You asked about how
my days go? We'll here goes!!! Last week for P-day we played zombie
tag. There was a "zombie" and that person would tag everyone
else and then they would drop the glowstick they were wearing and become
zombies too. It was a lot of fun and kind of exhausting. I am learning to
how to shoot hoops better so that I don't look to awful playing with everyone
else. I practice before everyone gets there and we start the activities.
I throw like a water polo player though, with one hand and everyone looks
at me funny, but it works for me!
We went to a member’s
house after dinner and taught their niece the restoration. She is staying
with them for the school year and one of the conditions is that she has to go
to church and seminary. They are studying the Book of Mormon in seminary
this year and with her coming to church every week, they are practically doing
half the work for us!! Getting investigators to come to church is always the
hardest part. We taught her again on Saturday when we went over there for
dinner and I think it is going well. She is quiet and doesn't say much so
it is hard to know.
On Tuesdays, we
usually go to a less active member's house for lunch and talk to her a little
bit. Her son is some sort of soccer super star, so that is their priority right
now instead of church. She wasn't there
though and we were confused because she runs a day care and she doesn't usually
leave. When
we stopped by later we saw her and she told us that some
friends had come unexpectedly and were now staying with her. We were able to see another one of our less active sisters on Tuesday and
really help her out. She said she was having a hard time that day and
that she knew that God had sent us to her to help her and comfort her. We
invited her to the Relief Society activity that night and she came and it
seemed like she had a wonderful time.
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| Biking off into the Sunset |
Wednesday was kind of
rough. We finished priming a member's chairs so she could paint them.
This was the third time we had gone over to help her. We didn't
mind at all because then she will make us lunch. Afterward we rode our
bikes across the train tracks into another neighborhood and tried to visit some
people, and it seemed like no one was home. We did end up being able to
see someone, Sister Brown. She is a great woman and a fabulous painter.
She does great portraits! After visiting, we went to an appointment
with an investigator. As soon as she walked in, she said that she was
going to be baptized....in her church. We were really bummed and tried to
get her to at least come to our church once so she could see the difference,
but she wasn't feeling it. I was completely dumbfounded and didn't know
what to say. It is a good thing that Sister Seymour and the member we
brought with us found some words because I had no idea what to say. We also saw
a potential investigator that we had really hoped would be great, but he said
his wife didn't want to learn more so he didn't want to go against her.
Our teaching pool
really shrunk this week with another investigator in Louisiana helping her mom
and another in the hospital (again). We were really bummed, but we took a
step back and tried to see if we were doing anything that might be keeping us
from being fully obedient. We then decided that we would have to have the
faith that the Lord would help us find people to teach and that all we had to
do was keep being obedient and have faith that the Lord would help us.
Thursday completely
made up for the day before, it was fantastic!!! As we knelt down to pray
before we began our weekly planning session, we asked that we would find people
to teach. Like 30 seconds after our prayer, we got a referral from the
church referral hotline. I was so happy I started literally jumping for
joy. We contacted the referral and set up an appointment for the next
day. The referral came with contact information for the person who
submitted the referral so we decided to call her up to see if she would come
with us. We went to call her and realized that the last digit of her
phone number was missing. We started to get a little sad when I had a great
idea: call the number and had the last digit, one at a time starting with 0. So
we did and at the number 7, we got a winner!! We told her we had an
appointment and she said she would love to come. In the afternoon, we
went out to visit members again. As it was coming closer to the time for
us to be picked up for dinner, we started walking to a member's house to wait
for our ride. As we were walking, it started to rain and we were terrified.
When it starts to rain here, it can turn into a downpour an in the snap
of your fingers. So we started running for the front porch of a member to
get undercover before then. We got there and they weren't home, but they
had a nice front porch with chairs so we just waited for our dinner appointment
to pick us up. It was a good thing we got undercover because it did start
pouring. After dinner, we had an appointment with a couple we had been
trying to see for a while. We read 3 Nephi 11 with them and at the part
where Christ descends from heaven and appears to the Nephites, the spirit was
so strong it was just hammering in my chest and I knew they had to feel it too.
They did and the wife was like, you guys have a case. We committed
them to a soft baptism, which means that if they come to know these things are
true, they will be baptized. It was so exciting and made us so happy!!!!
On Friday, it was
pretty gloomy outside. There was a tropical storm that passed over that
day so the threat of rain was scary. Sister Canfield, the lady we live
with left for a trip that morning and we were sad to see her go. It is so
great living with her, and just having someone home when you get there is
great. We had a district meeting with the missionaries that serve in our
area (three companionships), and then went home to have lunch after. It
was pouring when we were done so we called Sister McQuay and she took us to her
house and we watched bible videos and Mormon messages for the hour of lds.org time we get each week.
When time was up, we
went home and since it wasn't raining too bad we put on our jackets and biked
to a member that didn't live too far away. We had a great visit,
challenged her to share a mormon message with her friend and then biked home.
It was really raining by that time, but not quite pouring yet. I am
pretty sure the thunder we kept hearing and the threat of a downpour spurred me
on to bike harder and faster than I ever have before!!! It was kind of
crazy, and we were laughing the whole way home because we were biking, in the
rain, in skirts. We were super excited to have that lesson with our
referral guy, but half an hour before the lesson the member we were going to go
with canceled because her parents wouldn't let her drive the hour to get there
in the pouring rain and it was raining
hard. So we scrambled for like 20 minutes, calling almost the entire ward
directory looking for someone to go with us to the lesson. Finally,
someone picked up the phone and we were able to go. The lesson was quite
interesting. He is a 22 year old guy for starters, we don't seem to teach
anybody but old women. The second interesting thing was the coffee table
full of weed. He said he forgot we were coming over, but he let us in any
way. It went really well and he seemed very open to what we said, so that
was great.
On Saturday, it
didn't rain at all like we thought it would. But we were in a lot anyway
because we had to prepare our Relief Society lesson. Every fourth Sunday
we teach Relief Society and the Laurels come in. I guess it i
s their way
of getting the YW used to going to Relief Society so they aren't freaked out.
I guess they also think it is better that they come when we teach because
we aren't as scary or something. I don't know. The lesson was from
a couple of talks from last conference, one of which talked about putting on
the armor of God. We thought it would be fun if we had a laurel model the
armor for us, and so we scurried around the house trying to find things to use.
We used an apron for the breastplate and the girdle, a bike helmet, and
some sandals, a box for a shield, and a sword one of the other sister
missionaries had. Before you freak out, she collects medieval weapons so
the Elders thought it would be funny to buy her a sword they found at a garage
sale.
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| Sword Play |
After all of our
studies were done, we once again decided to cross the tracks in an adventure
into to the other neighborhoods. Because of the rain though, there was a
stream of water, just wide enough that you couldn't jump over it. Again,
I was hit with inspiration. Use the bike pedal as a stepping stone.
Sister Seymour preformed it beautifully, but I lost my balance and
stepped in the stream with one foot. So with one wet foot we continued
on. Sunday was great as always and it just makes me so happy to have this
gospel. Our lesson went great, or so everyone tells us and we had a
delicious dinner. I love being a missionary :)
Sister Hudgens
