Monday, July 21, 2014: First Week in Meridian

Good morning! 

This week has been really good! I'm liking Meridian a lot, although I'm still adjusting to the fact that I'm now in my fourth area on the mission. Pretty weird. I'm thinking I'll only have one area after this and then I'll be finished! unless President plans to keep me in an area for only one transfer from now on, in which case I've got a few to go. :P

But I think Meridian will be good for me! The ward is a little smaller than the ones I've been in in the past but it's kind of fun that way. And I love Sister White! I think we'll get along just fine. She's the sort of person who's pretty chill about everything so she's pretty easy to work with. She only came out six weeks after than me too, so we're pretty close in mission age. 

I'm wondering if every week here will be as different as this one was. We were doing a lot of service this week, and there were transfers, and I was sick for half of it, so overall it was kind of interesting. 

Tuesday--Transfers! I said my goodbyes to Sister Cook and Sister Hansen (and Sister Dailey--she's so far away from me now! *sob*) and headed off to Meridian! There really wasn't much time left in our P-Day by the time we got here so we had lunch, did a little more emailing, and grocery shopped. Then we had dinner at the Bryants and helped load some food storage boxes into the Slaughter's (Bishop's family) home. Bahaha. They're a funny family. When I shook Bishop's hand he greeted me and said, "Welcome to the Slaughter house." Very clever. :)

Wednesday--We had district meeting and then went to the Slaughters to help sort the food storage. Just a little back story for you: the Mitchells, a family in the ward who are in the process of moving (more about that later too) had a ton of food storage boxes they wouldn't be able to fit in their trailer, so they donated it to the ward, and Bishop selected twelve families to give some of the boxes too. So we spent the afternoon working out what was going with who and pushing boxes back and forth and whatnot and learning about all the weird food storage stuff you can get from the church. Did anyone else know you can get dehydrated tuna/sausage for your food storage? I sure didn't. Oh, and we stole some of the good stuff for ourselves. The hot cocoa mix is really good :) 

Thursday--We tracted and tried potentials for a long time. We currently don't have too many investigators; Meridian has a ton of less-actives though so that's kind of what the bishop has wanted us to focus on a lot. That evening we had dinner with the Blaylocks. I think I'm going to like that family a lot. Sister Blaylock is really cool; she went to school for deaf education, which I'm planning on going into, but ended up going the speech pathology route instead (which I've also considered) so we had a good conversation with that. She's also into pottery, which is one form of art I've never gotten to try before but have always kind of wanted to! She says one P-Day she's gonna show us how which I'm pumped for! 

Friday--My throat had been a little scratchy on Wednesday and Thursday, but I woke up on Friday with my throat so sore I could barely swallow or talk. Not too surprising, since that happens to me about a million times a year. I got ready and did my personal study but ended up forgoing weekly planning and going back to bed. That afternoon we went the Slaughters to deliver the food storage to a few families and then they fed us dinner. They take good care of us; it seems like every time we leave their house we always come home with more food! 

Saturday--We set our morning aside to help Sister Mitchell out. See, the Mitchells are wanting to move to Panama City (not sure why exactly) but they're not able to move there yet and they've already sold their house, so their moving temporarily to a trailer where they can live month to month until they're able to move to Panama City. So we spent a lot of Saturday helping Sister Mitchell clean out her pantry. It was lots of fun, and we managed to acquire a good amount of food out of it for ourselves, too. I'm pretty sure we're set as far as food goes for a while. 

Sunday--First Sunday in a new ward! Those are always fun. A small young family who has moved down from Arkansas came to church seeking some help, so after church Sister White and I had the opportunity to go with Sister Caraway, the relief society president, to get some of the things they needed. Kind of a different Sunday, but fun. And pretty neat to see how the church welfare system works and what goes on "behind the scenes" and stuff. Then we went to the Slaughter's for dinner and talked to some of the youth about the role they play in missionary work--which I love to do! I feel like the youth have so many opportunities to do missionary work in their regular lives and it's something I wish I would have done more of when I was younger so I love getting them excited about it. 

