May 26, 2015

I have too much to type and not enough time to type it all. So I'll be quick. 

This week was full of miracles! So, a couple weeks ago we were driving around York and we passed this house with a mustache welcome sign on the front door, and I was like, "Hey! That house has a mustache! We should try it sometime!" And I was mostly just kidding because it's not like the mustache would make that house any more promising than any other house, but Sister Brunner was like "Ugh Sister Temp, stop picking random houses!" (yes, this is a typical thing, me pointing at random houses wanting to try them.) So for a couple weeks we would sometimes write "mustache house" on our list of people to try, and then on Wednesday we finally got around to it. And we were expecting them to tell us to go away like every other house we try, but a girl in her early 20s answered, and she was like "Oh hey! Sorry about my dog, you can come in if you can get around him." And we were like, "whaaat, she's letting us in? She doesn't even know who we are yet!" So then we came in and told her a very abbreviated restoration lesson and she was like, "Wow that sounds awesome! I'm super busy this week because of my sister's graduation, but can you come back next Wednesday and tell me more?" It was ridiculous. So now we're gonna try her tomorrow. 

Mini miracle: So we were gonna go to Texas Roadhouse last Thursday as a district but then that didn't work out and I was disappointed because that's my favorite restaurant and I was really looking forward to eating steak. But then on Sunday the Deans invited us over for dinner and fed us steak. And then yesterday the Byers invited us for dinner and we had steak again. So we actually got steak 2 days in a row. 

Transfers is coming up this Friday so if you're planning on writing me, you should probably hold off until next Monday when I let you know where I'm at. At first, I felt like Sister Brunner and I were definitely staying in York, but now we keep feeling like something's gonna happen this transfers. And then this week, the pedals on the piano at our place stopped working, so I'm kinda hoping I get transferred somewhere with a working piano. (That's a terrible reason to want to be transferred haha). 

We bought Meet the Mormons this week! I love that movie. Yall should go watch it if you get the chance. It's only $8 at Walmart and I think it might be on Netflix. Oh and we got our conference ensigns this week! That was probably the most exciting thing ever. I really loved this last conference and it was awesome to be able to go back and read some of my favorite talks. I really loved Rosemary M. Wixom's talk and Kevin W. Pearson had an awesome talk too. So my quote of the week comes from his talk:

"If you are struggling, confused, or spiritually lost, I urge you to do the one thing I know will get you back on track. Begin again to prayerfully study the Book of Mormon every day, every day, every day. I testify of the profound power in the Book of Mormon that will change your life and strengthen your resolve to follow Christ. The Holy Ghost will change your heart and help you see things as they really are."

I felt the Spirit testifying to me of the truthfulness of that as I was just typing it. The Spirit is so cool when you're able to recognize it all the time. That's one of the greatest blessings to me from coming on a mission. I definitely know the Book of Mormon has that power to clarify your mind if you study it every single day. 

~Sister Temp

May 18, 2015

Sister Brunner let me borrow her card reader, so I have pictures this week!

This is what my wall of notes and quotes and stuff looks like now.

actually that's what it looked like 2 or 3 weeks ago. It's bigger now. 

I don't even know which picture of the sky to send. I've taken so many since I last sent pictures. But here's one from yesterday right before it started raining cats and dogs. There was actually a really awesome double rainbow but when we started driving, the other one kind of vanished. But this is a rainbow going right into McCool Junction, which is pretty sweet.

 Here's the York water tower! Everyone knows the York water tower. You drive right by it on the freeway.

 And this is us at Adopt-A-Pet. You can't tell in this picture, but my left arm is completely coated in mud. It was raining and the dogs attacked me, so I got mud all over me. Sister Brunner is fairly mud-free because she always made me go in first. 

I met Elder Oaks yesterday! He came to the Kearney stake conference and he went through and shook like everybody's hand. Yesterday I felt the Spirit the strongest I've ever felt it. In the 15 minutes before it started while everybody was sitting and chatting, I just felt completely at peace. Which never happens. I wasn't thinking about the past or the future, I was just content and peacefully joyful. I never wanted it to start, I just wanted to stay like that forever. 

Well, I gave a training on Thursday. It feels like that was weeks ago because so much happened between now and then. This training wasn't as bad to prepare, so I think I may be getting the hang of it. But that doesn't mean I like it. Maybe someday. 

