Um, sister brown is not gone YET, she
goes home Tuesday night on the red eye. My new companion will
be.....sister chan from hong kong. So excited. She is super fun and
spunky and chatty and wears the cutest clothes. I need to get my alaksan
drivers license and be the designated driver. She is senior companion
but just can't drive. Send me auntie bonnie's address, I want to write
her in China and tell her! I get sister Chan on Tuesday.
It has been a lovely week, we got two new
investigators, the Woman In The Store and the Guy Who Showed Up At
Church. The Woman In The Store runs the shop with her husband. It's a
preparedness shop full of dried food, food storage, knives, sleeping
bags that roll up real tiny and keep you warm in zero degrees, and my
favorite, dried mango cubes. We taught her last Thursday, standing on
either side of the counter, in the morning before customers tend to come
in. She has looots of questions. She is getting religious stuff from
everywhere, searching and searching for truth. While we were there
another guy came in and gave her dvds on other religious stuff. She says
she is soo confused. She just wants to know what's right. She is
freaking out, for instance, about her personal worthiness before God
because she worships the sabbath on a sunday, and she knows that it is
one of the ten commandments to keep the sabbath day holy, but what if
that really is on a saturday and the 7th day adventists are right, but
she went to one of their services and it just wasn't for her. I tried
sharing some scriptures about how Peter or Paul, can't remember which,
brake bread and taught the gospel to the other disciples on the "first
day of the week" after Christ's resurrection which was on a Sunday which
is why we now keep the sabbath day on Sunday, which is technically NOT
the sabbath but the Lord's day......look it up in the bible dictionary.
But she was still just like, "I dunno..." Sister brown felt such
compassion for her and said, "It breaks my heart that you are so
confused. It is not what the Lord wants to have us be confused." She
read John 14:26-27 to show her that He wants to give us peace and that
the gospel can give us peace. Peace of mind. So cool. And her husband is
like kinda not anti, but a little bit, so she was saying at the end of
the lesson--already--"If I join your church though, I am worried about
what my husband would think" and things like that .Crazy she is already
thinking about that. Luckily there are miracles after people show great
faith. He will always provide a way.
The Guy Who Showed Up at Church is awesome. We met
with him Thursday evening. Usually in a first meeting we have to ask
questions about a person's religious beliefs, see how religion has
played a role in their life, see where their faith in Christ is, just so
that we may be able to have an idea of where the person is coming from
and how to teach them. Well, this guy said, "I just wanna lay it all
out," and talked and talked all about that stuff, and let us know
without us having to ask, and said he has always felt this "positive
energy" around members of our faith before, and he just wants to be
Christlike and learn about this gospel. It was awesome. We gave him a
restoration pamphlet and he said, "I will read this tonight."
Unfortunately, neither of these people showed up at
church, sad. For the Woman In The Store that wasn't surprising but for
the Guy Who Showed Up At Church, for him now not to fulfill his nickname
was sad. He lives with an older lady and kinda takes care of her, he
just got a job at the hospital and is supporting his family back in
California--in Irvine! hahha--and apparently she was sick on Sunday and
he was taking care of her and he texted us this as well: "Also I haven't
bought a suit yet. LOL." Um, that is not COMPLETELY NECESSARY my
goodness.
La mujer mexicana didn't show up at church either.
For some reason we haven't been able to get a lesson with her lately.
And tonight, sista brown's LAST night, we are supposed to have a lesson
with her, but she hasn't texted us back to confirm, and we are like oh
my goodness what is happening? So sad.
Sighhh.
Weird, it is
negative eight degrees. It's been like ten degrees lately. It doesn't
feel too much different except as you walk you're like, "Man, my legs
are cold, maybe I shoulda worn wool tights" and when you breathe your
nose hairs freeze together. Yep it's pretty exciting.
Our ward mission leader anounced over the puplit
last Sunday that Sister Brown looooves reeses peanut butter cups, so she
has been inundated with them as good-bye gifts from everyone in the
ward. Hahhaha.
We are supposed to like, go on a hike today, hahaha,
I hope it actually happens. Our investigator who dropped us wanted to
do something with us today so we are gonna hopefully go on a hike with
him, with carleen who is a member and she is awesome and took more
pictures of us yesterday, and with the zone leaders....the rest of the
elders are thiiiinking about it.
We had a couple of good lessons with less active
women lately, they both opened up to us a bit more, we found out why one
of them hasn't come to church in about six weeks. She is a lovely
woman. We go see her every Sunday evening.
A member family had us come shovel their neighbor's
walk the other day. Apparently he went n talked to her outside a few
days before and asked how her husband was and she burst into tears, her
husband had died last August. Bro. Gilbert had no idea. So he had us
come shovel her driveway and she came to the door when she heard the
sounds, and invited us in for coffee, but we got girl scout cookies
instead, what the heck. Bro. Gilbert's 5-yr-old kid who is awesome, he
reads the book of mormon word by word to us and highlights things,
hasn't complete comprehension about what he's reading yet but he is so
motivated, anyway he was there helping us as well. The woman is very
sweet, reminds me of Julie Monroe's mother in looks. She has lots of old
books, like from the 20s and 30s, like my lovely mom. She doesnt' like
new books or new authors, there is too much "stuff" in them. She lived
in Germany for a couple of decades. She plays piano. I told her I could
come back sometime and play her a concert and she said I was more than
welcome to. Bro. Gilbert asked us later if, as a friend, he could
introduce her to one of our doctrines, the fact that families can be
together even after death, and we said yes yes please do, member
missionaries are soo important.
Anyway it has been a lovely week. I will keep you
posted next week about my new companion. And what it will be like
driving on the snow.
I will miss Sister Brown a
lot, we've had the most hilarious times. We have learned so much from
each other about communication and everything. We know we were put
together for a reason, the Lord knows us so well. We make a lot of
videos on my camera. Mom n Dad when I sent my last memory card, did the
videos get transferred to the computer? This is very important
information. I want to know if I send home the card and then when I get
it back if it's okay to delete those videos to make more room, as long
as there's a copy of them on the computer back home. Hahhahaaaa.
LOVE YOU ALL.
xoxox
sister ashblink
love it. love all of it.
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