Highs and Lows

Hello again! What another crazy week. We have had some fun and....not so fun times as well this week. To begin can I just say, it is a REALLY good thing I didn't go foreign and have to eat all these crazy foods! BUT you should be proud, I always eat what the people serve, regardless of how well it tastes to me. For example, ya'll know how much I don't like vegetables. WELL, I have been eating peas, broccoli, cooked carrots, tomatoes, and so forth. Gross huh. But I guess it's gonna help me be healthy so I shouldn't complain. Anyway last week on P day we played kickball with our zone. Let me just say, the elders get CRAZY competitive. It was pretty fun for a while and I also worked up quite the sweat. I am SO out of shape. (currently working on that as well ;)

So for some fun little facts for ya...our nine year old finally got permission from her biological father so she got baptized this week! Since she was getting baptized, her family was priority this week so we went there every night. Her step dad got baptized last year and has the Aaronic Priesthood so he was going to be able to baptize her! How awesome huh :) Well they had some whip cream one night, and I ended up showing the girls that "trick" that Brandon showed me with the whip cream :) They thought I was awesome. The dad tried it, and he totally almost fell in the rocks trying to catch it in his mouth..he still missed :) So he sent us home with bottles of whip cream and that night, our apartment had a whip cream fight! haha good times.

Anyway so that was fun :) This week we also got to have interviews with our mission president! I love him. We get to do that every other transfer. However, the interview was literally 2 minutes long so it was just a lil check up and if we had anything serious we needed to talk about, then we had to set up another time. But it was still good to just touch base with him. He said I look like the kind of person who would keep things "bottled" up inside me so if I need anything to make sure I talk to him or his wife. We also learned that day that we get to help with the Gilbert Temple open house! The sisters get to work in a booth outside the temple but we aren't allowed to proselyte. We are just there if people willingly ask questions or want to refer themselves to learn more. So that's cool! We also might get to do an endowment session there before it opens to the public! But we don't know yet. This week my companion and I also had the opportunity to help package invitations to see the Christmas lights at the Mesa Temple. An LDS man prints them for free and only charges for ink and paper so the missionaries package them and send them to every ward in the 5 missions in Arizona! SO many cards. But it was kinda fun to help do that :)

This week was also good because every week I have been here we ride our bikes down to Biscane Bay. It's an apartment complex that takes a half hour just to get down there, so we only get there about once a week. We have knocked on a lady's door every time and she is never there. Well this week she was there! Success! She was busy but said she had a few minutes. We were able to give her a brief synopsis of our religion and the restoration/priesthood and stuff. Then we set up an appointment for this week! She seems pretty open and we got along pretty well so hopefully everything works out with her :) We are excited to teach her!

Now, one of our investigators put herself on date for January 1st but we really felt we could get her baptized this month. We prayed about November 30 and I just kept getting the impression it needed to be earlier. So that left the 23 of November....aka NEXT SATURDAY. CRAZY RIGHT!? So we taught her on Thursday night and we had to teach the commandments. Investigators have to live the law of chastity and the word of wisdom for at least 10 days before they can be baptized...Thursday was day one. We taught her and she has to quit cold turkey! She is not really addicted, so she says, but she loves her coffee. Soooo it could be rough. She had to be to church on Sunday as well cause she has only been once and you have to go twice. We bought her a cute water bottle with some lemons to help her be able to resist coffee and she really appreciated it. We were so excited and all ready to plan a wedding for her as well so she can get baptized on the 23! Soooo we had a lot to do for her in order for her to be baptized, but we knew it's what the Lord wanted! Sooo we've been checking up on her and we were really excited. Sadly, she bailed on church.....we were CRUSHED. We had so much faith and knew she needed to be baptized on that date and now she can't because she didn't come to church. She said she wasn't "feeling well" but we know that she is scared to let others see her commit to this. Especially her family. She is scared of the judgement they will have. So that has been really hard on us. She won't answer us now and we are a little nervous. She is SO prepared and I will be so heartbroken if she doesn't come around. She is SO close!!! I can't imagine how sad God is :( But we will work with her still and hopefully she will come around and show her faith by taking that action. 

So our little 9 year old got baptized on Saturday! I know you are waiting for that email or letter that tells you thank you for putting me in piano...NOT going to happen. I haven't practiced the piano in so long that it is such a stressful thing for me to play the piano in public! I had to play at a stake meeting the other day and I was also the person who played at the baptism! I accompanied the special musical number as well. It is so stressful and makes me dang nervous since I haven't played hymns or primary songs in a LONG time. Anyway, the stepdad, did really good baptizing her. It was super special. They had to do it twice though because somebody (my companion) didn't put the plug in the font right so it was draining for a while before the baptism!!! haha oops. The water was really low and her stepdad held her down quite a bit the second time cause her knee and elbow kept popping out so he pushed her farther down and held her longer looking at the witnesses to see if it was good. haha it was SO cute. Their family was so grateful and they are now working towards being sealed in the temple! 

We also had a super cool experience on Saturday night. Again, everything we had planned fell through and we went to see a recent convert.. She really needed us and she just started sobbing. She is feeling like everything is against her and just having some physical ailments and stress as well. Oh my goodness, I hardly know the woman and I cried for real (spiritually) but tears definitely came out. The bishop came over and gave her an AMAZING blessing. She had never had one before and it was so cool and she was promised so many awesome things. I wish I could better explain it with more detail, but it really touched me and was a good experience for me.The Lord definitely put us in her house that night because we weren't planning on being there. 

On Sunday, like I said, our investigator didn't come to church and my companion and I were so sad and discouraged. It had felt so right and now because of that one choice, she can't be baptized this coming week. We were pretty down and I wasn't feeling too good physically either. We ended up going to one of our ward mission leaders homes that night to have a correlation. It ended up being a venting session for us because we have had some mixed messages from the ward members about them helping and such. It's a long story but it was really stressing us out and becoming overwhelming because we are supposed to involve members and we just feel like a burden to them. This mission leader and his family are so amazing though and they are always there for us. They made us get blessings before we left and I didn't realize how much I needed it until I got it. It was so good and they do so much for us, and it was much needed by us. I'm so glad we have members that we CAN TRUST and who do take care of us. They were so sweet and were really sad to hear what was going on. After that we had a pretty good night. We took some members,(they are awesome/the husband got home from his mission a year ago) and we taught our 9 year old's stepdad about getting the Melchezidek priesthood. We all sat around a fire and had hot chocolate and smores! It was really fun and reminded me of home. They said they could see I'm definitely a "country girl" as they put it. haha. It was really fun though and we are excited for these steps that that family is making! So all in all it was a good yet stressful week. We have a few referrals that we are hoping to meet this week and add some people to our teaching pool! I feel like this email was a little scattered, but it's so hard to put all the details in here in the short amount of time I have! Love you all! :) Have a great week.