Monday, March 16, 2015: The Last Blog Post

Well, folks, this will most likely be the last post I will make on here as a full time missionary. I can't believe it's coming to an end! 

The Laurel branch has only one of your usual jumpsuits for baptism, so we had to dig through a closet of white shirts and pants they've collected for David and Nathan. During our search we discovered the biggest pants I think I've ever seen. Sister Stacey and I could literally fit inside them together. If ever I am feeling fat, I will refer to these pictures. :)

 

For the last few weeks of my mission I am seeing miracles and blessings everywhere. David and Brittany were baptized and confirmed on Friday! It was a really good service and they were so happy! I know they're both going to do amazing things in their life. I can't wait to see where they end up :)

 

That was the highlight of our week! The rest of the week was full of other adventures, one of which I will be sharing in my homecoming talk. Crazy! Even though missions seem to go by slow sometimes I can't believe it's really almost over. I don't even know how I feel! I'm so sad to leave President and Sister McDonough and all the missionaries and the investigators and the southern culture and everything! I'm freaked out about being a real person again and having to apply for school and find a job and stuff. I can't wait to watch Frozen and be with my sisters and wear pants and play my ukulele! Agh! So many emotions going on in my brain. For now I'm just going to enjoy this last week and work as hard as I possible can! For those of you reading this in Mississippi I will miss you so so much. Don't worry, this isn't goodbye forever. :) For those of you reading this in Utah, I can't wait to see you again!

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Ok! So first, pictures and tender mercies:

Tuesday we had transfers, so we went with the elders to T-Point so we could say goodbye to a few friends who are leaving us once again. While we waited for new people to come, we went with Sister Frandsen (another sister in our district) to email and get lunch at Tophers, which turns out to be one of the best burger places in Mississippi! It was really good, and the manager apparently likes missionaries a lot so he was nice to us. He told us if he had sons, he's let us marry them :P

Wednesday was getting to play Resto Jenga with Jayden, this awesome young woman in our ward, and Hailley, one of our investigators. This game lasted longer than any game I've ever played--and believe me, I've played this more than a few times on my mission. Finally when there were absolutely no more pieces that could be safely moved Jayden carefully removed a piece that should have made the whole thing fall--but it didn't! Instead it slanted and stayed firm. Then I took out the other side and behold, it remained standing! If you look you can still see the two pieces close to the top impossibly standing on top of each other. That was just a funny thing and I was so grateful to have Jayden there to be a friend for our investigator.

Friday evening we got called by the young women asking if we could help them out with something. We came to the church to find strawberries for days all over the kitchen! Turns out they were making chocolate covered strawberries to give to the women in the branch for a fundraiser (they'd told the priesthood men about it ahead of time and they'd secretly ordered a dozen strawberries for their wives--it was pretty sneaky cause I hadn't heard a thing about it). We don't have a ton of youth in the branch--actually Jayden is technically the only active young woman right now--so they were a little shorthanded. We had tons of fun helping and they even sent us home with a few strawberries for ourselves--you know, just to make sure they weren't poisoned or anything. Don't worry, they were perfectly safe and they didn't even last the night.

Saturday we had a Johnny Lingo night at the church! Fun fact, did you know that's actually not a commonly known movie outside of Utah? I thought you were required to watch Johnny Lingo before you could be a member of this church! :P So Sister Stacey and I got a good kick out of watching everyone's reactions to this super old, super cheesy movie. Then afterwards we decorated cookies in the cultural hall. We had a ton of investigators there so I'd say it was a successful night!

And I'll just go ahead and include yesterday in this post so I don't forget next week. Sister Stacey and I decided to use some of our P-Day shopping for stuff we'd both been hoping to find for a while. Most importantly, I was on a hunt for a Mississippi necklace. So we went to a couple of southern antique shops in hopes that they would find something. In the upstairs section of one of the shops, we found this little gem among a bunch of odds and ends: a Utah plate, with the Salt Lake City temple on it (ignore the mad woman to the left who looks like she got rained on--we weren't gonna let a little storm stop us from our search!) Crazy! Oh, and I found my Mississippi necklace. It only cost 9 bucks too, which is pretty good, since most of the ones I've found have been around 30 dollars. I'm too cheap to pay that much so I was so happy about finding this one, which just so happens to be the one I like the most out of all the ones I've seen, too.

That's all for this week! Thanks for tuning in!

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Tender mercies of this week:

Monday was just a crazy, crazy day that didn't go at all how we planned! We were supposed to have a zone P-Day in Hattiesburg but instead we had an adventurous day of driving on roads that are apparently only meant for golf carts, getting lost on Southern Mississippi campus, losing my companion on an elevator, and a whole bunch of other crazy things that ultimately led to us completely missing out on zone P-Day, the whole reason we were in Hattiesburg in the first place! Long story. But there was one thing that did go according to plan: we were able to go to Books-A-Million and I found myself another journal since I seem to be in the habit of getting very small journals and filling them up way too quickly! 

