November 28, 2011

Dear Fam,Hello and Happy Turkey Day...a few days late. I forgot that Thanksgiving was coming up! I hope it was good for yall. I am still full. Sister Welch and I had a really good week.Monday Sister Welch and I went about our business washing clothes, cleaning, writing letters, dealing with angry people (we won't go into details, but sometimes I think the holidays really bring out the worst in people). I got a haircut from a less active in the Woodington ward. She has been starting to come back to church recently. It is really exciting! We worked on our map book in the evening and listened to some cheesy church music (From Cumorah's Hill). It was great!Tuesday we spent a good chunk of time tracting. We went with Sister Joyner on exchanges in the afternoon and contacted some less actives in the area that the bishop had asked us to go by. We met one guy..whose last name was "Guy" and he was very nice. We started talking to him about the church and the he gave us a really confused look so we asked him if he knew about the church he said he didn't, but that some people with the same tags that were boys and stopped by a few weeks ago and he couldn't figure out why we kept coming back, but didn't want to be rude. We told him the situation and he said he hadn't ever gone to the church before. We talked to sister Joyner after we left and come to find out, they had an incident a while back where some missionaries, who are now known as the "kiddie dippers" came and baptized a bunch of kids without teaching them anything or having them come to church or talking with the parents. I am glad I am not in their shoes.In the evening we met with Austin and Kaitlin, who are cousins to Sarah that we have been teaching. We taught them the restoration/gospel of Jesus Christ/commandments with cups that you build into a pyramid to represent Jesus Christ's church. It is such a fun lesson to teach! Austin and Kaitlin both really liked it and they were able to grasp what we were teaching before you could snap your fingers! Their parents are both less active, but they want to start coming back to church. We are so excited for their family. Missionary work really is so fulfilling. It is really really hard sometimes, but when things finally start to work out, it's the best thing ever! Wednesday's district meeting was amazing as usual. Elder Thatcher is a really good district leader. We read in Doctrine and Covenants 42:6-8; 12-17. We discussed about how we can be able to think outside the box and think of new finding ideas..since ours aren't working as effectively as they could be. There is a better way to do missionary work than to spend your whole day tracting. That is what I have been learning...for quite a while now. We read about going westward and Sister Welch and I decided that we may or may not be reading into the scripture to much, but that we were going to go westward in our area to find new people to teach. We also talked about working with the youth. They are such good missionaries! We decided to go to Albertson after district meeting and we did some work out there without any immediate results. However, we were able to meet with Claire. She is working towards getting her marriage papers sent to Mexico so she can get a marriage license..and then she can work towards being baptized! She is so solid! We have been texting her a scripture every day and she has been reading them everyday and she bought a notebook to take notes and write down impressions she has been recieving. She doesn't even need a mission president to tell her to do that. She just does it. I look up to her a lot and I think she has taught me more than I have taught her. We were talking about Alma 32 and she related the seed to her children and how she wants them to grow up in the church. I thought, "wow." I don't think I would have ever thought of that.Thursday was Happy Thanksgiving Day! We normally do weekly planning that day. So, since we weren't allowed to do proselyting that day, we did weekly planning. Sister Welch and I decided to build a fort in our apartment and we did weekly planning in our fort. Then, we went to the church to practice the piano ( I get to play a piece for a christmas contata in the Woodington ward...woot!) The elders told the people that they were eating lunch/dinner with that we didn't have a lunch/dinner...after we had eaten our delicious lunch of corndogs and chips with guacamole. (We had a supper for the evening. There is breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner-around 2ish, and then there is supper-around 6 or 7ish) Anyways, they basically demanded that we drop everything we were doing and come over and eat there. So, our agency was obviously removed from the situation and we went and ate Thanksgiving #1. I tried turnip greens. I almost barfed. Luckily I had a lot of potatoes so I just mixed them in and it wasn't so bad. After talking with the Floyd family for about 2 hours we headed to our supper (aka Thanksgiving #2) and ate some more food there. They even had mac n' cheese as part of their thanksgiving. We ate fried turkey, fried cornbread, collards, and lots of other buttery fried things that I don't even know the names of. It was really good. I think I felt my arteries clogging as I ate though.Friday we decided to pursue our "going westward" to see if we had better luck. We headed out to Beullaville and we met a lady named Lisa who was waiting at her door for us. She let us in and told us that her sister is a member in the Woodington ward. She wants to know more about the Book of Mormon and she's just a great lady. We are very excited to meet with her again. Her husband wasn't there, but hopefully he will want to participate as well.Saturday we met with a less active and had a good lesson with her and on sunday we had five people come to church!Sarah is getting baptized this saturday and she is really excited. (rightfully so...)My time is up, but I hope you know I love you. You are in my prayers always!Love,Sister J