I'm just about over my cold, which is such a relief. It's so nice to be able to breathe again. I love being able to inhale, I'm not gonna take that for granted for a while. But of course there's always something with me. As soon as I got better, we found out that I have eczema on my right hand so yaaaaaaaay. It's on my knuckles and down the side of my hand so it feels greeeeeat whenever I have to shake hands with someone. But I'd much rather have this than a stuffy nose.
We got to go on exchanges this week, so that was exciting. We went up to meet our sister training leaders in Kearney, Sister Lutz (who is from Canadaaaaa) and Sister Wilson. They're so awesome. And slightly insane but still awesome. I went with Sister Lutz and we had barely left when we got a call from Sister Wilson and Christensen telling us that they had just got a call from the ward mission leader who had been assigned to give a training in this huge meeting that night with a ton of big priesthood leaders in the area like all the bishops and branch presidents and stake people and mission leaders and such and he told them that he couldn't make it so he decided to ask the sister missionaries to do it in his place. And Sister Wilson and Christensen said they prayed about it and felt that they should be the two to give the training. Which was totally fine with me. It's so amazing how God answers prayers so quickly sometimes because for exchanges Sister C and I both came up with some goals and mine was just to at least bear my testimony to everyone we talked to since I'd been having trouble speaking up in lessons (shocking, right?) and that went okay, but Sister C had set a goal to eliminate fear. And of course we prayed for help to accomplish our goals and God decided that He would help her along by giving her a huge training to do in front of all these big priesthood leaders on short notice. And she was slightly freaking out a bit but they did it and they were great and she says that everything else is just so easy in comparison.
While I was with Sister Lutz we decided to go tracting, which was about as successful as you would expect, BUT then we saw this lady shoveling snow and we went and helped her and her name was Dora and she could barely speak English but then we said Jesuchristo (is that how you spell it?) and then she understood and she let us set up an appointment with her and she's a new investigator!
We had another blizzard on Wednesday so we got stuck in Kearney all morning and we barely made it to our district meeting on time. But we had a really cool experience! Sister C and I were driving to our district meeting from Kearney and we were on the freeway and we were kind of confused cuz our GPS was telling us to get off the freeway even though we still had quite a bit to go but we got off the freeway and as soon as we drove off the ramp our gas thing started beeping and we realized we were like completely empty and we happened to be driving RIGHT past a gas station that's right off the freeway so we turned in and filled up and then the GPS told us to get back on the freeway instead of to keep going the random way it was taking us before. God took control of our GPS! it was really cool and I'm not describing it right but it was a miracle.
Have I talked about my district here yet? They're really cool. Not as cool as my mtc district but they're okay. Our district leader, Elder Sellers, kinda struggles, which is hilarious. When he was introducing me on the first day I was there he called me Sister Tempt, and everyone jumped on him for that, and then later he accidentally referred to the senior couple in our district as old people, and everyone jumped on him for that too, and he just can't get anything out right apparently. He also told the district to open to the book of Zeezrom like a month ago and they still won't let that go. But it's all in good fun.
Everyone here is dying. That's how they describe it when you go home from your mission. Sister C is going home in 2 transfers and so is one of the sister training leaders and a few people from our district and then the transfer after that the other sister training leader goes home and a few more people from our district and it's really sad and there are only like 2 elders that are staying longer than that. Oh and Sister C and I are the only sisters in the district, which is slightly awkward.
Zone Olympics are coming up this Wednesday, so that's . . . exciting. Not really. Apparently everyone has to participate and there are like pushups and situps and stick pull and arm curls and sprints and I'm not excited for all that humiliation. But I'm sure everyone else is super out of shape too, especially since they've all been here so long and there's not really much you can do for exercise around here. It's not like you can just go out jogging in this weather. It's like super foggy today. I walked outside and I thought it was sprinkling for a second cuz I felt little water droplets on my face and arms but nope, that's just all the moisture in the air. It's awful. I miss Arizona weather where it's the same every day. The weather is so bipolar here, it was freezing for half the week, like in the negatives sometimes, and then Sunday, it was hot (well, it was "hot" in comparison) and I only wore a sweater. It's so weird. I don't like a variety in my weather.
Yesterday was branch conference, and it was super weird cuz afterwards there was a potluck with the whole branch and they just took down the chairs in the chapel and set up tables in there and there were less tables than there would be at a young women event in our ward. We don't even have a real building, it's like one of those buildings with different businesses in each door, so it's kind of set up like a doctor's office-ish? with a long hallway and little rooms and the big main room. But it still feels like a church building, so that's good.
We haven't found any investigators yet cuz it's so cold and you don't really tract much in the winter cuz people won't answer the doors and if they do they'll call you crazy and tell you to go home and get warm. But we are pretty close to getting an investigator with this one woman named Danielle. I haven't met her yet but Sister C and her old companion went and tried her door a few weeks, or maybe a few months, back and she came out and talked to them and told them that she found God when she was in prison a while back and they gave her a Book of Mormon but they hadn't gone back to see her again yet. We tried her a few days ago and it was night and we got to the door and could smell alcohol pretty bad but we knocked anyway and this guy answered and he was apparently super drunk and he asked who we were and when we told him and said that we wanted to meet with Danielle he said that he was her brother and that she definitely wouldn't wanna meet with us so we should just go home. Soooooo we left and decided we would try again when he wasn't there but this other guy yelled after us a few minutes later asking if we wanted to teach them and we asked if there was a better time and he told us to come back next week. So who knows.
While I was sick I read Our Search for Happiness by M. Russell Ballard (cuz we were snowed in and there wasn't anything else to do) and I really liked it and it answered a lot of my questions that I was wondering and there was this one quote I really liked: "Many of our missionaries begin their missions thinking they are going to repay Heavenly Father for His goodness toward them by serving Him for 18 months or 2 years. But before long they learn an important eternal truth: you can never do more for the Lord than He can do for you." And it's so true because no matter how hard you try, you can never repay Him because while you're trying to serve Him, he just keeps blessing you and it's impossible to ever be even.
Quote of the Week: Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain." -Helen Keller
~Sister Temp
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