Tuesday I got a letter from my little sister with my decorated planner covers in it! I guess it doesn't matter how long I'm on my mission; mail still makes me very, very happy. 

Wednesday we were taking to Taco Bell by a member. I've only been there once so it was a bit of an adventure. Turns out they've got a quote on every hot sauce packet. I looked at this one and got really excited because this has been my personal motto for the past couple of years: Do it with passion or not at all. I believe that whatever you do in life, you should be passionate about it, otherwise there's no point doing it. And being the missionary that I am, I think that goes along perfectly with sharing the gospel. One of my companions told me about two missionaries who had gotten very rote in their tracting. They knocked on a door and gave their presentation of who they were and what they were doing. The woman who answered looked at them blankly for a moment and said, "You don't care about what you've got to offer, so why should I?" And then she shut the door. I've tried to keep that in mind as I spread the gospel with others. The Book of Mormon is the most important book they could possibly have in their hands, filled with the most important truths there are in the world, so I'd better show by my actions that it's important to me. 

Friday we had dinner with a guy in our ward and his girlfriend, who he's been trying to share the gospel with. You might say we sort of gospel jumped her last time we saw her (we thought we were supposed to be sharing the restoration with her but her boyfriend hadn't told her anything about it yet...oops) so this time was a little more relaxed to show her we're not complete weirdos! It was a fun night. We made hobo dinners and played Bananagramz, which turns out to be really fun! 

Saturday was great because we were finally, finally able to go tracting! It was awesome! We went out on this country road and it was such a beautiful day. We had some fantastic weather this week and I felt so blessed because of it because warm weather makes me so happy! We were also protected that day...we were talking to this lady on the porch and she asked where our car was. We said it was down the road and she said, "Really? You are lucky because we have a couple of dogs that will just tear you apart." Well, we were walking away and three dogs ran up to us, barking and bearing their teeth. We turned to the lady and said, "I think we found them!" So the lady told us to get on her porch and she'd get her shoes on and walk us away. So she did. And it was scary. Did I mention I've been afraid of big dogs ever since I got knocked down by a couple of strays when I was a little girl? Well...yep! That's definitely a thing! But we were protected. I'm definitely gonna have to invest in some pepper spray before I get back out there. 

And that pretty much sums up the last week of the transfer! I'm now entering into the last six weeks of my mission! Agh! Crazy! Every time I say it, it doesn't feel real. Sister Stacey and I are staying together, so I'm happy about that. So excited to enjoy our last transfer together!

Monday, February 2, 2015: Tender Mercies

 Last week we taught a youth Sunday School class for Sister Foote. I'll just say this about that experience: I'd take teaching my 5-6 year old primary class back home over teaching teenagers any day! It was an adventure for sure. We talked about tender mercies the Lord gives us and challenged them to take a picture every day that week of a tender mercy they had seen. They flat out said no! But I thought it was a really good idea so...I decided I'd do it myself. In fact I think I'm gonna do it for the rest of my mission! This way I'll actually bother to update my blog for the next 2 months are so and you guys can see little snippets of Sister Glenn's final adventures in Mississippi. 

So here are my tender mercies from this week. I did miss a few days, but most of them are covered! 

Tuesday I went on exchanges to Oakgrove with Sister Cooper. While tracting we knocked on the door of the sweetest lady! She says she always carries rocks with her in her pocket and when she sees someone having a hard time, she gives them a rock and tells her it's a stress reliever. Then she tells them about her Stress Reliever and Rock, Jesus Christ. Pretty cool! The best part is she says when she doesn't have rocks on her she can still find them anywhere, just like we can still get help from the Savior wherever we go. Oh, and she gave us each a rock before we said goodbye! 

Wednesday Sister Stacey and I had to go to CVS to get a heating pad to help her stomach. While we were there we discovered a mongo giant sale for all the candy you could ever think of...so Sister Stacey ended up walking out of there having spent almost as much on candy as she did for her heating pad! She's hilarious. But she gave these kisses to me and thanked me for helping her and being there for her this transfer. I don't really think I've done anything spectacular, but it sure made me happy :) 

On Friday we got a call from Sister Foote, the branch president's wife. She said she had a feeling she should call us and asked how Sister Stacey was really doing. She admitted she wasn't doing very good. Then Sister Foote said she understood because she's been having stomach problems too and she imagined since it's the end of the month, we were probably scraping the bottom of the barrel and therefore Sister Stacey was probably eating things that weren't great on her stomach. So she said, "I'm going to go to the store and get you some things that will be better for your stomach. So this is everything she brought by! And it really was a blessing because with the prescriptions and doctor visits we've both had to pay for, we were sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel like she thought. Thank goodness we have such kind people in the world who follow the promptings of the Spirit. 

Saturday Laurel had it's very first Mardi Gras parade! Probably the only one I'll ever go to cause it's family friendly, ha ha. It was a lot of fun! We went with a recent convert and a few of her friends. The parades threw out bead necklaces and small toys so that was fun!