And...that's my week! No pictures this time I'm afraid. Next time for sure :) 

I realized something interesting about myself this week. As I've been making conversation with Sister White, I realized that most of the stories I tell her have to do with Clinton, Red Star (LOTS of Red Star) Picayune, and my companions. I talk a lot more now about my mission experiences than my home life because, well...that was forever and doesn't seem very real anymore! it sort of a weird feeling but it's good, too. It makes me feel like I've been out long enough and I've had enough experiences that I know what I'm doing a little better than I used to :) 

New Address

2805 Willow Bend Dr

Meridian, MS 39301

Tuesday, July 16, 2014: Curve Balls

Those of you who regularly check my blog might remember that last week I said I might be moving. And I am...across Mississippi! Ha ha. I definitely didn't see that coming! But it's true, I'm leaving Clinton already. I'll be going to Meridian with Sister White, and Sister Hansen and Sister Cook will be staying here. President McDonough is really trying to get rid of trios, and I guess he decided this was the best way to do it for us. It's still kind of weird, though. Staying in an area for only one transfer is pretty unusual, at least for our mission. After we got off the phone with President on Saturday Sister Cook made the comment, "You've had more curve balls thrown at you on your mission than any missionary I've ever known." And it's kind of true! Ever since President changed my assignment from Wesson to Red Star on the way to transfer point six months ago I feel like he's thrown all kinds of curve balls at me and I don't really know why. It's definitely keeping me on my toes. I won't even write "Meridian" on the inside of my planner yet because I'm afraid he might change his mind at the last minute!

 

But in a weird way all of these curve balls have strengthened my testimony that God is in the little details of everything. Even though I didn't get to be in Clinton very long I learned a lot. 

 

So with that, I'll be letting you know how my first week goes very soon! Can't wait to see what's ahead!

One day we were walking along and all of a sudden these ducks just waddled by. Kind of random! And they weren't scared of us at all.

Me glaring at Sister Hansen. I asked her to take a picture of me with one of the ducks pretty much touching my fingers, but she waited too long and missed the chance. :P

 Brother Kynerd and his sister, Carol (she's the sweetest lady ever)

Danielle, who will be getting baptized very soon :)

Monday, July 7, 2014: Fourth of July and Other Stuff

Is it really P-Day already?! This week went so fast! 

I'm going to have to be quick about this post because we're getting our emailing done a little later than usual and we still have lots to do today. But my dad said he liked it when I broke down my week, so I'm going to go ahead and do that again and if it's full of typos I'm sorry! 

Monday--I finally managed to get my permanent retainer fixed! The glue came off of part of it a long while ago so I really needed to get it taken care of. Uninteresting for all of you people? Maybe. But to me it was one of God's tender mercies because I just so happen to be in Clinton where Brother Boone lives, and he's a dentist. So he was willing to fix my retainer and it thankfully didn't cost me a cent! Thank goodness! The world is full of such good people :) 

Tuesday--We went to see Brother Kynerd and Carol, two of my favorite people. Brother Kynerd had us make a tomato sandwich--just a sandwich with tomatoes, salt and pepper, and mayonnaise (unless you're me) I've never seen him eat one before, but for some reason it made me think of my dad. Probably just because we used some really yummy homegrown tomatoes :) 

Wednesday--There was no district meeting this week, so we had a full day! We also had a few appointments that were going to be far away on Thursday, so we decided to have Thirsty Thursday on Wednesday! Yuck. I don't think I'm ever going to like biking. Especially when it's hot and sweaty and humid! 

 

First we went to see Brother Patterson and shared the spiritual thought I should have shared on Sunday. I think it went well :) We did a pretty good amount of tracting and then that evening we went to dinner at Sister Lewis'! Her son Charlie offered to feed us, and oh my heavens, it was so good! He cooked a bunch of pork and chicken on the grill for us and he did a fantastic job. They also invited over their neighbors which was a great missionary opportunity for us! Especially considering we'd tracted their street a few weeks before so even though I didn't recognize them I'm sure they recognized us! I think having dinner with them and getting to talk to them showed that we missionaries are normal people (for the most part). One of the couples even said they wanted to take us out for lunch sometime! I hope we'll be seeing more of them. 

Thursday--We tracted in Jackson! (A small portion of Jackson is in my area) We were hoping since it was a holiday lots of people would be home with their families, but we tracted for three hours and almost no one answered the door! Kind of disappointing. But as we were walking back to our car we passed a family that was playing Two Square (Yes, two square, not four square--don't ask me what it is) together, so we talked to the mother a bit about the Book of Mormon and she was interested in hearing more! Woohoo! So if we get to teach that family, then all of that tracting was worth it. :) 

Our dinner appointment that night ended up falling through, so I decided we needed to throw a party ourselves! We cooked some hot dogs and roasted marshmallows over the stove. We even tried to watch fireworks when we heard them going off, but even though they were shooting them off only a few blocks away, we couldn't see them. Mississippi just has so many trees! 

Friday--Weekly planning, then we went to see Danielle with Sister Carr. I think it was a really good visit. Also, Danielle has a friend she talked to a little bit about the gospel. It would be really cool if we could start teaching her! 

