Because the picture didn't come until after I finished
emailing last week.....
Yeah. one of the best moments of my life. :D
Anyways....
so, Monday night. We had FHE with the Chestnuts again,
and we talked about the Plan of Salvation. Owen, the oldest boy, who
is.... about 9 I think, was cute. He kept going off on tangents that
didn't fully relate to what we were talking about, so we had to ask him to hold
off all questions until the end of the lesson. So, we finished the
lesson, and he's about ready to burst with a question. So we
opened the lesson up to questions, and he asks "What happens when there's
a really mean guy that comes in and kills all of your family and all you want
to do is take revenge?"
There was this part of me that wanted to laugh, and another
part of me that was touched by the sincerity of his question. So we
carefully explained that the Atonement of Christ can help us with everything,
including getting over wanting to take revenge to a mean guy that kills your
entire family. We then asked him to pray about it to see if what we
taught him was true, and he said he would. It'll be interesting to see
what he says about his experience tonight. :)
Thursday was awesome!
We started out with going to the Blanchards. We serve
them every Thursday, because Sister Blanchard has some health problems and
needs help keeping up with her kids. So, sometimes we help clean or
organize. Or there's weeks like this week where we do this:
These are the really fun weeks, where we just need to
distract the kids so that Sister Blanchard can get something done (They're 11,
9, 5, and 3). This week we swept up the patio, then played with the
kids. It was pretty fun. :)
After playing.... I mean... working with the Blanchards, we
went home, changed, and walked down to Kims house to have dinner with
her. She made this really yummy sauce with tomato sauce, Cream of
mushroom soup, mushrooms, and shrimp. And it was all on top of
noodles. Mmmmmm.... so good! :D And guess what, guess
what?!?! When I walked in, I looked at her little table thing that was by
the door, and on the bottom shelf of it, there was a Book of Mormon! :D
She wants us to keep coming back too, so Sister Stevens and I plan to
invite her to give the church a second chance and take the lessons again.
We then had splits on Thursday night, so that Sister Stevens
could go see James Klemmons while I went and saw Karisma Woods. And oh my
goodness, can I just say that I love splits?! It means that we actually
have work to do! :D Anyways, so I went to the Woods home with Sister
Moral, and we went over the first three lessons with her to see how much she
understood. She actually remembered a lot! I was pretty
impressed! I think having the visual aids we made for her this past week
helped her remember more. Anyways, we have to push her baptismal date
back, just because there is so much information in the last two lessons, but
we're hoping that she'll be baptized around the end of December.
Oh! And I forgot, when we were walking home from the
Blanchards, we started talking to this guy outside who was restoring a
Mustang. His name is Blaine, and he's a retired cop. He doesn't
really believe in God-- he pointed out how in law enforcement you either don't
believe in Him because of all the things you see or your belief is the only
thing that can keep you rooted and same. But he was really friendly, and
said that he might come to the stakes "Meet the Mormons" program just
to see. Anyways, he was super nice and cool, and has the sweetest pit
bull. :) We're hoping to see him again soon.
After Zone Meeting on Friday, which was awesome, we went to
this older less-active couple, the Hellyers, and started re-teaching them the
lessons. It was really good-- there was a nice spirit, and we got to
learn about Sister Hellyer's conversion story. But I made the mistake of
singing them a song when we saw them Tuesday, so now I think I'm going to have
to find a song for every lesson. Oops. Oh well, they're just a
super sweet couple. I wish they could come to church, but I don't think
their health would permit that. :(
We also saw the Pitts on Friday, like we always do.
Well, sort of. It moved from Wednesday to Friday. Anyways, we
taught David about Missionary work, and he's super excited! He wants to
be a missionary so bad! He cracks me up. He's so stinking
cute. And he was happy that he can be a missionary NOW.
We also saw the Higleys on Friday and talked about what it
was like living in China. It was really interesting to hear about school
there, because most kids go to private schools and have dorms for middle school
and high school. Also, Sister Higley is an awesome baker! She LOVES
to bake, which is sort of odd because most Chinese people don't have ovens (can
you imagine that? No homemade cookies, no homemade cakes!). But
yeah, the Higleys are great. :)
Saturday was.... interesting. So, this upcoming
Wednesday, we're in charge of Mutual for the 10th ward. So, we spent
pretty much all day preparing for that. We got the lists of all of the
Young Men and Women (after much begging through the entire week), separated
them all into Companions, Districts, and Zones, complete with District and Zone
Leaders, and typed up mini mission calls for everyone. And it was a
miracle that we had all day to do all of this, because we needed all day to do
so. Every single one of our Saturday appointments, except for dinner,
cancelled. Every single one of them. It was crazy. The whole
all appointments cancelling and trying to put the youth into
companionships. I can't even imagine the stress President Cannon goes
through when transfers come! It was fun, but a little stressful. But
still fun. :)
And on Sunday, we gained a new Bishopric for 10th
Ward. Which means that Brother Jepsen is no longer the 2nd
counselor. I'm kind of sad about it. But our new bishopric will be
pretty awesome. :) The new bishop, Bishop Trautman, used to be a Ward
Mission Leader (from what I've understood), and both of his counselors,
Brothers Higbee and Patterson, are great men to work with. I'm excited
for this change. :) But I'll miss Brother Jepsens comments in Ward
Council Meeting.
And to round out the week, I have a great story to tell you.
So, Sisters Branham and Wasden sent us a text during church,
asking if we were going to go. And we were like "go where?"
Well, through 3 hours of phone tag, we learned that our District Leader
had sent a text to them, saying that President Cannon had invited the entire
district over to have ice cream at their house that night! And we were
like "Uh..... we never got that." So the sisters freaked out,
thinking that it was the Elders pranking them, so they called President
Cannon. Well, turns out that it was no joke, so we all went over to
President Cannon's and had ice cream at his house. It was pretty fun to
spend the last hour of our Sunday with President and Sister Cannon, eating ice
cream, with the rest of our District. :) Apparantly, we're the first
District to be invited over by President Cannon to have ice cream with
them. They were talking about how they wanted to have their missionaries
over to their home more often, so we were kind of the guinea pigs for
this. Pretty awesome, yeah? :)
Anyways, I love y'all! As you can tell, things here in
Kuna are going great. I love it here, and I'll be sad when I have to
leave it behind. :(
Hope y'all's week is going good! Keep the Faith
everyone!
Love,
Sister Empey
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