October 7, 2013
Greetings family!
I can't believe that it is already Monday again! The weeks seem to fly by but the days can
drag on. It's crazy to think that I have
been out for three months! Not a long
time in the scheme of things but a good chunk nonetheless!
I loved all your e-mails :-) they made me smile and be very happy! I got an e-mail from the sister missionary in
the ward... Dang! All I remember is her first name is Karen and
her last name starts with an F... She is
so cute! I can't wait to meet her :-)
As we were e-mailing Elder Thomas was making our lunch☺haha! We were the winners! They were good sports about it and we all had
a fun time. Sister Carrigan needed to go
to the mall so that's where we headed.
She is dead set that she will be transferred next week and so she thinks
wherever she is headed will be out in the middle of po-dunk nowhere. Her mom told her to buy them all Georgia
pajamas for Christmas so she wanted to go see if she could find any. Well...there weren't any. It's just not
the time for them yet. Instead we kinda
just walked around the mall and had fun.☺ We passed a kiosk with a bunch of
straightening irons. The lady was
passing out coupons so sister Carrigan took the one she shoved in her
face. The next thing I know the lady has
grabbed me by the arm and shoved me in a chair.
She starts yammering about positive and negative ions and starts
straightening my already straight hair.
Then she takes the other side and starts curling it. All the while trying to sell me the $275
straightener. I told her over and over
how I had no money. Finally, after about
20 minutes of sitting in the chair she got the message. Her whole face changed from bubbly to
indignant. The problem was, now half of
my head was curly and the other half was straight :-) she ran the straightener
quickly over the curly part and more or less pushed me out of the chair. My head was still half wavy and now half
straight! Dumb lady! It was funny though.
We got done and still had about an hour left of p-day, so we headed back
over to the church to hang out. I love
hanging out with the Elders! They are so
fun and just awesome to be around.☺ We had dinner at the Holgados again. Sister Holgado has signed up for every Monday
this month. She is funny! She loves having us over... Her son Scotty is 14. He is handicapped and has the mentality of
about a five year old. She wants him to
get baptized even though he doesn't need to.
Whenever they ask if he wants to be, he says no. She says that she reads the stories in like
the Ensign of people with disabilities getting baptized and I think it makes
her feel bad. She asked if we would give
simplified missionary discussions for FHE and she wanted visuals. We watched the restoration video. Scotty sat through the whole thing but was
done as soon as the TV turned off. I
don't know if we'll ever get anywhere.
But it makes Sister Holgado feel better and we love the Holgado's, so I guess we will continue
onward!
October 8, 2013
Today was zone meeting. You know
what that means! Yup! I saw Sister Hooker!☺ Yea!! She got your letter Momma. She said she wrote you back. You will probably get her letter before you
get this. She told me that ever since
you talked with her parents, they mention me in every letter. She says they follow the blog and ask her how
I'm doing. Ah! I just love her!!☺
Today or tomorrow is when we find out who is training. Everyone keeps saying that I will. Though I actually think that training would
be fun, I don't know if I will. I feel
like I've gotten too prideful with everyone saying that I will train. I will try not to be too sad when I don't get
that call but I think I will be a little disappointed. Which is just silly cause I KNOW that being a
trainer doesn't determine how good of a missionary you are. I don't know, we will see. . . .
After going to lunch, (somehow like half of our zone went to the same
place. Which we aren't supposed to
do.) We headed over to Marni's to help her clean. She is so stinkin' sweet! She loves to make bread and she got all
excited and said she was going to make us bread for next time. Whenever we leave I really want to give a
spiritual thought. Her sometimes Marni
will ask us questions but for the most part she doesn't.
