I'm on the Departing Missionary Board! No....!

Departing Missionary Board!

Sounds like y'all had fun on the cruise.  Those beaches look great.  I miss the beach, I like the beach.  Most of my companions miss mountains, I miss the beach.  I got the four letters you had sent to me this week, I really enjoyed them!! Thanks for thinking of me while you had fun!  Also, news: it is official, Sister Lijenquist and I are going to finish our missions here in Olde Oaks.  

Us at the museum

Last Monday we went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  Our ward mission leader got us the hookup with tickets so instead of being $20 we got them for $4.  Thank you Brother Harris!  The  museum was awesome!  Super cool.  First we didn't really know where we were going, but we found the energy hall exhibit.  All about energy and oil and gas since that is what Houston is famous for.  Pretty cool stuff.  Then we went and looked at the Hall of Paleontology.  Super cool!!!!  Lots of dinosaur skeletons.  They had them set up like they were fighting each other, and then there would be an artists rendition of to next to he exhibit.  We saw the hall of the Americas, which was about the Native Americans.  So there was a gospel relevance, we 

More of museum

were learning about the Lamanities.  Then we saw the Hall of Ancient Egypt and that was pretty sweet.  Lots of mummies and mummified cats and neat stories.  By then it was definitely lunch time, so we got some lunch and headed home.  

We then hurried and did our grocery shopping before going to dinner.  After we went tracting and met this family that knows their Bible better than Sister Liljenquist can speak English.  We talked a lot about the Pre-Earth life and Adam.  He doesn't believe we lived with God before we came here, and that Adam totally messed up and should have been able to live in the garden forever.  We have been studying all week and we are going back tonight with the mission president to talk to him again.  Should be interesting.

Tuesday was crazy.  We went to see our investigator in the morning with a member.  We are almost done reading Lehi's dream when she gets a call from the school saying her son had found a syringe on the way to school and poked some girl with it.  Her life has basically exploded in her face.  Her husband is emotionally abusive, so she is basically raising her four kids by herself.  Then her sister-in-law was abusing her kids, so she got three more.  Since they are wards of the state she can't discipline them, so now she can't discipline her own kids.  And then this happened.  We have sent up lots of prayers for her.  Then the member decided to take us to lunch and on the way our super awesome investigator dropped us.  It was kind of a rough day.  We went to volunteer at NAM, sticky noted someone's door, had a dinner with crazy children, and then went finding.  Fun times.

On Wednesday we did our usual visit with Betty.  For once her son actually talked to us.  He said he won't go to church because it will make him cry and be emotional and he has to be manly.  Lame!  But he talked to us, so baby steps.  We then went to have lunch with a less active and she wasn't there, so we just went home and had some lunch.  We then tried by some of our people, volunteered at NAM again, had dinner, and then went tracting when it was really cold.  Found a cool guy though and met with a couple that has been investigating the church for about a year now.  Helped her do crafts and talked about how they haven't been to church in a few weeks.  Then we committed them to come.  

Thursday we did service at the Arboretum pulling weeds.  Fun stuff.  It can be when you do it with the district.  Got to be with my Sister Davis, I am going to miss her!!!  She flies home on Wednesday.  That is weird.  I go home soon.  Super weird. Anyway, moving on.  Our afternoon appointment canceled, so we went to the mission office so Elder Stevens could fix our brake light.  He wasn't there, so we went home and had lunch.  Afterwards we went back and he tried to fix it for a while, sent us away to figure out how to get to it, and then he still couldn't fix it.  

So we went to dinner at the Bishop's house and then drove forever to find the Pepboys so they could fix our light.  We found the nicest people though!  They guy who looked like he was in charge of the place told us that he had two techs with three cars each and the store closed in an hour. We said we weren't about making them stay late when another employee said, "But Pepboys is".  We said that was a good answer and then he went and found someone to take a look at our light, he fixed it real quick and boom!  Fixed!  We went to go tell the manager how awesome his employees are and found out the guy who fixed our light doesn't even work there!!!  He was the manager's roommate and used to work there.  I love super nice people.

Friday we had district meeting and we did some weekly planning.  We both felt like they were going to take us both out at transfers, so we did some intense updating.  We then had a good lesson with a family.  It is a less active/part member family.  We have been trying to find her records forever, but we haven't had any luck. Our ward clerk said that he has tried almost everything, so if they can't find her records with the additional information we got from her, she will have to be re-baptized.  We are secretly hoping that we don't find her records, so she will be more likely to let her 9 year old daughter get baptized sooner since she will also have to be baptized.  It was a good lesson though.  We then had delicious BBQ for dinner, did some finding, saw a nice member, and then went home where it was warm.  We then were super sneaky and found out Elder Nielson's favorite cake, their apartment number, and their gate code so we could make him a cake for his birthday the next day.

Elder Nielson's 20th Birthday

Saturday morning we got up and brought Elder Nielson his cake.  It would have been a lot better if we didn't have to pound on the door and call three times to wake him up to come to the door when he should have already been awake, but he still enjoyed his obscure earthquake cake that we had to have a member look up on Pintrest.  We then returned home, studied, and picked up a girl that got home from her mission in Brazil on Wednesday and went to go to three appointments.  They all canceled on us, so we stopped by a less active's and made sure they knew what time church was.  Kate's mom gave her money to take us to lunch and we found this delicious hole in the wall Mexican restaurant where we were the only white people.  That means it was really good.  Then we did more weekly planning since we hadn't been able to finish, went finding and had the worst luck, stopped by a recent convert's and it was great.

Sacrament meeting was awesome on Sunday.  All the speakers were great.  Relief Society was great too.  I am excited to learn more about President Benson's life this year.  We were able to get some stuff done before dinner with one of our favorite couples and then we had a great lesson with the couple who has been investigating for a year and is more active than most members.  It was really awesome.  We shared the talk from conference "Trifle Not with Sacred Things". After talking with them for a really long time, the member said, "If God told you that on February 14th you should be baptized, would you get married before then?" They thought about it and both said they would pray about it and we could come back next week to talk about it. We are really pushing them because we want them to be happy!!!!  
Hopefully they will get their answer soon.

Well, life has been crazy and it will only continue to get crazier!  Have a great week!

Sister Hudgens