Week 61

So basically this week has been great!!! We just got back from seeing the Holocaust museum at D.C. aaaaaaaaaaaand basically yeah...ha ha this is going to be the shortest email ever.

 

Love y

You all!

 

A bit of letter from mom's email this week:

 

also....do you know of any jobs or places or odd jobs even that I would be able to do for a month and a half while I get home?? ( I think ill go crazy if I'm not doing anything! ha ha and also I need to start saving money)

  

The guy named Ed we have not been able to meet with again!

 

I hope you have fun hanging out with your mom! Tell her I said hi!

 

Wow!!! That girl does have a good memory! That's super cool that she remembered you! I cant believe that they are already in their new house and whatnot!!! Ha ha there's been so much that has changed since I've been gone!!! (Kara moved, will was born, Carsten will be moving, new bishopric, the chapel has been redone, you all went on a trip, Kemi's graduating, Carsten's graduating from Dental school, you got a new car, etc.) ha ha but hey I mean I know a lot of people where their parents move when they're on their mission, so unless you've done that and haven't told me......;) ha ha

 

I can't believe Mothers Day is in a little over a month! I forgot about that! So far I've called home once in every area and I've watched conference once in every area. Except in my last area I won't do either of those cause I go home before they happen again! Its weird how fast time has been flying!!!

 

Oh also....so this is random, but Carst had mentioned wanting to come up when I get home, and I've already told him this, but I figured I should tell you as well, but basically I told him that if he isn't able to make it up, then I will be able to see him in August 2016 because Sister Bost gets home to Texas the month before that and we're going to party in Texas for a week and 'Im going to go visit Carst and Aly in there! Ha ha so if he ends up not being able to come, then i'll still see him in a little bit over a year.

 

anywho, love ya! Have a good week!

 

 

 

 

Week 60

 

 

	.

Well, It's been a grand week!

 

Something so cool happened. So for the last couple months, haymarket
has really struggled. We've had relatively no investigators, maybe a
couple here and there, but they keep just dropping off the face of the
planet.

This past Tuesday as a district we had realized that we all needed a
miracle in order to find people to teach. The elders in our ward had
no new investigators either as well as another companionship in our
district. We decided that we were going to set individual goals for
ourselves and that we were going to have a district fast.

So we left that meeting and that night we found the first new
investigator that we had in awhile. A couple days later we found
another. And finally on Sunday we found a third one. They all seem
super interested in learning and it was definitely a miracle that we
found them. The other two companionships also had no other
investigators, both of them found two new investigators this week as
well. It was definitely a miracle.

To top it off, we had taught the most lessons to less active members
than we ever had, and we also had more less actives members come to
church. It was so great! Miracles truly happen!!

Some random guy rode by on his motorcycle really loud while he blasted
his music straight up baller right there;)

we met a white woman who converted to Muslim. What. I didn't know that was a thing.

 We had an awesome meeting this week as well! It was so revelatory!! President Riggs
wanted to talk to us about the Book of Mormon and how we could use it
more effectively in our teaching. I felt the spirit so strong and we
also talked about our technology and how the number one reason that we
have iPads is so that we will be able to use technology appropriately
when we return home. The second and third reasons is to hasten the
work and to help us have better communication tools. Crazy right?

As we were out tracting today  we met a man named Ed and he told us he
was atheist and so I asked him, "Have you ever wondered if there was a
god or a higher power?" His response was, "You know, I've always
wondered" . I was dumbfounded! I thought it was so cool. And the. The
rest of the conversation was really awkward becaus I couldn't form
correct words and I kept repeating myself as I tried to tell the story
of Ammon with king lamoni. Awkward life! Ha ha

At night I really wanted food. So I ate saint patties day lucky charms
cereal...in a wine glass. Like the classy missionary I am and all.
Bahaha

 

this week I went on exchanges with some other sister missionaries.
 We ate dinner at the smiths. So...last time I was on exchanges in
Gainesville, which was like 3 months ago, I'd gone to the smiths house
as well. Ha ha they make really good food..anywho, the kids were
persuading bro smith to tell us a mission story of his that was about
a banana. He gave in and told us.

He served a mission in Argentina. People over there RARELY give you
dessert. But there was one time someone asked if they wanted dessert,
so of course they said yes, because they never got any. The old woman
comes back out with these rotted, disgusting bananas. Brother smith,
has been out for awhile and knows that with things like that, you just
gotta scarf it down and get it as fast as you can. So he quickly put
it down his mouth.