We went over to try and see Ethan (he is the one
with the less active family and he is the only one not baptized). We haven't seen him in quite a while. He still wants to hear about the gospel. It's just a matter of getting a hold of
him. He wasn't home. His dad answered and though he was polite, he
didn't want to talk to us. I don't
think Ethan has told his dad that he has been meeting with us. We didn't have dinner tonight so we tracted
straight through. We got a lot of
contacts so that was way nice. We met a
lady who's grandma is LDS. Her story is
kind of crazy! So her grandma was
baptized when she was like 15. She got
married at 16 and her husband ended up becoming a baptist pastor. She kept going to church though and two of
her boys went on missions. Her dad went
to the baptist church. He met Emily's
mom and she converted him to her church and that is where they are now. Emily's grandma is still a faithful and
active member, which is awesome! She was
so nice and told us if we just ever needed someone to smile and be nice to us
to come visit. So cute!
It was getting dark so we headed back to the car and went to go visit less
actives. As we were driving we passed
the Elders. Sister Carrigan passed them
and and then turned into the next neighborhood.
We were going to pick up the Elders but decided not to. We had to make it to our appointment. They weren't home. Then we got a call from Sister Henderson. Oh my heck!
Her divorce has turned pretty ugly.
They are going to Judge Judy. I so wish they wouldn't do that. It won't end up being good for any of them. Maybe you all should watch it on TV, then you can see who they are. So that is what up. Pretty crazy day! No phone call from the assistance about
training. Only one more day of waiting
for that.
October 9, 2013
Holy crazy! So this morning I have
been having an internal argument with myself.
On the one hand I wanted one of the assistants to call. I wanted to prove everyone right and be
training. On the other hand I'm
thinking, "If I'm thinking like that and wanting so badly to train I'm
just being so prideful!" I kept thinking that it would be embarrassing
if I didn't get a call as everyone said I will train and then I don't. Basically I was just a jumble of nerves. Well at 9:22 a.m. we got a call from the
assistants. Sister Carrigan answered it laughing. They asked how she was and
then how I was. Then they said. "Sister Carrigan, Sister George the Lord has called both of you to train. I was shaking and just started crying, my
emotions were everywhere! I didn't know
what to do! So, there you have it. I'm training.
And so is Sister Carrigan again!
She thinks that I will stay in Suwanee and she will go somewhere
else. Guess we will see on
Monday. I'm feeling pretty humbled right
now. I'm excited and scared. I know that I can do this and I know the Lord
knows I can do this. I will be the very
best trainer I can be!
So now we have the trainers meeting tomorrow and it goes right during our
meeting with Richard. So we called him
to see if we could set up a different time.
He told us that he had some exciting news and then told us that it was
his birthday today. Happy 65th birthday
Richard! Then he told us he had started reading the Doctrine and Covenants.
Then he stopped for a minute then said, "Now I know that I have a lot of
work to do. And this is
exciting. Well, I guess what I'm trying
to say is that I need to be a re-baptized."
AHHH!!! Yea!! Richard wants to be baptized!! I'm so happy!
We are meeting with him on Friday before we do exchanges. I'm just crazy excited! The Lord works great miracles on the hearts
of man.☺ I'm so proud of this cute little old man who has listened to the
spirit testify to him! OK, he really
isn't that old. But he is cute! I'm just praying that his family will allow
him to do this without giving him such a hard time! So that was my morning, all within a span of
2 hours!
We ate lunch and got all our plans figured out. We had run into a lady yesterday who said to
come back. We did but she wasn't
there. Sad day! We had about an hour before our next
appointments so we went and got me a GPS.
Though I know Suwanee pretty well, I still don't know it well
enough. It is a good GPS and will come
in handy.
Our appointment was a member referral.
Her name is Kiaundra. She is 19
and she's the cutest thing on the face of the planet! We did a church tour with her and that was so
fun! She is so excited and ready for the
gospel! She got really excited when I
talked to her about the Book of Mormon and wanted one right away. She has a lady who she is really good friends
with who is 60 years old and Mormon. Her
mom and sister both don't want her to come to our church but she says she just
tells them that they are silly and she has plenty of Mormon friends. We have state conference on Sunday and she
wants to come. I really hope she wants
to dig deeper into the church! I feel
like Satan is hardcore attacking everyone we teach! I know it's because we're finding people who
could do so much good in the church.
