What do you want to be as you grow up?

With Companion Sister Opeda

June 12, 2013 was the day I entered the mission field here at Temple Square in the Utah Salt Lake City Temple Square Mission.  The last year has been filled with so many questions from guests from around the world.  At first, with Sister Lin, most of them were in Mandarin, so I reverted most of the questions back to her :) Some of the most common questions we hear each day--

• "Wow, how many pipes are in that organ?" (11, 623 in the tabernacle organ)
• "Are you allowed to get married?" (yes! We believe that families can be sealed in the temple for time and all eternity.  The family is the most important unit is society and is one of the powerful ways how God shows His love!)
• "Where does the Prophet live?" (Somewhere here in Salt Lake, however he is always out traveling God's children throughout the world as a witness of our living Savior, Jesus Christ.)
• "What do you do in the temple"? (We make higher promises with our Father in Heaven. We testify that through making covenants that He has required us and blessed us with the opportunity to make, we can come closer to Him, receive blessings and return to live with Him again as families.)
• "How long did it take to build the temple?" (40 years, from 1853 to 1893)

Yet, mixed in between these questions on the surface from the hundreds of people we see and meet each day, there are questions and comments each day that illuminate the truthfulness of the gospel--

• Just yesterday a woman said, "Never in all my life, have I seen so many young women so happy.  You all are doing something right here."
• "Why are all the Mormons I meet such driven people?"
• "How can we bring the light each of you have to touch all the world?"
• "We never want to leave Temple Square. Why does it feel so good and so comforting to be here?"

• 

  Making smoothies with Sister Opeda!

With each person, the Spirit directs us how we can respond to help them to know that everything we share, everything we have, is something that was already paid for by their Savior and made possible through their Father in Heaven's great plan for each of His children.

I think of the questions that God as our Father might have asked us before we came to this earth--

• What do you want most when you go to earth?
• What do you want to learn?
• How can I help you to never forget me and your Savior even when you're away? You need to know I'm still always here.
• How can I help you and always let you know my love is there?

With Father's Day coming up, I think of the questions my own amazing Father has asked me throughout my life.  In one specific instance in kindergarten, I came home just crying and looked for the nearest and best place to be comforted--my Dad's lap.  I remember crawling up, sitting there and him looking at me with a smile and yet with such concern.

"What's wrong Kels?" he said.

"Tomorrow is career day at school and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up," I responded as I cried.

"You can be anything," he said with a smile.

My eyes got bright and big, as they still do, "Anything?!"

Laughing now and holding me closely he said, "Yes, of course, anything."

As I got older and went through different things throughout my life, my Dad and I have been able to talk and see that it's not really what we want to be when we grow up, butas we grow up. I really know and have come to see through the thousands of people I have been able to meet and talk with during my time as a full-time missionary called to serve in both the Temple Square and Reno, Nevada missions, that the gospel of Jesus Christ will give us the steps to take as we grow up. The Atonement of our Savior is infinite, we cannot put limits on it by our time or expectations, but it is there to create growth where our desires are pure and our faith is in Him.

Learning in Sister Malavasi's District Meeting! So blessed to see Sister Gearheat all the time too! yay!After another wonderful security training with President Harmon!

I am so grateful to know that my Father in Heaven's love for me is reflected through His Only Begotten Son, His called Prophets and Apostles, through His trust in me as one of His representatives, and with Father's Day coming up--through the love that my own Father here has for me.  I am so grateful for my Dad, Vaughan Briggs, and the lessons he has taught me through my life.  That he isn't just there for when I grow up, but as I grow up.  His love has taught me so very much about the reality of my Father in Heaven's love.

To both of them I wish the ultimate Father's Day.  A day where they know they are loved by their children, when they know we respect, honor and cherish them, and when they know that never, ever could we or will we be able to do without them.

Happy Father's Day, Dad and to all the Dads out there!

Love Always,

Sister Briggs

SHOUTOUTS: Sean Burton, Cami Jensen, Grandma Jeanie, Mom & Dad, Robert Donakey, Brother & Sister Donakey, Ken & Tawny (congratulations! Happy father's day to you, Ken!), Sara, Mary, Becca, Barry

I need to go and talk with Dad

Sister Taylor and I in the tabernacle :)

Hi everyone! Just one more week until Christmas! I hope everyone is making an extra effort to include Christ at this time...it is in fact His birth that we celebrate at this time and I am so grateful to be His representative.  I testify to each of you that He does live.

I love this mission :) We got to take an organ tour, to go back stage to see just how all these beautiful instruments work, and I even got to play it! 

