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| Sisters Goodrich & Hudgens |
This week was a crazy week!!!!! Full of miracles and
pure awesomeness. Monday turned out to be fun even though we weren't able
to go to the Bluebell factory. We just went to the church building and
and we played with one of those colorful parachute things and played games.
It was fun. We had dinner with the Claunch's and then had a lesson
afterwards. It was lots of fun and their sons are helping us teach, so it
is working out well.
On Tuesday we helped Sister Rojas pack up some of her things
as she is getting ready to move. So we wrapped baking pans in paper and
bubble wrap for an hour and she sent us home with a giant blender and half of
her pantry. We then went out to the mall and tried to find our potential,
but she wasn't there!!! We will keep trying. We then went to play
chicken foot with the old people. They are so fun.
Know who thinks
they are funny? The elders. We had let them borrow our church keys
so they could go to the family history center on Monday night and they said
they would give them back at chicken foot. When we asked for the keys
back, they said they lost them and they were either in their car, at Walmart,
or the mall. We were so mad at them!!! We needed them that night
for our meeting. When we left I said they better pray hard to find those
keys. One of them then pulls our keys out of his pocket and tosses them
to us. They thought they were so funny. It was only slightly funny.
We are trying to find some way to prank them back, but we aren't too
devious and we are too busy doing missionary work to think about stuff like
that. We tried visiting more people before dinner, but none of them were
home. We had dinner at the Parkinsons, and before we left we set up a
time to come back and make cookies for a less active that lives on their
street. Everyone loves cookies! After dinner we went to our ward
coordination meeting and it went well.
On Wednesday we had interviews with our new mission
president, President Mortensen. While he interviewed our group of 8, we
received training from the assistants to the president (APs). They gave
some really good training on goal setting and achieving. My interview
with president did not go as I expected. I thought he was going to get to know
us and things like that, but he pretty much just chastised everyone if they
weren't talking to 25 people everyday and committed them to do that. I am
pretty sure that 6/8 of the happy people that walked in to the interviews
walked out solemn and glossy eyed. I think President Mortensen will be very
good for the mission and will take care of some of the problems that we have,
he is just very different than President Pingree. By the time I get used
to President Mortensen, I will go home though. So I am just going to take
his advice and do my best as a missionary.
After interviews we helped the
Claunch family with family history since both of their boys need to find 5
names each for youth conference. We had dinner and saw the bishop's
family then went and saw the Lowes.
Thursday we decided to take president's challenge and we
tracted for about 3 hours today. Not at the same time though. We
went out in the morning before an appointment for an hour and the results were
surprising. Though not many people answered the door, few let us say more
than 5 words, there were a couple of people who let us share a message about
Christ and one even said we could come back.
We then had an appointment
with a member family. We have been teaching them for a few weeks now
since their son is getting baptized soon, and their 2 less active daughters
have been present through all the lessons. We had a really good lesson
about a few of the commandments, including prayer and going to church, and one
of the daughters prayed at the lesson and came to church this week! It
was so great!
We then had lunch and went to the food bank. We have been
doing a food drive at church all summer, so we take them with us when we go.
It has been slow, so it is good that we bring our own work! We
didn't have much to do so after about an hour we went to another family's house
and helped them with some family history. I was able to help him find one
name that led to a few others. We didn't have a dinner appointment so we
went home, had dinner and then went out tracting again.
We knocked on one
door and this lady answered and was not happy to see us. She asked if we
had permission to be in that neighborhood (she thought we were solicitors and
they aren't allowed). I pulled out my ministerial certificate which says
that I am a certified minister for the church and can go out and proselyte.
I don't know if that means that we can be there, but it worked. We
figured that even if she called the cops, it was going to take them like
15
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| Sisters Hudgens & Goodrich |
minutes to get there, so we finished the loop and then went to a different
area. We went to another neighborhood and started knocking doors when
this lady answered the door. She told us to come in and we were kind of
shocked and a little leery until she said she was a member from the spanish
ward! We talked with her for a while, tried by a new member and she
wasn't there, and then saw a member and while we were talking I got a bloody
nose which was only kind of awkward. We then still hadn't talked to 25
people by then so we went to the gas station. I picked up a pint of
Bluebell so it looked we were there for a purpose and we ended up talking to
the cashier, Ghani, for like ten minutes in which he asked us if we were from a
church, that even though he is Muslim he loves Jesus Christ, if he can bring
his family to our church, and if we had some lessons we could come over and
teach him. Yes!!! We weren't able to set up a time there, and we
really hoped we didn't get him fired, but it was totally worth letting my ice
cream melt a little.