Saturday--We did a LOT of tracting and contacting. A lot. It was exhausting! But good. We're really trying to find more investigators so that's going to take a lot of searching. Saturday went a lot like the fourth of July; nobody answered or let us in for a long time but at the very end one lady let us right in. She acted like she knew us, but we were sure we didn't know her. Finally we just admitted we weren't sure who she was. Turns out, she had been taking care of Sister Cronin, a lady in our ward who had just died, for five years! She came to the funeral and she's been to our church a few times, so she recognized us. We told her a little about the Book of Mormon and she was very eager to start reading it. She says she's ready to hear the truth. This lady has been so prepared! I think really good things are going to happen with her. :)

Sunday--We had dinner with all of the Boones, which is something they do every week. We weren't really sure what we were going to share with them so we picked a verse from the Book of Mormon and invited them to share a Book of Mormon with someone they know. We offered to give them a Book of Mormon if they needed one. To our surprise, several of them said they would like one, and told us about someone they knew who they had been meaning to give a Book of Mormon to. We ended up placing four Book of Mormons that day--and those who didn't take one said they had a copy at home and they would find someone to give it to! Honestly, I wasn't expecting that. I've planned out some pretty detailed lessons challenging members to share what they believe and had nothing come of it. But we simply bore out testimonies of the converting power of the Book of Mormon and a lot of people took the challenge! Pretty cool! 

 

Also Danielle surprised us by coming to church on Sunday! She was supposed to be going to Arkansas so we weren't expecting to see her there! And she told us she had a surprise, but she wasn't going to tell us what it was. Well, actually she said, "Fine, I'll tell you. I'm leaving the church." Well, she's also told us she was going back to her old church and that she's started smoking again before, and was completely joking, so I wasn't buying it. Finally, after using my best pestering abilities, she said, "Fine! I'm thinking about getting baptized one the 27th!" Oh my heavens! We absolutely screamed! :D That lady is crazy. I love her so much :) 

Well, those are pretty much the highlights of my week! Sorry it's so long! 

Oh, and I finally have a picture for you guys:

Ah, the south. I'm going to miss seeing stuff like this on a regular basis when I go home! 

 

Also, I'm probably going to be moving out this week, so for now just send any mail you have for me to the mission address!

Monday, June 30, 2014

This week I learned a lesson about following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. I experienced two instances where I was distinctly prompted to do something. The first time was when we went to see a lady named Lori. She's someone the missionaries used to teach, and we've been knocking on her door ever since I got to Clinton. I was starting to think I'd never get to meet her, but we had a few extra minutes on Thursday so we decided to knock on her door one last time. To my surprise the door opened! We ended up having a really good lesson with her. She started crying at the beginning and told us she knew God kept bringing us back because she was home last time we knocked on her door, but it was a bad day for her so she didn't let us in. Then she said, "I know God is watching over me because you didn't have to keep coming back, but you did anyway." As the lesson went on the thought just kept coming back to me, "You have to invite her to be baptized." I didn't really know what her back story with the past missionaries was, but I did it anyway. She said yes, and we set her with a tentative date. It wasn't until after we left that I found out they'd invited her to be baptized the last time they taught her before she disappeared, and even though she was excited about their message she said no. but I guess since then she's had a change of heart and she's realized how important this is! Pretty cool!

The second experience happened yesterday. Every Sunday we go with the elders to see Brother Patterson, a man in the ward who is in an assisted living center. As my companions and I were driving there we discussed what spiritual message we should share with him and I started flipping through my scriptures to see what I could find. I ended up turning to a quote i'd stuck in there a few years back. I had the thought that that was what we needed to share with him, but it didn't exactly go together with what we'd already planned to teach. So I decided not to say anything. We ended up sharing a thought on prayer, which turned out pretty good, and he asked us if we would come back on Wednesday, which is unusual, because we normally only come on Sundays. He started to cry, and explained that it was the anniversary of the day his daughter had died. I was shocked. The topic I'd considered sharing with him from the quote in my scriptures would have been exactly what he needed to hear. I wish I would have shared it with him when I was first prompted to, but I'm grateful that I have a chance to go back this week and fix the mistake I made. 

 

Sometimes I get frustrated because I feel like I never seem to get any spiritual promptings, but I think the real problem is I'm just not heeding the quiet whisperings of the Spirit enough. The more you listen to those whisperings, the more able you are to recognize them as promptings--which entitles you to receiving more promptings! That's definitely something I want to work at, because I'd much rather leave a lesson feeling grateful for doing what I felt I should do than leaving regretting what I didn't do.