Wow. Ten weeks already??? And it's December?????? Time
flies! I'll probably talk about this a ton, but time moves weird on a mission. Some
days go soooooooslowwwwwwww because every appointment falls through, you spend
time tracting and driving around and you still don't get to teach any lessons,
and by 8:30 you and your companion are racking your brains for ANYONE that you
haven't tried to visit in the last 24 hours. But then you look back, or in this
case, I'm looking back, and I've been in Poplar Bluff for more than two months
and I'm coming up on the last two weeks of my second transfer. It's crazy! This
week was a pretty good week. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone's
Thanksgiving was wonderful, and full of food. Sister Richardson tried pecan pie
for the first time ever, and now she thinks it's wonderful. We might go and buy
a pecan pie at Walmart today. I did NOT get any pumpkin pie though! It's crazy,
right? No pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, and I went to three different
Thanksgiving dinners.Four, actually, if you count the ward party, but I think
there was pumpkin pie there, and plus that was like two weeks ago. Forever in missionary
terms. That's another thing about "mission time": two weeks ago feels
like forever ago. I can hardly remember everything that happened yesterday.
Tuesday, we delivered some boxes of food that the Young
Men and Women of the ward made for some of the older single sisters of the
ward. One of the boxes was meant for a Sister T, and she's such a great member.
She's about 80 years old, and she's the same woman who gave Sister Richardson
and I about 8 skirts. She is always giving the missionaries random things, like
oatmeal. When we brought the box of food over, she just shook her head. "I
told them to stop sending me food!" Then she starts going through the box:"Nope,
won't eat that. Here, you take it. Nope, won't eat that either. Ugh, can't eat
that, too much heavy syrup." I guess when you reach a certain point, you
just know what you do and don't like--and you're not afraid to let everyone
know! She is also impossible to escape from! We got there at about 2:45, and we
told her straight off the bat that we had an appointment at 3:30 in south side.
We barely got out by 3:35, and that was after telling her four times that we
had to go. She is just full of stories! I love it.
On Wednesday, we had District Meeting, and I had to give
a training. There are usually two trainings every week, one given by a
missionary in the district and the other given by the district leader. My topic
was "Discerning the Thoughts and Needs of Investigators through the Holy
Ghost." I think the lesson went pretty well. I brought candy and passed it
around at the start, so that always helps :)
Then... Thanksgiving! I wrote Mom/Lyvia/Quinn a pretty
detailed letter about what we did on Thanksgiving, but here's the rundown: We
got up at 6:30 (surprise!). We did our regular study schedule until 10, and then
it was a free day! As a treat for us, we went shopping at Walmart, and got some
stuff to clean our car. We looked at baby clothes (so cute). Then we went to
the Dollar Tree, because I bet
Sister Richardson that we could find something there for
more than a dollar. She won, because we couldn't find any POSTED prices above a
dollar, but I'm still pretty sure that there were some books there that cost
more than a dollar. Anyway, then we went home and cleaned our car. It's super
clean now :)
Our first Thanksgiving dinner was with the R family. They
had six missionaries there total, because our zone leaders came down and ate with
them too. The food was delicious. Then a second Thanksgiving dinner! With the P
family. They fed us a lot, and we felt fit to burst of too much food. By the
end, when I had to eat a piece of delicious pecan pie, I really thought that it
would be too much. I felt like I was so full of food that it was filling me all
the way up my esophagus. But it wouldn't be a good Thanksgiving if
you didn't feel like that, right? Then we went back to spend time with the R
family just playing games
(not board games though, or video games). At about 7:30,
we headed home and spent the rest of the night resting and writing our
families.
Friday was a little dreary. All of our appointments fell
through, which is always rough. I mean, it was the day after a holiday, so of course
people were pretty busy. Never too busy for the gospel, though,
right? Haha. Saturday went well. We tracted and found two
new investigators! Yay!
And Sunday was a normal Sunday. A fast Sunday, and none
of our investigators came to church, so that was a little sad.
Overall, we kept pretty busy this week, which is good.
The secret to missionary work is work, after all! I've already seen that. We
are blessed so much more when we work and try our best and do everything
we can than when we just coast along or do the least we
can do. On my mission, we try our best to have a plan for every hour, and then
we go do our best to make those plans happen. I think that people can feel the
Spirit more when they realize how important the gospel is to you, and you show
that the gospel is important to you by working hard at it. It's like going to
seminary every morning, or reading your
scriptures daily, or doing your visiting teacher. These
things are work, and sometimes they can be hard or seem boring. But when we do them,
we are showing to ourselves, to others, and to God that we
realize that they are important.
Love you all! Hope that you ate lots of pie and leftovers
this week. Good luck giving away your copies of the Book of Mormon--remember, it's
a lot easier than you might think!
Get ready for the holiday season! I think that Sister
Richardson and I might go caroling with the Young Women this Wednesday--it
seems way too early for that!
Sister Barret
No comments:
Post a Comment