We went tracting after that and people were very nice but no luck. We went to see another lady that we had met
yesterday that had said to come back too.
She was just heading to the grocery store but she was very sincere when
she told us she was glad we had come back.
We got her phone number so we could call her before we came... I really hope and pray that she and her
family will be willing to listen! I want
to teach a family SO BADLY!! I want to
bring them into this gospel so that they can have the blessings of the
temple! I'm going to try really hard to
get in with her and her family.
We had dinner with the Watkins tonight.
They call us their girls. It's
kind of funny and I love it.☺ They aren't very pleased about transfers. They told us that there was nothing good
about that news. Sorry! We told them about how our Spanish Elders
wrote on our car and we wanted to get them back by filling their car with
balloons. Brother Watkins was all over
that. He said we could come over and use
their air pump so we didn't have to blow them all up. He is a funny guy. :-) When dinner was over we
went and got the Elders. They had kind
of stranded themselves and wouldn't be able to get home on time. Oh Elders!
October 10, 2013
It has been a mostly up with a few downs kind of day. My first up was when I walked into the
trainers meeting, and there was Sister Hooker!☺ Besides us two, there were two other sisters and two other Elders
from my MTC District that are training.
Crazy! Elder Harmon wasn't there
and neither was Elder Zimmerman. I was
sad about that. But, I did get to see
Elder Angilau and he is awesome! I asked
and no one had heard anything about the Elder Harmon. It's like he has disappeared into the wilds
of Georgia! And I can't write him
because that's against the rules. Elder
Angilau did know about Elder Zimmerman though.
Poor guy got poison ivy and he is crazy allergic to it. I guess he couldn't sleep for a week. Sad! That's all the info I could get about my Elders.
Thank you Sister Hooker's mom for posting pictures of these two on Facebook!!
So this is a really cool compliment that we got today. Sister Carrigan's trainer, Sister Blaylock,
told her that she has been hearing our names a lot and hearing about
Suwanee. She heard that we were getting
Suwanee out of the slump that it had been in.
It was really nice! And that is
way cool that other missionaries in our mission are hearing about us! Whoot!
When we finally got home we looked at our phone which had been on silent
and saw a bunch of phone calls and texts.
Brother Wernli had called us and left a message. Richard had called him and had asked him to
tell us that he didn't want to meet with us for a while. He kept telling Brother Wernli that he was
just a mess. Brother Wernli said from
the rest of their conversation it sounded like Richard had told his wife about
wanting to get baptized and, well, Richard doesn't have a lot of self
confidence and his wife was not happy.
I'm heartbroken! I felt like this
was going to happen. I've been praying
for his wife and son's hearts to be softened.
Sister Carrigan wanted to act in an like Brother Wernli never called so
that she could tell Richard she was leaving.
I told her I thought we should not call Richard because that would make
it worse. I will be devastated if I have
to leave and not tell Richard good bye. I love
this place with all my heart!
We went to Brother Hiers and Brother Nevins after lunch. We went tracting after that. I love tracting in the fall! It's not too hot or cold but still
sunny. It's so pretty! Mary had called us yesterday and asked if we
could come help her pack because she was moving. The people they were renting from sold the
house. When we got there she was so
frazzled! She hadn't even started. We tried to just help her get started. She really doesn't want to move. I was looking at all her pictures and I got
so sad. Her husband died a year or so
ago and she is just so lost. She looks
so pretty and happy in those pictures.
Now she just looks tired. Oh how
this gospel could help her if she would just let it! But she won't and it makes me ache because
she won't let the spirit truly speak to her.
I will just continue loving her though and pray that she feels Christ's
love. We got to have dinner with Sister
Fullwood tonight. What an amazing lady
she is! She has one of the strongest
testimonies I have ever known and her faith is amazing! I love her so much. She for sure is one who I will forever keep
in touch with!