This is really cool. So a couple weeks ago, some other missionaries were talking about how God answers specific prayers and they were talking about how they drew a family they wanted to teach, with a dad and a mom and a couple kids, and then they prayed to find the family and they found a family that fit their picture! So Sister Brunner and I thought that was awesome and we wanted to try that. So we drew a family with a 10 year old boy and like a 6 year old boy and like a 2 year old and then a daughter in her early teens. But then we forgot about our picture. And then 2 weeks ago we had an appointment to teach a less active family but we got there and they weren't home. But their neighbors were outside so we decided to go talk to them and the mom's name is Cassie and she didn't seem very interested to me but she said we could come back. We took her cookies on Mother's Day because she seemed pretty stressed and she was really grateful for them and then we went back on Saturday and we started teaching her and she's so awesome! She grew up in a very strict Catholic family and same with her husband (we haven't met him yet) so they don't really have a religion but they call themselves Christian. Which is like the perfect set-up! And then yesterday we were thinking about her and her family and we realized she has all the kids we drew in our picture! She doesn't have a teenage daughter, but she took in her sister's daughter about a month ago so she's been living there with them. How perfect is that. God answers specific prayers!

Quote from Elder Oak's talk yesterday, which he quoted from a little girl talking to him: "I know you are an apostle because you are clean. And your head is shiny."

Actual quote of the week."You don't have to try to be successful for the rest of your life. Just be successful today and then you will be where you want to be."

Just 1 more.

~Sister Temp

May 11, 2015

Well, there was no Mother's Day tornado like last year. That was pretty disappointing. There was aaaalmost a tornado on Wednesday, it was only 45 miles south of us, but then it went around us. On Saturday we woke up at 2 in the morning to the loudest thunder I've heard in my life. I love thunderstorms, but it was actually kinda freaky, especially since there was almost no time gap between the lightning and thunder. But that's about all the storms this week. 

I'm so happy that we're going to Kearney tonight for exchanges. We get to go to FHE with the YSA branch. The Kearney sisters were telling me that the next week after I left Kearney (while I was in Kearney after Sister C left) one of the YSA was like, "Wait . . . Sister Temp was actually . . . temporary?" And apparently that was just the funniest thing ever and he still laughs at that all the time. 

These last couple weeks I've been feeling kind of unmotivated and depressed and I felt like anything more to do would've pushed me too far. And then I started thinking about how maybe I actually needed something to focus on and put all my energy into (not that I even had any energy), but when you're more focused on others, you're less focused on yourself. And then I started thinking about how much I would hate to find out that I had to give a training and that if someone told me that, I would die. But then I got stuck on thinking about giving a training and that thought wouldn't leave my mind, and so I knew it was coming. And this morning the district leader asked if I would give a training this week. It's a really good thing that the Spirit has been preparing me to hear that, otherwise it might've pushed me to the edge. But when I read the text, I just thought to myself, "Ugh, I knew that was coming," and it was no big deal. 

This week we were doing service for Sister Byers and we were helping her paint a fence and of course I was talented enough to somehow turn my head with just the right amount of momentum to swing my glasses off my face right into the can of paint. I couldn't hit a target to save my life but accidentally sending my glasses into the paint can like 5 feet away is the easiest thing in the world.

Turns out Jessi doesn't hate us. Or maybe she does. I don't know, it's really confusing. We went and saw her this week and she told us that she just always got our texts at bad times and would forget to respond. And she told us she would come to church this Sunday and bring her daughter. But she didn't. And she didn't respond to our text. So apparently she just hates us over text. 

We taught Debbie out of Preach My Gospel this week. She kept telling us how she just couldn't feel the Spirit ever so we read chapter 4 with her, which is all about recognizing the Spirit and we helped her to realize that she does feel the Spirit! It was great. I don't think people really understand how common the Spirit is. It's not gonna be some big manifestation, it's little feelings that could almost be taken as your own thoughts. But if you are ever joyful or peaceful or experience anything like that, that's the Spirit. It's that simple. But then she told us that another concern she has is she doesn't know if the Book of Mormon is true or not. And we were like, "Well guess what? The Book of Mormon is topic of the next chapter in Preach My Gospel!" And she laughed, so I guess we're basically gonna read the entire book with her. 

