July 20, 2015

Okey doke, so my week...

Last Monday Sister Vargas actually was here!! She came up with another pair of Missionaries for a Doctors appointment! It was so good to see her. I miss her tons!! We all went out to this.. gas station.. sounds weird I know..  but its called Shakas and they have suuper good burgers and you basically get to make them however you want! AND ITS FREE FOR US POOR MISSIONARIES! It was fun :) And I found that they had ginger beer there! It was a fun surprise! Our zone was supposed to go to the zoo but not enough of us could make it so that got pushed back to today!

Tuesday Herbal Life was back open so we went in for lunch to see all of our Mains and get ourselves a shake :) We did some  knockin' doors and invited a recently returned missionary to come out with us. We met a super awesome Jehovah Witness lady and we all had fun trying to teach each other. We had dinner out in the middle of nowhere Firth and then headed back into town to see a less active, Tara at 6. We watched a super cool video about addiction and she loved it. (she has got a two year old and she is a single mom, but she is trying to quit smoking. She is probably one of the nicest and most spiritual people you will ever meet.. which sounds a bit backwards but its true!! I love her to death and I always leave there feeling like I came out of a devotional or something!). That night Herms started feeling sick again so we headed home and I called Dr. Lil J.... (Lilinjquist)... Lil' J is easier... and set up an appointment for the next morning.

Wednesday our Dr. appointment was at 10 (during our district meeting) so we headed into IF and got the low down on what we needed to do as well as some blood taken (she wasn't too happy about that). We made it back in time for some of the meeting and then we headed to do some Mormon.org hour. That night we got a Tornado warning and we had some thunder/ lightning come through town! 

We had dinner with a mom and her two kids (dad drives trucks) and the oldest is 3 and he was having a blast showing us all his cool fighting moves. (Totally reminded me of Carter). He showed me the first one and then said "Yeah its pretty cool, I know". He was awesome. 

After dinner another return missionary came out with us who spoke Spanish and we went to see one of our investigators named Vicente. I cant remember if I have talked about him or not, but he is pretty much just a grumpy old man. I have been praying a lot to have more love for the people and for the ability to really put 150% of my heart into the work... annd Heavenly Father has a funny sense of humor because he gave us Vicente. He is super contradictory and very upset with Heavenly Father for leaving him and letting so many bad things happen to him. The first two times we went it was border line just arguing. Even though he is the most frustrating person we have to work with I love him so dang much!! Its almost annoying!! Hahaha. I just cant help but want to be there and want to teach him, so the third time we went I told him, "You know what Vicente, we are going to try an experiment. Sound good?" And he said.. "pues.. si." And I told him, we are going to come twice a week for three weeks. We are going to share what we have and what we believe, we don't want to argue, and you can see if there is anything new that you don't already know! He said it sounded good and that he has nothing else to do so why not! I told him that we were also going to leave him with homework and he ended up agreeing to that too! So by the end of these three weeks, if he doesn't feel anything then that's okay we wont meet with him anymore, buuut if by the end he feels something or gets his answer, then we will keep moving forward!! Anyway, we had a lesson on el plan de salvacion. Annd it went of track a couple times, but it was good!

Thursday we had weekly planning!!! Yaay! We got some snow cones before to pump us up hahaha. There is a stand in the parking lot of the only grocery store we have in Shelly, and they are free for missionaries. (Reminds me of the RM..."We got free glazies on Wednesdays"). That night we did lots of knockin doors with a girl who just got her mission call to Spain!! It was a lot of fun and we got to meet a lot of new people in this trailer court (that we thought we knew a lot about.. we were wrong!) There were tons of new people! We also had dinner with an awesome family in our Spanish branch, who live just around the corner from us, the Shumways. We went over some plans for how we can fix our dinner schedule because right now each week is just a random ward within one of the three stakes we are serving in.

Friday we got our progress records out of the way a day early because we were having exchanges with our STLs the next day and then we finished up the rest of our weekly planning.  After that we headed over to go see a recent convert family in our 4th ward that we have been trying to contact for ever and she was home!! She has two kids 12 and 9 and they are crazy amazing!! The boy (12) was bearing super hard core testimony and telling us his conversion story and everything!! It was amazing!!! We asked them if they would want to come with us one day to visit Sidney and share their testimony and the boy got so excited!!! He said something like "Yeah!! I think that would be so cool to go, because I could share my testimony and what if my story helps them get the answers they need!!!"... yeah.. he is awesome.

 We also visited the Hatch family,  our most favorite family everrr!!! And we got some info from the mom about friends of Mikayla and thenn she told us that there had been a death in our 4th ward!! It was so super sad! There was21 year old young man who got hit by a train! She told us the family were a little less active and she sent us their address and phone number and stuff. That night we had a wedding reception to go to hahaha. I think I told you about the dinner where we got to hear all about this girls story of how she got engaged and her dad invited us to the reception because their workers would be there? Anyways, we went and it was so super cute and we saw tons of people from our wards. We stayed for a while, but the workers weren't showing up so we left and headed to go see some peeps before we had to head in for the night. 

Saturday, we got to meet with our WML (Ward Mission Leader) of our 8th ward and then we had no luck with visiting people. Everyone just decided not to be home. It was a little rough. It started raining and there was a super cool thunder storm, but it wasn't too fun walking around in it. We were knockin doors in this apartment complex and then I got this feeling we should go visit the family who just lost their son. I told sister Fermoso and she said she had just had the same thought. We headed out and found their house and their daughter answered. "Wow that is so crazy, I was just thinking about the missionaries! My brother just passed away three days ago and I was just thinking about how we needed the missionaries to come by. My parents aren't home right now, but they would love to have you I am sure"..... I got the chills. It was so crazy. The spirit was just so strong. We told her we would love to come back and she told us that they were having a viewing at 6 the next day and then a funeral (today) at 12. She was so sweet and then she ended up giving us a referral of a hispanic family that lives across the street! They ended up being less actives who were super super interested in coming back to chruch!!... It all was just a huge testimony builder of following the spirit as well as knowing that Heavenly Father sees the big picture. We just see a corner of the puzzle and we could never pretend like we know whats in store for us. He is our guide and as long as we trust that, things will work out. They wont always be easy, but we will be doing what we need to be doing.

Sunday we had a big meeting before church about the dinners getting changed and then we were at our 8th ward since last week we went to the Spanish branch (they start at the same time). There was a kid who gave his farewell and heads out to the Mexico City CCM on Wednesday!! (I warned him about the pizza and Lasagna). We had dinner with a super funny couple in our Spanish branch and we were actually at her parents house (which is like a log cabin that they built, which totally reminded me of the coast, though it was much bigger than the tilton hilton). And then we went to the viewing. Man, that was a little rough. The family is amazing. They were just so positive and when we talked to the mom the first thing she told us was that he had gotten his mission call. It just hit hard.... plus I had never been to a viewing before. It was difficult, but I cannot begin to describe how much my testimony of Heavenly Fathers plan grew for me last night. We went to see Mikayla after that and we all had a good time catching up and sharing some funny stories and then talking about the LDS community here. It is a little rough being in Mormonville. Its more of like a label than anything for people here, which makes it hard to get people to open up to us, but the work does go on!!

Anyways, that was my week!!!!

Love you