After dinner we went over to John Scamon's house. He is an "eternigator" and has been for very
long time. He knows most everything
about this church. He has a testimony
but instead of doubting his doubts, he doubts as faith. It's pretty sad. He texted us the other night and asked if he
could have his house blessed. His 11
year old daughter has been hearing voices in her room and a bunch of other
creepy stuff. We took the Elders over
and they said a prayer blessing that house and then they gave Briana a
priesthood blessing. After that we
headed home.
On an ending happy note! I got your
letter today Momma! I love your letters.☺ I also got one from Sister Hooker.
Man, I love that girl!☺ On
Tuesday I got a letter from the Parkers. Kristine sent a picture that Kaudri had colored and their family
picture. Lucy's smile is the cutest little smile ever. I also got a
letter from Aunt Diana last week so that was fun. Yea for letters!
October 11, 2013
We got to go on exchanges today.
First, we had weekly planning. Oh
boy, that was rough! It took us a long
time. Sister Alder came here this
time. Suwanee was her greenie area, so
that was fun! Sister Galt took us to our
meeting place because we are pushing our miles. Going to Lilburn takes up a ton of
miles... When we got back to Suwanee we
went tracting. It was about four and we
had dinner at 6:30 so we had our 2 hours of tracting in. We had tons of fun! Sister Alder is cute. We were laughing and joking and having a grand
time.
We had dinner with the Watkins again.☺ They gave us an open invite to
call whenever we didn't have a dinner appointment. I thought we would surprise them was Sister Alder. We drove up and Sister Watkins
ran outside all excited. It was kind of
fun to do that. We met Sister Watkins
brother... He is quite the
character! He was really nice. After dinner we had to drop off a Chinese Book of Mormon to Sister Tiszai. She had
met an Asian lady on a plane trip and ended up talking about the church. The lady was super interested. She is from China and though they have all
those rules they still revolt a little and talk about stuff the government
tries to stop. One day we will get
missionaries in there! Sister Tiszai had
a really great missionary experience and it was so fun to hear her talk about
her experience. I love hearing members
stories about their missionary opportunities and getting to cheer them on! It makes me even more excited to be where I
am right now, a full time missionary!
October 12, 2013
We started off the day by going over to the Galts neighborhood clubhouse,
at 7:30. Their neighbor passed away and
the memorial service was today. They
needed help setting up and since Bishop asked if we would of course we did it. The story is super sad. Tim and Debbie got married in 2000. They are probably in their fifties or
sixties. Tim had cancer but had beat
it. A few weeks ago he went to the doctors for a checkup. The doctor gave him an all
clear and told him he was doing great and that he was super healthy. Bishop Galt went over to chat with him for
little bit after his doctor's appointment.
About 6 hours later Bishop Galt got a text saying that Tim had passed
away. He was pretty sure that the name
was wrong because he had just seen Tim a few hours ago. Bishop Galt went over to the house and Debbie
answered the door. Tim had a massive
heart attack and was gone. I'm only
writing the story and I am crying! This
is like the saddest story ever! Let me
tell a sweet, happy though. Sister
Galt was talking to Debbie and said "You know, you will see him
again." Debbie looked at her and
said, "I will?" Sister Galt
(is an amazing missionary) said, "Yes, he is up in heaven waiting for
you! He is there with your parents and
his parents and they're all cheering you on!" Debbie responded "Oh! I've never thought about that! I like that thought." Ok, so I've started crying again. . . .
Mostly it is just so amazing to me what this gospel can do for people! I am amazed that people aren't lined up in
droves to get baptized so they can be sealed together. And it's amazing to me how much comfort one
little sentence about the gospel can give someone! That is one of my most very favorite parts
about being a missionary! I love see a light come on in their eyes when they actually listen to the spirit
testifying to them of the truth. Even if
they deny it, they have been touched.
We got back to the apartment at about 10:00. Bishop had told us he wanted us at the
memorial service also which started at 1:00.
We went home, did personal and comp study says, ate lunch, and then went
back over.
