Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Shortest week ever (8/17/15 email)

Hello again, friends and fam! I have got some stories for you.

I'll start with the weirdest story. My companion and I were walking down the street and we saw this old woman in her driveway cleaning out a motor home so we stopped and asked if we can help with anything. Her husband came out from behind the motor home and we got talking and had a very long and amusing conversation. Also, he didn't have a shirt on at this time and he had a decent sized, hairy beer belly and was missing most of his teeth. Ok now that you have the picture in your head, I'll continue. After we introduced ourselves as missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he said, "I'm above all of you. I know more about the Bible than anyone else. I'm #1 at everything I do. I'm the #1 bass fisherman in the world." If that is true, then I'm proud that I was able to talk to him, but I'm feeling a little skeptical. He just continued to tell us how he knows more than anyone else in the world and is the best at everything. Also, he was born and raised in Wisconsin and the schools in Wisconsin are #1 in the world and other states are dumb. Everyone in the mission talks about the interesting Portland people and apparently there's a saying "Keep Portland weird," which made me a little jealous that my area is in Vancouver for now, so I'm glad I got to meet a Portland-type of person here in Vancouver. Oh also, he said that God just wants us to be more relaxed about religion and God doesn't want us serving missions; He wants us two girls to open up a can of Blue Ribbon beer and go the fair to "chase boys around." Then, after we tried to slip in a spiritual message one last time before leaving, he invited us to come back another time.

There is something weird about how time is altered on your mission. The weeks feel like days but the days feel like weeks. At the end of the day, I look back on the morning and can't believe how recent that was, but then I look back on what happened a week ago and it feels like it was yesterday. I've had such a hard time sorting through the order of events in my brain haha so bar with me.

My companion and I didn't bring any CDs to listen to in the car so her family mailed us about 8 CDs and my favorite by far is the 2015 efy CD. There's the main song, Here Am I, and I can't help but feel like a million bucks after listening to it. Go listen and sing along to it and try not to feel empowered. It's impossible.

Something a little creepy but so true that my companion quoted is, "Satan knows your name, but calls you by your sins. God knows your sins, but calls you by your name." Satan knows us better than we know ourselves, which is creepy to think about, but God does too and He is way more powerful than Satan. It's our decision who we want to give ourselves to.

The power of prayer is so real! I've been trying to pray more specifically now and my prayers have totally been answered! We always pray before we plan our week out and we ask to know what message we can share and how we can help people to the best of our abilities. Then, for the times that we don't have appointments, we pray and ask where we should knock on doors. Well boy does God help us out! One week the bishop told us he had been praying and felt like we should go down this one street. We prayed about it and asked, "Please have the people were supposed to talk to be outside at this time." Boom. The third house we walked by had this lady sitting outside who apparently had met with the missionaries that were in this area before us and she said she was trying to find us. Her phone broke so she didn't have our number anymore so she had been praying that we would come by her street again. We were the answers to each others prayers! Also, another night, we prayed and asked where we should be. We went by this one guy's house that we talked to earlier that week and gave a Book of Mormon to. He answered the door and said he's been having a hard time since his mother in law just had a bad fall and broke her leg (she's 104 I think). He was so happy we came by and invited us to come back this Tuesday to have our first official lesson with him. So, everyone, God is always listening and just waiting for us to ask for His help. Sometimes He won't answer our prayers right away or in the exact way we expect, but He knows exactly what'll help us most so trust Him.

So I'm loving this mission so far. The couple we live with is amazing and it's the husbands birthday tomorrow so we're surprising him with a balloon that says, "So many candles so little cake," and we're gonna try to make white chocolate covered popcorn. Also, the humidity here is perfect for my skin. And the people are amazing. I LOVE VANCOUVER!

No comments:

Post a Comment