This was another amazing week of being a missionary at Temple Square.  Each day I saw so many miracles, each day I saw the amazing grace of God's hand working and weaving throughout my life and the lives of so many others. Many who have come to see the lights at Temple Square this week have taken notice of what a special and miraculous place it is.  I have heard many comments from people saying, "I wish I could just live here on Temple Square," or "I wish I could just stick Temple Square in my pocket and take it home."  What I wish for each and every person to know is that the reason that we love Temple Square so much is because it is a familiar feeling to what we have always known all along--it is the spirit of God that is so abundant at Temple Square that keeps people coming back.  This spirit can be with us everywhere we go, we just have to learn to recognize it :)


Sister Godfrey had us all over for dinner and made SEVEN different desserts..I am so grateful for everything her and her family did for us and wish them the very best Christmas!

Linda and Chuck were two people we met at Temple Square just last night who had learned to recognize the voice of the Lord in their own lives.  Linda and Chuck are from Texas and have been converts to the church for just over 1 year.  Linda laughed when she recounted the story of the persistent missionaries that would always come and knock on her door.  Chuck said the first time he let the missionaries in, he was searching around his home for his shot gun while the missionaries talked in the door way outside. When Chuck and Linda finally agreed to meet with the missionaries, they said they felt a difference right from the beginning, but they continued to attribute it to something else.  They would say, "oh, this warm feeling we feel is just the love we feel for these two Elders and the love they feel for us," or "this feeling is just coming because we are doing a service to them by listening to their message."  They continued to attribute the voice of God, the Holy Ghost to something they thought they were more familiar with. As they met with the missionaries, they said that everything they heard started to sound more familiar, and it was then, they realized they were familiar with God.

This is something that we each do so very often. We think we aren't familiar with God, that we don't have a relationship with Him, and so we say that what we feel, what we hear is something else.

I love having my amazing trainer, Sister Lin, back at Temple Square.  I can't believe this is her last transfer!

I was reading in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 3 about the time Samuel was called of the Lord to do His work. In this account, we read that Samuel heard his name being called 3 times, each time thinking it was his Dad.  He would probably think, "Okay, I need to go and talk with Dad." Each time we went down the hall to the room of his father to say, "Here am I, for thou didst call me," and his Father would reply, "I called not, my son; lie down again." The third time Samuel heard someone calling his voice, he approached his father once more, only this time, his father recognized it was the voice of the Lord and instructed his son to respond as it was God calling him.



I was amazed as I read this account and thought about Chuck and Linda.  So often we hear a voice calling to us, a familiar voice, a comforting voice, yet we attribute it to something else.  Really, we are all so familiar with God, that we could easily mistake His voice with the voice of our own Father; for He is indeed, the Father of our spirits.

So often our mind tries to trick us, to make us think this familiar voice is something else.  When we had our mission tour just this last week, Elder Clark told us that while he was in Bolivia a woman stopped him and said, "You Americans, I could never live in your country. "  He was completely taken back and asked the woman why she felt that way so strongly.  She responded, "There you live with your minds, here we live with our hearts."


To the Briggs Family---the huskies are everywhere! This is Kate, she is the daughter of the family who had us all over for dinner this week :)

Let us all live with our hearts and recognize the God that calls out to each and every one of us each day.  He calls to us not just as a collective group but as individuals, as His precious children.  I know that I am His daughter, and when He calls my name, I know it.  He is my Father, your Father and He can pick each of us out of a crowd.  I wonder...can we pick Him out of a crowd?  Look for Him this Christmas, think and feel with your hearts, and you will find Him.

Love Always,
Sister Briggs



 This was actually taken the day after Thanksgiving when they had the lighting for Temple Square. Ed and I didn't get to see her, but Barry, Becca, and Mary did. This was the first time Barry has been able to see her there - Thanks to Jean Donakey for forwarding this picture.  We are always happy to add Kelsey Sightings to our Blog. 

SHOUTOUTS: Got to see Brother Cecil Samuelson at Target...that was amazing! My wonderful Briggs family, Robert Donakey, Brother & Sister Donakey, Mary, Becca, Barry and Sara Donakey, Zach Hansen, Karsen Yack, Sister Hill and Sister Rushing, Kurt & Megan Mooney, Jay & Taylor Winters, Matt Duke, Amy Briggs, Sister Blauer and the AMAZING Thomas family (thank you so much for your beautiful Christmas card! It really absolutely made my day!)


We got to have dinner with a family, and they had the cutest dog named Sammy! Joy really is in the little things :)