Friday we were so busy we didn't have time to tract.
It was crazy. We helped Sister Rojas again, this time wrapping
pictures. She again unloaded a few things on us. We then went home
and started our weekly planning session that we were supposed to do yesterday,
but didn't have time. We still didn't finish before we went to bake
cookies with the Parkinsons for a less active. We then had a meeting with
our investigator Rucker, miracle!! We haven't been able to see him for
like a month and a half. We invited him to meet us at the frozen yogurt
place though, so we managed to get him out. We had a good meeting with
him, finding out about some of the things hindering his progression and
committed him to come to church and read his scriptures. At the end we
asked him if he knew anyone who could use a message about Christ and he told us
we should come with him to visit one of his friends who is a less active in the
ward. Go Rucker! We were able to go there, visit, leave a message,
and tell the kid to stop avoiding us when we came to his house. After
that we had dinner with a family in which the mother is less active due to
health reasons and we were able to have a good visit with them. They had
on a Pandora station that was awesome. It was playing all those
movie/show soundtracks that I like. Tender mercy of the Lord right there.
After dinner we went to the Claunch home intending to take Camille out
tracting with us, but she wasn't ready right away so it was too late and we
ended up helping them get ready for the pest control people who were coming to
spray the next day.
Saturday was a busy day! We went out tracting in the
morning, hoping it wouldn't be too hot. It was pretty hot. We
knocked on 30 doors, and only like 5 of them even opened. We decided to
tract around member's homes and so we went to one cul-de-sac to do so. We
knocked on a door and one guy said we could come back We wrote it down,
decided it was to hot to keep going, and went home for lunch and completed
weekly planning. We picked up Camille and went to visit a part member
family and then went back to the guy who said we could come back. We
knocked in the door and his wife answered. We asked if Mariano was home
and she said yes and who was asking. We told her who we are and she
looked a little surprised. "My husband? Are you sure? He
is atheist!" she said. We were a little surprised, but told her he
said we could come back. She said that she believes in God and wasn't
going to stop this so she let us in and we talked to Mariano and his wife for
about an hour and it was great! We all felt the Spirit working through
us, even Camille and we committed him to pray and ask if God was there.
We are going back next week and we are super excited! We had just
enough time to drop Camille back off at home before dinner with the bishop's
family. After dinner we tracted again and met some not very nice people
you didn't want to talk to us and some other very polite kids who listened, but
didn't want to hear more. It was a very productive evening.
Sunday was great. We had a good ward council, 5 new families
have moved in, Rucker came to church, and a family who is moving gave some
really good talks that I think y'all would have enjoyed. We were asked to
go into primary sharing time and talk a little about baptism and someone we
helped be baptized (I let Sister Gooodrich do that since she has more
experience that I). I was talking about baptism and said I wish I had
written down what I felt that day since it feel like it was a really long time
ago and one of the little girls said that that's because it was a
long time ago. I just laughed it off, but it kind of was. I was
baptized 12 years ago, that is longer than any of those kids have been alive!
Anyway, it was a good day.
We decided that is it is 100 degrees
outside that we aren't going tracting. I don't want to get heat stroke,
been there, done that. So we visited members instead and it was really
nice. There was a big storm that came in with lots of thunder and
lightning that sent Sister Goodrich running from the car to the doorways every
time. Before we went home we stopped by a family who is moving this week
and she unloaded her freezer on us. That means I only have to buy a few
things today and our freezer is so full, I don't think anything else will fit!
Well I hope y'all are doing well. Just remember that
the Book of Mormon is true, God listens to and answers every prayer, and going
to church is important.
Sister Hudgens
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