I was going to send pictures this week… but I forgot my camera cord, so that will have to wait until next week!! So guess who I got an email from… NANCY OAKS in New Castle!! I think I told you about her, she was the awesome Born-Again Christian who let us come and sing for her and made us dinner and gave us produce from her garden… anyways. She just found my email and emailed me… I’m going to write her back… not like you needed to know that last bit… but anyways, I was excited!!!
So is it warm there? We just had a heat wave (50 degrees!!) which is unfortunately over… and my toes are back to freezing… not that I don’t have enough layers, I just forgot to wear boots today… so guess how many layers I usually wear in a day?? Not 1, not 2, but FIVE layers!! And that’s when it’s been around 30!! This week it’s supposed to be around 14 degrees… woo-hoo!!! And add the freezing bitter cold wind chill and humity… makes tracting fun!!! :)
So this week has been awesome!! On TUESDAY we went to the Children’s Museum with 6 elders, and it was a BLAST!!!!! Four of the elders got sucked into the Star Wars display (Elder Carskaddon, Hernandez, and 2 elders I’d never met) and so we went on ahead with Elder Parsons and Mourra… they are such goof balls!! But we had so much fun!!! We got permission to wear pants, and the elders all wore suits... random fact. We were there for about 4-5 hours and touched EVERYTHING!!! We climbed a tree house, sat in a race car, designed a barbie outfit (definitely not my highlight!), saw an enormous water clock (I’ll send a picture), went in an awesome mirror maze (it was really weird, you would think someone was somewhere else, and then poof! They were right by you, or on the other side of the room), we also flew to Egypt and had a pretty awesome experience there… among other things… if anyone is coming to Indy with kids… definitely plan on going there!!!! Oh, and we just missed Bob the Builder Gilbert!! He’s coming next week… I hear it’s going to be pretty awesome!! Oh, so funny story… that night on the phone, Elder Carskaddon asked us how we got over the worldly influence and we just kind of looked at each other because we didn’t really have a hard time, and then Sister Summers said “All I had to do was put my skirt back on”, and he started laughing so hard and turn to Elder Hernandez and said “Hey the sisters said that all they had to do was put on their skirt to get back in focus!!”… Guess he was having a hard time and needed some help… not sure that that was super helpful though!!!!!! :)
WEDNESDAY we had District Meeting and an awesome lesson with Jan Brown… she is going to give us a baptismal date this week… last week she got a Gospel Principles manual… and only read 1 chapter… EXALTATION… that was a doozy of a lesson!! 3 hours later she said she felt at peace!! Oh, and guess what!!! This week we had 5 meals with members!! And we usually only have 0 or MAYBE 1… we ate green fried tomatoes and catfish… quite good in fact, I was really surprised…
THURSDAY we had interviews which lasted forever… but they were good. My interview only lasted about 5 minutes… I didn’t have any questions… so it was super short!!! Oh, then we did service at a less actives… DISGUSTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We found mouse poop, the son found a whole mouse skeleton (which was pretty cool), a rat hole, cockroaches, etc… it was pretty nasty… but we serve with a smile and grimace later :)
FRIDAY was a slow day… we didn’t teach anyone a full lesson and I wasn’t feeling very good, so we went and slept for a while, then went out again. But I’m doing totally better now!! Oh, so remember the cabbage patch doll lady!? WE are probably going to go and do service for her (soon we hope)… sorting her cabbage patch dolls and she’s going to give us some!!! Awesome eh? We’re pretty excited… :)
SATURDAY was an awesome day!!! We had an awesome lesson with Destiny and Dalton (the 10 yr old twins) and then talked about how this church had a special feeling compared to the 20 other churches they’ve been too… the members they are living with said that their mom is coming along and probably going to come to the lesson on Saturday… a FAMILY!!! We are so excited!!! I’ve never taught a family with children before… so this is super exciting for me!!! Then we were tracting pretty much all day and we were trying a lady who said we could come back near a members house, and we decided to go see a member family (and use their bathroom) and they invited us to stay and eat!!! It was so awesome!!! We had pizza and ice cream and it was so much fun to spend a little while with them!! They are so awesome… remember hearing about the Franklin’s with Zoey and Zealand?
SUNDAY we were at church for 9 hours… we are singing in the choir (to try and build relationships with the ward) and the song had about a million high notes… I was so tired after that!! Oh, then we had dinner at a less actives house….she always likes to experiment on us… this week was casseroles of every kind… potatoe, carrot, broccoli, and pineapple… for the most part they were pretty good… oh and funny story… so we were standing on her porch waiting for her to answer and Sis. Summers was just staring and me, then she said “Hey you have my name tag!!”, and she had mine!! I haven’t touched the name tag on my coat since I got here… but then we figured out that it was probably one of the 10 elders that were at church (they were hanging rather temptingly in the coat closet :)… we believe it was Elder Carskaddon, because that night when we told him, he sounded pretty suspicious…
MONDAY we went to the assisted living place again, which was awesome… I love those people!! The lady who lead with her utensils last week was hillarious!!! And it’s so neat how much people grow to love you, even in only 2 times of seeing them!!! After that, we had about 4 hours of tracting planned (with trying people in between) and it was so cold!!! I was praying so hard that someone would invite us in and we would have a really neat experience (kind of like Terry and Brenda) and we knocked on this door, and a little Mexican girl answered and said her mom was sleeping so we gave her a pass along card, and walked on, then we heard someone yelling at us, and we turned around and the mom was yelling “Hey we’re Mormons too!! Come in!” So we went in and had the most amazing hot chocolate ever, then she asked us if we wanted some soup, and we said we were fine, but she said “No, you must try Mexican food” and then she fed us some amazing soup, chips, Mexican cheese, and juice… we heard her conversion story and she told us that we HAVE to come back next Monday… oh boy… I don’t know what those Spanish elders complain about!! The ward loves them, they get fed ALL the time, and they only tract an hour every other day because their teaching schedule is so full!!!! Oh well…everyone has their own personal challenges… :) then we went and tried a potential named WILL who we had a pretty awesome conversation with… we’re going back tomorrow and starting at the very beginning of how to even have faith in God and Jesus Christ… I’m really excited. Tomorrow we’re having an exchange with some other sisters and I’m going to be with Sister Jenson… I’ve really never talked to her, but I’m excited.
So, this email was lots longer than I thought it would be… but I hope that you enjoy hearing about the week…. This week has been good in so many ways… I’ve been learning so much that a lot depends on me, my attitude and how much faith I demonstrate… yesterday when I was praying that someone would let us in, I KNEW that someone would… I just need to have that much faith all the time… something I’m working on… a faith filled missionary is so much more powerful than one who just goes through the motions… and I know that I definitely need to work on my prayers… that is the transfer focus and Elder Carskaddon and I have been talking about how important those prayers are… faith filled prayers are what we’re working on (what we’ve been talking about in District Meeting)!!! Well, I better go!! Have a great week and I love you all!!
Love, Sister Alex
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