Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Just Call Me Font Filler

Shoutout to my HARDCORE baby brother who turns 16 this week! Tomorrow, actually!! How is that even possible? How are you that old? I thought I just turned 16? 
Somebody keep those pedestrians off of the sidewalks ;) 
I love you, Druwby dooby doo! You're seriously like the coolest kid ever!! :)

So along with that news, I am so grateful for the knowledge that families are forever and that I get to spend ETERNITY with my family who I love very very much. How cool is that. This week, we got to take part in a wedding. They were able to be married for their life on this earth this week, and a year from now they will enter the temple to be sealed for eternity. How incredible is it that we have that power restored to the earth today?
So yeah! This week was awesome because we got to see our investigator get married on Friday so that she could enter the waters of baptism on Saturday. What dedication. She has the most incredible testimony. 
Filling the font was interesting, though. I didn't know something could take so long. It takes almost four hours to fill that puppy. So we had to get to the church super early. We left the house with all of our things for the day - our study books and our makeup and our lunch and even a curling iron so that we could curl our hair during lunch hour. It was funny. We basically camped out at the church all day. 
The baptism was incredible. It was all in Spanish. The hymns were a little bit of a struggle, but other than that it went really well! She was so happy to finally be baptized after three years of meeting with the missionaries. She's worked so hard to get to this point! We were crazy happy for her. 

Some other cool things that happened this week include:

-Holding REAL Mexican jumping beans for the first time
-Meeting a stray kitten outside the church building during district meeting and naming it Moses
-Going to the music store on pday and being able to play guitar for an hour. That was seriously so incredible. I miss that so much
-Purchasing a dinky little harmonica and having the elders teach me how to play it. (best day of my life)
-Meeting a super cool person named Elise who shares my love of fried pickles
-Doing some service for a less active member by helping her clean out a shed. We love to get down in the dirt, even in our skirts!
-And then, of course, the highlight of any week is meeting with Mervin. He's the coolest, funniest less active ever. He calls us his lady friends and shares his spicy chicken with us. He's awesome.

Alright. I have a funny story to share with you. 
We have this investigator named H.G. and he's super excited about learning. We've taught him twice, but his phone got shut off cause he doesn't have a lot of money and he couldn't pay his bills. He also lives on the fifth floor of an apartment building and the outside door to get into the building is always locked, so unless he's outside when we go to see him, we have NO WAY to get a hold of him! Super frustrating! During weekly planning, Sister Tolman and I prayed very sincerely so that we would be able to see him walking on the street so that we could contact him and set a time to meet with him and get him to church. We promised that no matter where we were or where we were going, we would stop the car and get out to talk to him. So it was Saturday and we still hadn't seen him. We were on our way to a dinner appointment with a member in Jonestown and we were stopped at a red light. All the sudden, I look across the road and cry "Oh my gosh! There's H!" Sister Tolman jumped and yelled, "Oh my gosh oh my gosh! PARK THE CAR!!" So as soon as the light turned green, we turned and found a place on the side of the road to park. By then, we had lost sight of him but we thought we knew which way he was walking, so we started heading in that direction, too. We saw somebody walking that looked the same as him but we weren't 100% sure if it was, haha. Sister Tolman leans to me, "Do you think that's him?" I shrugged my shoulders. "Only one way to find out!" Haha I called out to him as loud as I could, "H!" 
He turns around with this GIANT grin on his face! "Hermanas!" 
Haha, we were able to invite him to come to church and to set a return appointment for next week so that we can teach him again. Unfortunately, in our flurry and zeal to share the gospel and to keep our promises with the Lord, somehow Sister Tolman had dropped the phone in the street. We didn't realize that until we were in Jonestown. But neither of us worried about it. We knew that we had done right by our Father in Heaven and that everything would be okay. 
After the dinner appointment, we drove back to Lebanon to see if we could see the phone nearby where we had parked. It was right there! Just sitting in a pile of leaves, completely fine! No one had taken it or run over it or anything! 
I KNOW that when we keep our promises with the Lord, he blesses us. It was a simple thing to have our phone be okay, and I know that even if it wasn't that everything would have been fine. But it was our little miracle for the week and I wanted to share that with you guys. :)

There have been so many other miracles in this area. We recently started teaching two new people - J and F - and both of them during our first lesson expressed that they had been praying for truth to find them and for the Lord to set them on the right path. It's incredible to hear that because then, as a missionary, you just know you're in the right place! 


The work is awesome! This week, we had a little setback because I got really sick. :( That was so dumb! It's hard not to, though. A lot of the people that we're teaching have the flu and bronchitis and all sorts of nasty stuff and they still just let us come over to teach. I mean, that's really cool of everybody because we love teaching appointments. But it was hard for Sister Tolman because when I'm sick, she doesn't really have anything to do. She was so sweet about it this week though, just telling me, "No, don't worry. I needed to catch up on my Ensign reading anyway." So she just let me sleep. Thursday was the longest day. I slept until three. I mean, I wasn't feeling better after three, but we had appointments and I was sick of laying around. Ain't nobody got time fo dis! So I've slowly been returning to health. :) It's hard though cause I don't really get a lot of sleep at night. Sister Tolman has been having allergies and so she's congested pretty bad and so she's got this tremendous hibernating bear snore that rocks the streets of Lebanon with it's intense vibrations. I mean, usually she doesn't snore at all. But it's been pretty bad these passed few weeks...  
I hope don't snore. I've asked her if I do and she says no. But I don't know if she's just being nice! Haha. I just pray every night that I'll fall asleep before she does and that I will sleep through the night. I've never had to pray for that before. It's so stinking funny. I try not to laugh while I'm praying but it's just so humorous. "Please, Heavenly Father, let me fall asleep before my trainer so that I don't have bags under my eyes tomorrow." Hahahaha.

Ah, the struggles of missionary life. :) 

It's going awesome, though. I'm super stoked for General Conference this weekend. I learned so much from the Women's Conference. some incredible talks were given that day.
I'm so grateful for living prophets! I'm grateful for the organization in this church, which is the same as when Christ lived and established his church. I love the gospel. I am so grateful for righteous priesthood holders who can give blessings of comfort and healing to those in need. 
I LOVE THIS GOSPEL! :) 

And I love all of you. 
I hope you had a great week, everyone. So good to hear from you from time to time. 
Keep the faith! And make sure to watch General conference :D

Love, Hermana Bills