. Klaipeda is where I began to truly love my mission. It is a beautiful small city and the members there are like one big great family. I felt at peace as I started to find my place. My desire to go out and do missionary work seemed to catch fire, even though winter was quickly approaching. My companion and I worked hard to visit members and receive referrals which was hard because most of them would say, “The only friends I have are church members.” well now what? Is what I often thought. Well nothing like having an Eight year-old approach you and ask if you would teach them the gospel. I remember reading in a Lithuanian Liahona when I was serving in Vilnius an article about a young eight year-old who wanted so badly for sister missionaries to teach her that she would wait until they would come so she could have sister teachers. Aha! now that I remembered this, I looked at the little girl named Elizabeta and without a second thought agreed to start teaching her the gospel. We met with her a total of two times before she accepted to be baptized, It was cute and her testimony was definitely sincere. Her parents humored her in allowing us to come and teach her lessons but I remember the look of relief on their face when she agreed to be baptized and that she would be baptized at the church building instead of the ocean, I had to explain to her multiple times that it was way too cold to do it now and it would be a shame to wait. She smiled and agreed then asked if I personally would baptize her. I laughed and told her she would have to ask her dad, Who then told her he really wanted to do it. So for the first time in two years Klaipeda had a baptism.

Well it didn’t stop there, God seemed to bless us day by day. We were able to then go and teach a members brother, his name is Marius. Marius lives about an hour and a half outside of klaipeda, He has taken the missionary lessons before but has had a strong addiction to alcohol. He finally was able to quit and then agreed to be baptized, as easy as that all seems it was actually a very long process. The exciting part of this baptism was that at the time Marius’s nephew was serving a mission and he had just returned home and was able to baptize Marius himself. I love this family and being able to see them come together spiritually was a huge miracle for me. Seeing Marius come to church with his two sons and sit with his sister (Irma) and his nephew (Mindaugas) is one of my favorite memories.

The miracles continued as we were able to meet a student from Spain named Victoria. Victoria and I became best friends immediately. Teaching her the gospel was like teaching someone I had known for a long time, we were always able to connect things and make the lessons rich with the spirit. When we first started teaching her, her English was sometimes hard for us to understand but with time it was like she was a native speaker! While teaching her she had an addiction to coffee and it was interesting and sometimes impossible to get her to understand why we were asking her to give it up. That stayed that way for a while until inspiration kicked in and we invited her to have dinner at a members house, with sister Lucy Wang. Lucy, when the missionaries were teaching her was addicted to alcohol and coffee. I was blessed to watch as she taught Victoria how living the Word of Wisdom changed her life, Only this experience was able to get through to Victoria. At the end of the lesson we gifted her with some Fruit tea and told her to call us if she was ever having a hard time with staying off coffee. After that lesson with Lucy she never drank coffee again even to this day. I am forever grateful for the members and their help in teaching investigators, Every day I am reminded that we can’t do this work alone. We need to work together as well as with God. Every Sunday I waited eagerly to greet my adorable Spanish friend among all the members who adored her. That is what I love about serving in this branch, I was able to see how much they truly cared for each other and I know that helped Victoria a lot. After Victoria was baptize a member approached me and told me how grateful he was that Sister Missionaries came back to Klaipeda but that he wanted us to baptize Lithuanians so that they would stay in the branch and not leave, I understood what he was saying. So Sister Jerman and I went back to work in trying to find new people to teach once again. This time my energy for missionary work was lacking just slightly as we had hit what I like to call the Dark ages or more appropriately the Dark days, Winter had come and the days lasted about five or so hours then we were walking in the dark for the rest of the day. This was really hard seeing that Lithuanian summers are so bright and that was all I was used to at the time. So the work once again became hard, however, Sister Jerman kept me moving, and I will be forever grateful that she was diligent to the end!

Toward the end of Sister Jerman’s mission we found a man by the name of Vaidas. We met him one frozen winter morning and briefly talked, Vaidas had the appearance of a thug, he was someone we normally would have avoided. However he had over-heard a conversation Sister Jerman was having with someone else on the bus about the Gospel, so he decided to talk to us about it. I honestly didn’t think this would go anywhere but the next day we started teaching him. After Time Sister Jerman went home and I was now companions once again with Sister Aidukaitis (We were destined to stay companions forever), We were able to teach Vaidas together and soon after he agreed to baptism! This was truly a miracle in my eyes, when we first met Vaidas he had just been baptized into another church about three months prior to our meeting. He had many friends at his other church and he felt that it was were he belonged. Before he joined the other church, Vaidas was not believing at all. He did many things that would be offensive to any church which in time landed him in jail. While he was in jail, a prison guard handed him part of the New Testament and told him he could change his life if he so desired, then left him to read. So while in Jail he read the scriptures and soon gained a testimony of it’s truthfulness. It was pure luck that we even met him when we did, I have been able to see his testimony grow and that has been a huge blessing to me.

She reminds us that Klaipeda had not seen a baptism for 2 years.  These two sister missionaries were part of 4 baptisms in the 4 months they were there.  They worked MIRACLES together!