Dead mice, creepy towns, vicious dogs

Mission picture with Elder Stevenson

The pie that will make me gain 100 pounds

Exchanges with Sis Anderson

Cool wall in Richwood

Hello everyone!
 
This week was great! It was super super busy and lots of cool things happened.

We had 2 lessons with J&M this week and went more in depth with the plan of salvation. It answered a lot of questions they had and they agreed with it. They're awesome. He had to work all day on Sunday, but she was able to come to church! She loved it, as usual. We are going to get them on date this week! They're so prepared it's amazing. We gave her a necklace and she wore it to church.

K. is the less active convert we've been doing service for. We called him one night to check in and we invited him to church as usual. He actually said yes this time though! Apparently this is the most willing he's been since his confirmation. We talked him through how he would get there, what he would wear, etc. We called a few times to remind him and confirm that he's coming. Everything was set!..until he didn't come to church. He said he wasn't able to sleep at all and woke up not feeling good. We were bummed, but we will keep trying! We did service for him on exchanges on Tuesday. He's kinda a hoarder so we helped clean up. I discovered a few garbage cans in his fireplace to catch dripping water. One was full of water. One had 2 recently dead mice. Another had 2 decaying mice. I felt light headed and almost screamed and passed out. Haha life is tough as a missionary. We found this cool jewelry box and he let me have a cool ring that was in it. Thanks!

This week Sister Hansen and I made a companionship goal to be uncompromisingly obedient. It's been cool to see the blessings that come. This will show how serious we were about this. We were at a family's house for dinner. They have a long driveway out in the country. Their next door neighbor has 2 vicious dogs that aren't tied up. The family says they're dangerous dogs. As we were leaving dinner, I was about to back Sister Hansen when they started running toward us. I jumped in the car really quick and we tried to decide what to do. Sister Hansen said we could do an "emergency back" without me having to back her. I said "NO! I'm going to be uncompromisingly obedient!" And I got out of the car and backed her quickly. I left the door open so I could dive in if I needed to. Thankfully, Heavenly Father blessed us for being obedient and the dogs backed off.
 
A less active asked us to come visit her too! Last week we had an awesome discussion and she decided she needs to come back to church. We went bowling with her and a new convert last pday, she had us over for dinner with her and her non member husband, and she came to church! It was great and she felt like she belonged. We made this card game to play with one of our investigator families. It's plan of salvation Uno. We got some old pass a long cards and taped paper to the backs of all of them. We colored them a few colors and wrote "pre earth life, earth life, spirit world, resurrection and judgement, and kingdoms of glory." Basically the same rules as uno apply. Instead of numbers you have to put the things in order. So you can put down either the same color or the next thing in sequence. We played it as part of the dinner message and got the nonmember husband to play too. It was super fun. We were able to discuss the different parts of the plan. He wasn't sure about the pre earth life until his wife pulled out Jeremiah 1:5 and asked him what he thinks it could mean. Let's just say he's going to ask his pastor about it :).

The family that we initially made the game for had a chapel tour set up but two of them got sick! Our member was able to pick up one of them and we still had an awesome time. A fairly recent convert was able to be there and be friends with him. Sadly C. caught whatever his mom and sister had and wasn't able to be at church this week. He'll be there next week and wants to go to mutual this week! They're awesome, we love them! Praying they get feeling better and are less busy so we can meet with them more often.

The fairly recent convert, told us that he feels like we're the sisters who could make progress on teaching his mom. He told us this last Sunday and we were waiting to see if she was willing all week. Finally he called us yesterday and said his mom's heart was softened enough to let us begin with one lesson. She's a truck driver and used to be a prison guard and is pretty intense. She refused to let him get baptized for a really long time. The lesson is in 2 Saturdays and we're pretty excited and nervous. We're praying and praying and will be fasting to know how to best help her.

M. is doing awesome! We played the plan of salvation Uno game with her too. She loves the gospel and is very involved in reactivating and fellowshipping some sisters. We love teaching the new member lessons and getting more members involved with that.

Exchanges were super fun! On Tuesday we had the Powell Sisters here... I got to be with my baby Sister Flora again!! It was so fun to be back together. Haha she said it felt like her training was a dream and we were just invading someone else's area. It was grand. We did lots of service and had fun. Thursday we had the Mansfield Sisters here. I was with Sister Anderson! She came out the same time as Sister Flora and is training now too. She's awesome! There were tons of people out everywhere we went. Of course we talked to everyone! Haha so many awkward situations I don't even remember a specific one. Oh wait. So I prayed that we'd be able to embrace the awkward more. Right when we say amen, a guy pulls into the driveway by the house we're parked in front of. He gets out and we hurry out to talk. It was pretty awkward but he was interested so it was cool. Fun things, I love exchanges!

Holidays. So T., another fairly recently convert, offered to get us a pie for pi day. He got us one from Der Dutchman, a super yummy Amish place. We ate it all week long and it was the greatest pie ever. I also made some apple pies and they were pretty good. St Patrick's day was fun. I wore a green dress and ate lots of green food. Green eggs and milk for breakfast, mint brownies. Also for dinner a few times this week, members fed us corned beef and cabbage. Yay!

Saturday was crazy. Sis Hansen woke up feeling awful so I made some yummy rolls. I'm a chef now btw. We went to this cute sounding town called Magnetic Springs. We were expecting something like radiator springs. Haha nope. It was creeeeepy. We walked around and everything was quiet. We asked this dude if there was a spring or something close by (trying to figure out the name of the town.) He said no, but we could buy a bottle of water for $1 at this one place. So we thought it would be like super cool water that's specially made in magnetic springs. Nope. It was Walmart brand water. The lady working there said magnetic springs used to be a tourist attraction where movie stars and people would come to the bath houses there. They had magic healing water or something weird. Haha idk, but it's definitely not nice anymore. We got weird vibes so we left.

I love being a missionary! Even though sometimes you literally have to run between teaching visits, have companion study during lunch, and do companionship inventory between houses you visit, I love it! I love being able to serve people and bring them closer to Christ.

I'm excited for another busy week! We have exchanges with the Lewis Center Sisters and the Delaware Sisters. It's going to be a blast!!

Love you all!