His companion on the other hand was struggling. He couldn't get any of
it down. He kept gagging. The old woman was sitting across from him
and there was a door that was open behind her, and behind the elders
there was an open window. So the elder points behind the woman at the
open doorway and says "whoa! Hermana, look at that!!!" And right as
she turns around, he chucks the banana at the window. SPLAT. the
window....was not open.

The banana was so rotted and squishy that he whole window was covered
and of course the old woman turned around when she heard it hit the
window. Man. That had to be an awkward encounter.

We were walking trying to check on a potential and we heard someone
working in the car in the driveway, so I say, "hello?!" And this guy
pops out from under s car and asks us who we are looking for. After a
second he paused and said, "you like you have an important message, I
want to know this message, can you share it with me?" What! Ha ha I
was surprised!!!

 

ANywho, that was my week!!

 

Oh also....LOU GOT BAPTIZED!!!! WHOOHOOO!!!

Week 59

Yesterday when we got to church I really wanted the cookies that we had in
our back seat. We'd been trying to drop this plateful of cookies off
at a members house for the past few days, but they were just never there! and now we knew that the cookies were not edible enough to still give to them..but I wanted to eat them.
So anywho, we sneakily go to our own back seat before we go into
church and we both bit into a cookie at the same time...and our teeth
stopped.....DANG THOSE COOKIES WERE HARD!! Bahaha but they still
tasted pretty good....we just couldn't bite into them.

We Dropped by a less active sister In the ward. We'd never met her
before, but we were out doing things and I randomly thought that we
should go visit her. So we drop by and she's home! At first she had
this odd look on her face as she looked at us through the window. Then
she slowly opened the door and we explained that we would really like
to set up an appointment to get to know her better. She invited us in
super quick as she looked at her schedule. Right before we were about
to leave, she said she almost had told us to go, but at the last
minute she just thought it could be nice to meet with us and she set
up a time. She told us that she's been inactive for years. And
apparently I've actually met her family, they were in my last area.
They weren't really active either. BUT IM SO EXCITED! :D


 This week...we were also Stuck in the mud...in our car...in someones yard. so that was awkward. We had to call someone to come get us out. We kept trying to put different things under the tires in order to give it some traction....nothing was working!! Eventually we made it out!!

 

Well...that's about it this week! Have a grand week!

 

 

Week 58

HOLY SNOW!!

HEY its been a good week!!! we heard from several people that it was supposed to snow....aaaand

Sister Bost and I decided that it would be smart for us to get a shovel and ice melt. So we headed to the store and didn't find any....went to another store. Nothing. We went to several different places and all of them were out, but for some reason the Stores were packed and traffic was bad! It was a random week day. It's never like that. No place had any shovels or ice melt. Supposedly we are supposed to get 8 inches of snow. And I think people were panicking and they were stocking up on stuff. Seriously. People were going crazy in the stores and loading up on toilet paper and water bottles. It's like they were preparing to be trapped inside for months.

Then, Thursday morning, Holy snow! Well they were right about getting snow. It snowed and snowed and snowed. 

People here are so funny. Whenever it snows like two inches people are say, "sorry! We can't meet today! We're snowed in!"

Margo (a member of our ward) called us, she had fallen again. We weren't allowed to drive. It was right when we were about to eat dinner and we threw everything down and told her that we were coming. She just needed to hold on. It took us about a half hour to walk there

Sister Bost had thrown a sparkly headband away, so j asked her if I could have it. I felt like I was wearing s tiara ha ha and I told sister Bost that she should call me my lady and your majesty. When we got to district meeting, sister Bost pulls out my chair, motions to it and says "your majesty..." And then right as I go to sit down she pulls it backwards!, not enough so that I'd fall in the ground, but just enough so that I would semi fall into it ha ha we both just died laughing and a couple sisters right next to us were pretty confused.

We were supposed to have a lesson with the Ibanez family tonight. But we got to their house and no one was home. I was quite relieved, I didn't really feel like going there tonight, so we left them a note on the door and drove away, about 20 minutes later they called us and asked if we were going to still have a lesson, we said we were headed in the opposite direction, but that we would look over our schedule and see if we had time to come back. But we got there and they had a random friend there. But he said he didn't know much about our church. Haha The Ibañez tricked us! Ha ha we start talking to him about the church and telling him more and then right as he said he was about to go.....we found out that we had just taught a member....it was hilarious!!

The friend had planned this in the car, told sister Ibanez and she said she wasn't sure if they should do it, then she figured, "eh they're good natured sisters, let's do it!" 

