September 16, 2013

I wrote Kelly and said "maybe now that you're a missionary you'll realize how much you want letters and you might actually start writing me" :) Is it weird to have 2 daughters on missions? I can't believe she's a missionary already! What the! So how is/was your cruise? Sounds like it should be a lot of fun anyway :) Except the Alaska part. That's cold. It's been really cold here! The rain has become pretty chilly. It's definitely not summer anymore in Flagstaff! I potentially only have one more week here :( Sister Connell will be officially trained on Monday so that means she won't need me anymore :( Which means I might get TRANSFERRED! I'm so sad! I don't want to leave Flagstaff :( Oh well, maybe I'll get transferred to Black Canyon City ;) Yes, the journals arrived safe and sound :) I was worried they might get ruined in the rain, but the UPS guy brought it to us! It was cool because he even used the doorbell! No one comes to our apartment so no one uses the doorbell. It was an historic moment for us :) hahaha Anyway! On to INTERESTING stuff. Sorry I ramble like you ;) So this week was great! The other sisters had a baptism on Saturday and our 2 progressing investigators came! It was seriously the best baptism I've ever gone to. They could both feel the Spirit SO STRONG that they both got really excited to get baptized! But then neither of them came to Church due to family issues (one girl had family issues with her grandpa and her car and the other went home to say goodbye to the family dog they were putting down over the weekend). But we had a less-active member and her friend come to Church at least! They both loved it :) We have an appointment with her friend so we're excited to start teaching her :) We locked ourselves out of our apartment on Saturday. That was cool. We had a trainer/trainee meeting on Tuesday. I love meetings :) I'm one of those weird people I guess! I just love them because it's so organized and everyone comes together to feel the Spirit and to learn new things we can do better. It's one of my top 5 favorite things about the mission! I don't know what the other 4 are. One of them is teaching people. I just threw that out there... One day this week, we forgot to bring food with us for lunch so we went to Panda Express, then we had 2 dinner appointments and neither of them happened, so we called one of our members who said to call if we don't have a dinner appointment and he took us to Carl's Jr. and we had kid meals with the chicken stars :) Then I ate some pizza at the Welcome Center. I never thought I would train my body to eat so healthy that eating out twice, kind of three times, would cause me to be in so much pain when I went in for the night! I guess that's a good thing? I don't know what to say. Sorry. I even brought my journal! I guess I'll stop giving silly details about the nonsensical things we did this week and share with you some of the things I've been learning in my studies :) Oh! This week we taught the Word of Wisdom lesson and it was my first time teaching it to someone that wasn't living it already :) It was cool. I made Sister Connell commit her, she was scared, but as her trainer I felt that she should do it :) Now we're helping someone quit smoking! It's so exciting! I figured out why it's important to study for others instead of for myself! Normally, it would make sense to study for myself because I need to know what I'm talking about so that I can teach better, right? Well, it works a lot better when I study for others. This is why! The things I study are the things I think about during the day. So many times I've been in a situation where I'm having a conversation with someone and the things I think about to say are the things I had just studied either that morning or a few mornings before. So, when I tried it out and studied for appointments, not only was I able to call upon information that was pertinent for the situation, but I was able to tie the same things into other things I was doing that day! Let me explain myself. So I was studying missionary work and service to have that be the focus of the "spiritual thought" we share when we have dinner with members or when we pray with them. In one day, I used the service section of True to the Faith at dinner, 2 visits with members, and at the 12-Step addiction recovery group, and I also tied it into Mosiah 2:41 and part of the conference talk I had "RANDOMLY" (caps because I didn't pick it for any reason and in quotes because I know I was led by the Spirit to read it) by Elder Perry "Obedience to Law is Liberty" (which has become my new favorite talk from last conference (can you believe it's almost conference again??? I'm so excited!!!)). It's crazy how the things I learn become the exact thing I need to use in my teaching!!! Well, that's enough of that. Love you! Hope you have a great week!! -Kady (can't say Sister Tolley anymore!!!)