Hello everyone!
What a week! I know I say this every
time, but missionaries learn so much every day. Time goes so quickly,
yet every hour is packed with major life lessons, for which I am super
grateful. It's amazing to me as well that, with all the teaching
Heavenly Father has in store for His missionaries, He also makes
everything work out so that the missionary work still progresses every
day. Sometimes it seems like He's such an intricate planner!
Well,
Monday was great. I got a lovely letter from home, which was fun. : )
We had a good lesson with Luke, we taught him about Tithing and he was
so excited that he wanted to give us all the money in his jar! We helped him understand that you just give 10% whenever you get paid--and you don't pay
the missionaries! : ) The Notts fed us dinner, and that's always a
fave. Sister Nott reminds me of my Mom a lot, so you always feel
homesick in a good sort of way when you're at their house. It's kind of
like how Faye explained our relationship with flies--they're a nuisance,
but she's grateful that they help us remember we're alive. Okay, maybe
not a super helpful connection. Either way, I love going to their home.
My favorite part of the day was definitely our last appointment with the
Rics--we've had a hard time really getting to know Brother Ric, just
because he's a guy and we're two Sister Missionaries. Well, we've
realize that we just need to bring another father figure along with us,
so this time we brought Brother Round and it was a member match made in
heaven! We didn't know beforehand, but when they were together it was
like peas and carrots (or, as I'd prefer, butter and sugar)--Brother
Round just understood all of Brother Ric's life experiences, and by
the time we left they were a solid friendship. Woo hoo!
Tuesday
morning we got a crazy call from the Assistants to the President saying
that, even though I'm technically not in mission leadership right now,
I'm supposed to go to next week's Missionary Leadership Council in
Bismarck. What a shocker! I haven't ever heard of that happening before.
Apparently some special MTC people are coming and they want as much
input as possible. I wish Sister R could come. It will be so nice
to go to the temple!
We had a nice couple
hours at the Lee home painting their living room. Sister Lee did a
couple green walls, and then a couple sand/cream/not-quite-white walls.
We had to leave in the middle of the project, but her kids were being
super helpful so I'm pretty sure everything went well. : )
Cole and I were working on the confusing wall together, trying to
help each other see which spots were painted and which ones weren't.
Off-white on white is tricky, you know?
Courtney
was super fun to visit--she obviously really loves us because she
always has some sort of gift prepared--this time it was a Halloween care
package with soap and hand sanitizer and candies. Woot woot! Her
fiancee popped in for a minute, and he's had super awkward missionary
experiences before so we were super happy when it was just a good,
normal conversation. You have to establish a person-to-person
relationship with people, I've found, if they're going to trust you to
teach them. Anyway, she's going to feed us dinner in a couple weeks. She
also showed us her pile of Championship rodeo belt buckles, which were
super cool. I should've grabbed a picture!
We
were finally able to catch Dale at home--he used to be an investigator
in days long past, and now he's pretty set that he knows the church
isn't true. Upon questioning, however, we learned that he's never
actually read and prayed about the Book of Mormon, so if he can do that
we'd love to help him out. : ) That should be fun. The Whits fed us
dinner, and then we went back to the Lees' home to meet with Brother
Lee. It was super productive so talk about what he feels like
would need to happen for him to know that the message of the Restored
Gospel is true. It's so easy to get caught up in what we think for
people that we can completely skip over what they're thinking and
feeling, which is never effective. After all, it is their choice to
accept and act on the message we have, and if they really don't
understand or believe what we're sharing, they're not going to want it.
Wednesday
we had exchanges, and they were lovely! I had a day with Sister M
here in Beulah, and Sister R got to go to Bismarck again, this
time with Sister S. We both learned a LOT--for me, mostly, it was
all about following the Spirit and talking with everyone around us. Even
though I've always known that, as missionaries, we should be talking
with everyone we see, I've always been too scared to do it. But with
Sister M there, we just went and did it and it was so cool! Why do
I forget how great people are? Miracles happen when you go talk with
everyone--we found like 8 new solid potentially-interested people. And
when lessons fell through, looking back there was always someone we
found we wouldn't have found otherwise. It turns out it's all about
having a sincere heart--Heavenly Father will help us find those who are
prepared if we have 1-a sincere heart, 2- we really intend to talk with
everyone, and 3-faith in Christ (and not in ourselves). What a life
lesson! Hooray for exchanges!