While we were our knocking on some potentials, there was a couple pots of flowers outside of one house. Sister bost leaned down to smell them, and as she was going, I realized at they were fake, but she didn't realize that until her face was smashed into the flower ha ha .

A couple weeks ago we received a referral. When we'd asked for the referral it was the little girl who piped up and said, "go visit them! They are Christian that's all I know!" Haha so finally after a couple weeks, we were able to go by today. Imagine my surprise when a member of our Ward answered the door. I stood there speechless and my mouth was moving like a fish. Sister Bost had never met this Ward member before, so she was staring at me very confused. It was hilarious. She invited us in for water and cookies. 

We saw someone in their garage in a storm trooper outfit. Ha ha so classy. We wrote down his house number so that we could go talk to him later. 

anywho, that's about it! have a good week!!

Week 57

So something awesome happened yesterday! We were sitting there doing studies and we got a call from a random number. It was Brother Bold from my first area! He said that he was coming to our Ward because there's a woman who's a nonmember in our Ward and she wants to come to church! SO we got to church and everything...and she didn't show...didn't show....so we were thinking that it was a fake and she wasn't really interested. Buuuuut 5 minutes after church started a little old woman from Peru walked in and it was her!!!! Her name is Lucia and she is very interested in learning from us and she loved church yesterday!!! :)

This morning I had an interesting experience. I was in the gym and I was just standing on the treadmill trying to work up the motivation to run. Finally I started running and I got 3/4 of a mile done and I thinking, "ugh...keep going...well I don't really want to keep going but I know I should" so I kept going and I was pushing past my unmotivation. Then out of nowhere I had the thoughts, "hey you should get off the treadmill" my brain then goes, "well, why? I ate a lot of crap food yesterday, my body needs this." And I kept running. The thought came again, "Hey maybe you should get off the treadmill" so finally I was like, "ok, well maybe my ankle is going to start acting up, or maybe I'll trip or something, so I'll just stop" so I started walking and then I stopped.

So I was quite curious as to why I needed to get off the treadmill and I realized later what it was. So after I got off, one of the elders in my ward started talking to me about less active members and stuff and then I started asking him random questions about his life. So it wasn't until after this whole thing that I realized the significance of this. This elder usually cant say anything without it being a joke and stuff, but it was really cool to see that for some reason he needed someone to talk to at that moment, and since then he's acted a lot more normal instead of joking all the time. It's been cool to see! Thank goodness for the spirit!!!

One of our investigators in our apartment complex had a piece of mail downstairs and she hadn't picked it up in several days, so we went to give it to her and she answered the door in just a diaper. At first all I could see was her sweater and it was covering everything, but I saw a lot of leg and I was like. "Oh my gosh....she just answered the door with no pants on...please be wearing underwear pleeeease be wearing underwear." Ha ha and then she sat down and I saw she had a diaper on. Phew. Thank goodness! Ha I was going to be scarred for life!!

A sister missionary today told us about how she wasn't given a prescription that she needs. The doctors down here weren't going to fill it, but she legitimately needs it! So she hasn't had it for about a week. Her mom had one of her prescriptions for it back home, but it's illegal to send it through the mail, so this sister talked with the mission president and they decided that her mom needed to send it anyway. So they shipped it....it was supposed to arrive on Friday....didn't come. Saturday, nothing. So they were worried and they called her mom, for some reason there was no way to track the package. They called the ups. They called the mail. They called a bunch of people to find out where the package went. Nothing.

So president decided that they needed to pray. The next morning sthe sister missionaries mom called. She had found the package....it had been shipped to.... Africa..but for some reason they decided to ship it back. Usually if places like Africa receive packages that aren't for them, they will usually open them and throw them away, but they decided to send it back. And since it's illegal to send that stuff via mail then everyone would've gotten in super huge trouble. Like mega. the sister missionary wouldve been sent home and all kinds of stuff, but holy cow it was a crazy experience!!! ha ha of all the places. AFRICA.

Oh!! So I don't think I've meantioned this in an email yet...but we've been teaching a guy named Lou and he is AWESOME. seriously. We have to pass him to some other missionaries because hes out of our boundaries, but its been so cool to teach him. He's being baptized in march. He's a mega tough guy, was in the navy for a number of years and stuff, and yet he was feeling the spirit so strongly that he started to tear up and stuff and we're so excited for him to be baptized!!!!! :)

anywho, I hope everyone has a lovely week!!! love you all!! :)