I love it here. It's not dry and flat like I imagined, there are rolling hills and trees everywhere. And the sunrises and sunsets are AMAZING. I'll send a picture of it. The weather is great too. It's always between 70-85 degrees and not too humid.
My new companion is Sister Breaux, from Idaho. She has been out for six months and she's a great trainer. She's one of the happiest people I've ever met and she screams a lot, so we get along fine! Haha.
I was REALLY sick my first day here. I threw up multiple times and it was awful. I still feel a little nauseous from time to time. I don't know what it was.
The people here are so funny. Let's just say that if you picture a stereotypical person from Arkansas, those are the kind of people we meet every day. We've run into guys walking around in only boxers, 20 year old moms of three kids, and LOTS of missing teeth smiles. I'm definitely going to have a hick accent by the time I leave. The people are also VERY religious. I haven't met one single person who doesn't believe in God. It's both a curse and a blessing, because everyone is willing to talk to us but no one actually wants to leave their own church to come to ours. So we have a TON of lessons and hardly any baptisms. I swear, after half a week we've only been turned down by 2 people for a lesson. And they were super polite about it too. The rudest person I've had to deal with still said "No offense against your religion or anything, and I respect what you're doing, but I'm just not interested."
We have a lot of potential investigators right now so we haven't done a lot of tracting. Mostly we just call up people that we have information for and try to meet with them. My favorite way of finding people is to go up to families who are hanging out outside their houses. We get the best responses from them. We call that OTM-ing, which stands for both the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission and "Open Thy Mouth". According to some of the Elders in our district, it also stands for "Obesity Through Members".......hope that one isn't too true.
Speaking of which, the members in our ward LOVE sister missionaries. Our dinner calendar is completely full and they're thinking about making one for lunch too. There is also a set of elders in our ward (who are also our zone leaders) and they resent us for it because the ward likes us better!
We had a really cool experience yesterday. We went to the home of a man named Richard who the missionaries have been trying to track down for a while, but he wasn't home. We kind of forgot about it but then later on, we met a woman just outside our apartment and by chance, found out that she is actually engaged to Richard! She was really excited to hear our message and wants us to teach her and Richard this week. They are apparently looking for a church to join. Sister Breaux and I talked to her about eternal marriage and she loved it. We really want her and Richard to be sealed in the temple.
I loved that because it's a terrific example of how I'm learning not to get discouraged. No matter what, the Lord will always find ways to bless us and help us along, even if we don't see it right away.
I love being a missionary!
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