So now here is a funny story for you now that I have made you all cry.☺ Ummm . . . when you go to a non-Mormon
funeral or memorial, you're supposed
to wear dark colors or black. We pulled
up into the parking lot and I'm looking around.
I looked down into my lap and go, "oh geez!" Your brilliant daughter, me, was wearing her
brightest yellow skirt with a white shirt!
Sister alder had just happened to bring a black skirt with a dark purple
shirt. We walk in and I felt like I
should have just thrown up my hands and hollered, "Yep I'm a Mormon and
apparently I have no idea how to dress at these things." It was a bit embarrassing but oh well! I'm not too sure what Bishop Galt had
expected us to do. We got shoved into
a corner and we couldn't hear a word.
Our decorations and settings all looked really nice. At the end of the service they released a
dove. Now a) I thought they only did that
at weddings, nope, guess not and b) why do
people rely on animals? They never do
what they're supposed to do. The bird,
oh sorry, dove just flew into the tree right next to us. C) I don't really get
the whole symbolism of releasing a dove.
It's a bit strange to me. We left right after that because we needed to exchanged back.
When we got to where we were supposed to meet each other, I got out of the
car, gave Sister Carrigan a hug and told her I had missed her. We do a little thought about how our
exchanges went, what is one thing the other person thinks we can improve
on. Sister Alder said I am too hard on
myself and that I need to remember that I am a good missionary. She is so sweet! I will try to improve on that. When we got home it was around 4:00. We had just gotten the message from the zone
leaders that we were allowed to go to the adult session of stake
conference! Yea!
Sister Carrigan unpacked what she had taken
with her on exchange and then we got a call from Stephanie. She wanted to take us out to dinner. She wanted to go way on the other side of our
area. We told her how about Wendy's? I really didn't want to go but she was
insisting. We went and bought balloons
at the dollar store next to Wendy's for out filling up of the Spanish Elders
car. We blew some of them up while we were laughing and having fun while we waited for
Stephanie. When she got there she
ordered three large meals. I really
didn't want the food. I tried to eat as
much of it as I could but I only got about halfway through it. Stephanie told us that she and her boyfriend have planned to start
having kids. Oh goodness. I really don't understand her. She really wants to quit smoking, and she
says she believes what we have taught her but then she won't do anything about
it. I don't know what to do with
her. We were almost late to the
conference because she wouldn't let us go.
We made it as they were singing the opening song. Sister Hooker was there!☺ I love that we are serving in the same
stake! Conference was super good! It was all about missionary work and how
members can work with us and how we can work with them. They have all 36 of us come up and sing an
impromptu "Called to Serve" it was super awesome! Everyone was crying, missionaries were
crying, members were crying, it was just a cry fest. Elder Pieper and Elder Bluth from the Seventy
were there so we knew that our stake president, President Wood, was going to get
released. I'm sad about that. I really loved President Wood! After stake conference we went and talked
with Brother Pickett about all our investigators.
October 13, 2013
Here is my happy thought for today...
I have gotten to see my Sister Hooker four times this week. Yea for stake conference and zone meetings
and being trainers together! I LOVE
her! She knows when something is wrong
and she it has amazing. I love her
tons.
We rode home with the Watkins since they had taken us. At 4:00 we went
over to the church to help set up for a different funeral service. This guy is a friend of Brother Adams, and his
wife committed suicide. It is pretty
sad. Brother Adams has told us twice now
that Ben (the husband) will become Mormon at any time now because it was his
wife who is stopping him. Brother
Adams is a funny man! Sister Carrigan
played the piano. No one knows that I
can play. They may find out someday.
We did finish on a fun note. At
8:00 we went over to the Watkins and filled up over 80 balloons and a ton of
baby balloons. We're stuffing the
Spanish Elders car with them tomorrow.☺ Haha!
We are so funny!
Well my family! I love you all! Keep being amazing and keep being
missionaries! I pray for you all every
night that Heavenly Father will keep you safe and happy!☺
Love Molly
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