May 19, 2014

Hey Mom :)

So here is the reason why I have taken awhile to write to you. We had to take 3 hours out if our P Day today to compensate for a temple trip tomorrow. If you remember the name, Callie Davis was baptized a year ago this month and she is getting married on Friday in the temple so I am going to her endowment tomorrow afternoon :)

And then Sister Seaman wanted to go with our zone bowling so I was trying to write you and bowl at the same time. I did pretty good, I got a 95 :)

This week has been amazing! Two weeks ago we met a girl named Raquel, last week we invited her to be baptized, and this weekend she WILL be baptized! I can't believe how fast it all happened for her! I feel like that is how things will start being with missionary work. Not so much 40 years of investigating, but having those who are prepared only take a few months or weeks to  get there. The work of salvation is hastening!

So I spent $6.55 on a pair of sunglasses today... I hope that's okay!?

I love that idea from Sister Loftus! I was just talking about that same concept with the family we had dinner with yesterday. We had dinner with the Cherry family who is the fellowship of the Schafer family, and they came to dinner also. So we had everyone write on a sticky note things that are stressful right now, challenging, standing between them and their desires to be happy and serve God, and specifically for the Schafer family, things that are keeping them from baptism. Then we asked if there was anything on that list that Christ couldn't help them overcome? One of the teenage girls said, "Yeah, Christ can't help me keep my room clean." Another teenager had on "math" as one of their challenges, and the mom put on folding socks. We showed them a video about Christ and that because of Him we will live again and had them think about what that video is telling them about their challenges. We testified that Christ deeply cares about the small details of our lives. He desires our happiness, so He can and will help us to overcome any and all of our challenges. We invited them to all pick something on their list to pray about and to invite Christ to help them to overcome it. Mom, I know that the Atonement is much bigger than just to cover pain and sin. It is also to cover heartbreak, disappointment, embarrassment, guilt, fear, shame, pride, and anything else that reduces our happiness. You wanting to lose weight instead of just inches it TOTALLY something that the Atonement was designed for. Phillipians 4:13. All things, ALL THINGS, can be done, because of Him. I invite you to pray to know how you can receive the help that is being offered to you by Christ in all of your everyday matters.

The hair appointment sounds great :) thanks so much! And, ya know, I may finish up cosmetology. Might as well, right? We'll see. Something to think about much later :)

I go home from my mission 3 months from today :(

Life is really good. I love my mission. The best times are when we have teaching experiences and times where we talk with people and have truly meaningful conversations with them. There are some things about missionary work that I don't care for as much, but it's all part of the job and I really don't mind it. The hardest part about missionary work is having every little decision directly affect my companion and having every one of her little decisions directly affect me. It will be nice one day to be able to make little decisions that don't really affect anyone! I know my decisions affect everyone regardless, but it would be nice to be able to have a separate schedule. I wouldn't cut my mission short for that, though. And it's not a big enough deal anymore to complain. It is what it is. I hope to love every last minute out here.

Teaching is going well. I feel like I am pretty good at teaching on the fly :) I could whip out a spiritual thought easy, but I'm also getting really good at jumping right in to an unplanned LESSON. It's pretty fun :) we have had some days like that this week where we planned to do something and a teaching opportunity came up instead! We did really good with lessons this week. We only taught 2 lessons to investigators by ourselves. This week we had 11 lessons to investigators with members present :) total, we taught 23 lessons :) it was a good week for lessons. We usually aim for 0 lessons without members, 10 lessons with members, and 20 lessons total per week. So we did pretty good :)

I hope you are all doing well. I played soccer last P Day. It was really fun! I will be excited to play with you and to see the Littles play and play with them :)

I think that answers all your questions? Let me know :) love you, Mom!

Love, Kady