Thursday we had to do rushed Weekly
Planning because of swapping companions because of exchanges, but we
ended up getting it done in time for our lesson at 6:00 p.m. No members
could come with us, so we decided we'd just have to meet outside with
Brother Lop again. (Soon it's gonna' be too cold for that option,
ahh!) So we drove over to his trailer, and one of his roommates was just
by the door, so with our new faith-filled exchange focuses, Sister
R and I just talked to him! (This doesn't sound crazy but for
some reason it felt that way.) He said Brother Lop had just gotten
home from work and was showering, but then we asked if we could talk
with him and he said Sure! and voila, we met Ariel! He's
so cool! He seems almost more interested in learning about the Gospel
than Brother Lopez is! Also, he told us that Brother Lop's name isn't
Hombraldo like we'd thought, but Homberto. That makes more sense. : ) He
really understood the message of the Restoration, and he's excited to
read the Book of Mormon and find out that it's true. What a golden
trailer park! We'll be seeing them tonight, so I'm way excited. Dinner
with Sister Maup was wonderful--she and her mother Sister Stils took
us to the Country Kettle local diner, and it was so fun. After dinner
we ran to the Cranes home. We've been hoping to teach Hailee because she
was never baptized, so we weren't sure how it was gonna' work out but
we knew we needed to talk with her about that. And so we went, and then
when we knocked on the door guess what?! Hailee was home by herself, so
we had a minute to just talk with her about school and dance and
religion, and she wants us to teach her so she can learn about the LDS
faith and find out if it's what she wants in life. Yahoo! What a wise
lady!
Friday was also lovely. : ) We're just on
a following-the-Spirit roll, which is really how it should be every
day. Well, I woke up with a sore throat, and I knew I needed to stomp it
out real quick so I slept in (annoying but what do you do?), and then
we drove to District Meeting in Dickinson. (Did I mention that we're
stressing about miles? Yep, that's fun.) I asked for a blessing from our
District Leader, and it was awesome--as usual, it was exactly what I
needed, a promise of strength to do what I desire. That (new/refueled)
desire is to talk with and find everyone who's ready for the Gospel in
their life, and I was worried that if I got sick I'd pass someone by (or
even if I wasn't that I'd just get too scared), so it was exactly what I
needed to hear. We went to Walmart to buy groceries and we were able to
talk with our cashier who ended up being an investigator the Sisters in
Dickinson are teaching! So cool. : )
The
Schells gave us a ride to Hazen for dinner. I LOVE the
Schells. This time Sister Schell fed us Naan and Lentil
Curry, SO yummy! We had an awesome discussion on Things that Matter
Most, and then because we all love everyone so much we had to take a
picture.
Saturday we'd planned on going to Halliday, but
Heavenly Father had different plans for us. First thing in the morning
our scheduled appointments there all fell through, so we weren't sure
what the plan was. We went out and visited with Britany, and on our way
out her neighbor Ashley was sitting on the porch. So what did we do? We
talked with her, and offered to come back and teach her. And she said
yes! So we scheduled to come back that same day! Then we had bridge call
and lunch (I took a nap), and then we went to try a potential that
Sister Mans and I found on exchanges. He wasn't home, but his
roommate was. We talked with him and he just moved in from South
Carolina to work on the gas plant. He said he wasn't interested in
changing religions, but he did accept a pamphlet, and when we were
across the street he was totally reading intently. : ) Also, we stopped
by Luv and he was home, and we ended up having a lesson on the porch
about prayer and our relationship with God. He is super lonely and
instigated coming to Church. He didn't make it this week, but I think
once we find a friend for him he'll be set. Then we went back and met
with Ashley, and that was super inspired and great.
Whew!
We fed ourselves dinner, and then it was time to run to the Church to
set up the broadcast of the Adult Session of Stake Conference. Sister
Lee made it, so we ended up staying the whole time to watch with her.
I had to snap a photo of the projection to record how much President Hess loved this speaker's talk. Look at the sincerity in that smile! He's so happy!
We tried to see Dale
again that night. Like we probably could have guessed, he seems to be on
the typical rancher schedule of being asleep before 8:45, so no go with
him. We did get a good bonding experience with the dog Sheldon,
though.
Sunday was a nice day. We had Stake
Conference, so they broadcasted it to our Church building. The visiting
General Authorities were Elder and Sister Spackman--I loved Sister
Spackman's talk the most. She is an amazing speaker, and I love how
honest she is about sharing the Gospel. Also, I really liked this
insight from Elder Spackman (an indirect quote); "Most people take at
least seven exposures to the Gospel to decide they want to be a part of
it. A lot of the time we have awesome missionary experiences, but in the
end when the individual doesn't want to be baptized we get down on
ourselves thinking we're not good missionaries. But really, we were
probably their number one or four or six. Missionary work is more about
planting seeds than about reaping harvests." That's something that we
see a lot in every mission, I think.
Cool
story, last night we had about fifteen minutes until we had to be back
in for planning, so I felt like we should try Becky. She wasn't home,
but her sister from Stanton was! We got to meet her and it was
the best! I love it when we go somewhere not knowing exactly why, but
then we get there and realize exactly what we needed. So good. : )
Well, it's been a good week. Lots of lessons, lots of love. Thanks for the emails and prayers!
Well, it's been a good week. Lots of lessons, lots of love. Thanks for the emails and prayers!
Love,
Sister F
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