March 3, 2014

us and porter outside the ok city temple.

about 1/3 of the active members in our branch were at the temple.

Some friends we saw at the sister's conference. Sister Obeta, Sister Andrew (from the Marshall islands!), Sister Gonzalez (from Mexico), Sister Short, me, and Sister Preston. 

puppies!!!

Another week has just flown by here in Huntsville. On Monday we got to spend some time with our district in Fayetteville playing ping pong and watching Ephraim's Rescue. It's cool because our district leader is from Kiribati just like Sister Obeta so she has someone that she's able to talk to in her native language. On Tuesday, Sister Lavea came here on exchanges and we visited a woman named Carol. Carol is a friend of one of our investigators, Carolyn, and received a blessing from some members of the ward last week because she is really sick. They invited her to meet with us and she accepted, and we have been teaching her. She is the sweetest lady and also has a friend named Debbie living with her who has been sitting in on our lessons. We are going to invite her to be baptized today!

On Wednesday we drove to Springdale for a specialized sisters training meeting. Half of the sisters in the mission were there so I got to see Sister Breaux and a few other sisters I've met before. Sadly Sister Hatch and Sister Huskey were at the other conference. But the meeting was amazing! President and Sister Shumway spoke to us along with Brother McClellan, who is the mission therapist. The theme of the conference was "Come what may, and love it" and we talked about the trials we go through as missionaries and the way that we measure ourselves. It was just such a good meeting. Unfortunately, it will be the last sisters meeting we will have because the missionary leadership of the seventy has asked that they don't hold them anymore. I guess the elders probably got jealous or something. I think my favorite part of the meeting was when President Shumway called us out in the middle of his instruction. He was talking about how we need to be inspired by the success of other missionaries instead of intimidated or jealous. He said "Huntsville sisters, where are you? Tell everyone how many lessons you taught last week. 44. I have been to Huntsville before, and teaching 44 lessons in 1 week there just isn't possible. It just isn't done. You should take inspiration from what these sisters are doing." It was so cool!

On Friday, we went to go see Porter to ask him if he could still go to the temple on Saturday, but he wasn't home. We stopped by multiple times that evening with no luck. We were starting to get really frustrated because we had reminded him almost every day that week that he needed to be at the church at 5:00 Saturday morning and we knew he was probably going to spend the night in Springdale and forget to show up. So we left a note on his door telling him to call us and went home discouraged. We prayed that night that we knew how good of an experience it would be for Porter to go to the temple and asked that if it was Heavenly Father's will, that Porter would remember to come home that night. Well, at 2:30 that night Porter finally called us and said he had just gotten home and still wanted to go! We were thrilled. So we set out for Oklahoma City early Saturday morning and got there for a 10:00 session. It was amazing. The OK City temple is beautiful and we saw missionaries from our mission and the Oklahoma City mission. Porter had such a good experience and said that he can't wait to go back.

Yesterday, it started hailing and snowing around 9 in the morning. We decided to walk because it was pretty bad and poor Sister Obeta almost froze to death. But it was worth it because we had a neat experience. Remember how that couple picked us up last time it snowed and said we could teach them? Well they never contacted us (we gave them our number, they didn't want to give theirs out) so we almost forgot all about them but while we were walking home yesterday, they picked us up again! I know Huntsville is a tiny town, but what are the odds we would run into them in the same exact place one month later? We talked more with them and they gave us their address and we are going to teach them on Saturday.

Then later that evening, we tried to drive our car because we had a dinner appointment with the Elmores who live quite a ways out of town. We almost couldn't even get our car out of the driveway it was so icy and the snow had accumulated a lot. We made it to their house but when we left last night we got stuck in their driveway. So now I can say I've learned how to unstick a car from a snowy ditch. Seriously, I don't know why Washington always cancels school for an inch of snow. If I can drive a Chevy Cruz down a country road in a foot of snow and ice I think anyone in Sammamish should be able to get around okay. Anyways, when we got back to our apartment we got stuck again and this time we couldn't get out. To make things worse we couldn't find our cell phone to call for help. But this man walked by and asked if we needed him to drive our car out of the ditch and he was able to pull it out. After he parked our car in our driveway and got out, he said "Not bad for a drinking man, eh?" and wandered off into the darkness. I looked at Sister Obeta and said, "Sister....did we just let a drunk guy drive our car?" Yes, yes we did.

So this is the big week where we try to teach 1,000 lessons in our zone. Sister Obeta and I are shooting for 90. So we are going to have a busy busy week and our transfer calls are on Saturday. Everyone pray that I will get to spend another transfer in Huntsville.