"Your life will be easier when you accept that what God does in your life is for your eternal good." ~Richard G. Scott. 

~Sister Temp

May 4, 2015

Happy Monday! 

This week was great. It's raining today! Which is definitely a plus.

 

I still haven't found my camera cord, but maybe I will someday! It's probably best that I don't send pictures though, since I took like a billion of the sky this week and I wouldn't be able to choose which one to send. 

I've been doing much better at talking to people! The coolest thing was last Monday I printed a talk called "The Supernal Gift of Prayer" because I had written it down to print, but as we were leaving the library I was thinking "Why did I want this talk again?" I couldn't even remember writing it. But I read it the next day and I LOVED it so I definitely recommend reading it. I love this one part talking about the 3 answers you get to your prayers: 

1 - The warm fuzzy peaceful feeling everyone talks about. 

2 - The stupor of thought, which is kind of an uneasy feeling.

3 - Nothing. And the reason you sometimes get no answer is because God is leaving it up to you. He's waiting to see if you will make the right decision without His guidance because He trusts you. And as you act on your decision, THEN you will feel that it's right or wrong.

 

And then that night we had a lesson with Debbie and this talk was totally relevant! And I told her about the 3 answers we get to prayer and you could tell she was really listening. 

And then this other time we were teaching the Humanes and I was actually talking about half the time! I have no idea what I was saying, but I definitely talked. And then the oldest boy was like "How come you never talked when you were with Sister Christensen?" And I was like "Uhhhh because I'm the shyest person on the face of the planet."

One of our recent converts (she's inactive already) decided that she's moving to Guatemala . . . because she somehow thinks it'll be easier to live there than here. I just don't understand her.

Jessi hates us. I don't know what we did, but we invited her to church last week and she said her car was broken, and then another night we asked if we could come over (and she always says yes) but she said she was busy. And then we texted her a few other times throughout the week but she doesn't answer. So that's kind of sad. I'm still hoping she'll come back around. We're gonna keep trying her anyway until she actually tells us that she hates us.

Well, that's about it. This week was fairly uneventful. 

Quote of the week: "If you only do the work when you're motivated, you'll never be consistent enough to improve. The ability to stick to the schedule and do the work - especially when you don't feel like it - is so valuable that it's literally all you need to become better 99% of the time. Stepping up when it's annoying or painful or draining to do so it what makes someone great. Stick to schedule rather than letting life get in the way and remember what's important to you."

~Sister Temp

April 27, 2015

Well, I forgot my camera cord, which is really sad because the sky has been AMAZING this past week. 

Sister Brunner and I get along way too well. We're always quoting things and then getting mad at each other for quoting things we like and then we end up quoting even more stuff while we're chastising the other person for distracting us. Sooooo we fixed that problem by watching The District during meals and getting ready time. I've already watched the whole thing like a billion times and now we know it so well that we mostly just quote that. 

Guess what??? An apostle is coming to stake conference on May 17! Nobody knows who it is yet, except Sister Brunner lived with the stake president in her last area and he told her, so she told me. And he said that he wants to shake every missionary's hand! This is so cool. 

Some people are just so frustrating. We went tracting on this one street and met this 18 year old kid named Jared and we were really surprised that he was interested since everyone else we had already tried pretty much hated us. But he was super interested and told us we could come back the next day! So we went the next day and Sister B and I were so excited to meet with him again and then his dad answered the door. And told us how stupid we were for all we believed and told us never to come back and talk to his kids again, and then he gave back the Book of Mormon we had given Jared. We've been having a lot of problems with that lately. We went tracting another day and at several different houses, kids would answer the door and be super interested and then they would go get their parents and the parents would shut the door in our face. Ugh, some people's moms.

We were having companion study today and during that, one of us accidentally said 3 Nephi 3:7 instead of 1 Nephi 3:7, and if you go look up that scripture, you'll see why that's so hilarious.

We committed 2 of the Humanes kids for baptism! Their parents got baptized this last year but none of the 4 kids old enough for baptism did. They don't feel ready and everyone keeps telling them they're not ready but we had a lesson with 2 of them last week and committed them for June 13! They're still really nervous about it but we're trying to help them realize that it's okay to not be perfect before you're baptized. So if you want something to pray for, there's that.

QOTW: "The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best medicine for despair is service. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired." ~Gordon B. Hinckley

~Sister Temp