Week 31

Holy granola.
     This week has been craz-ay. The relief society just got new
visiting teaching lists, so everyone's a wee bit overwhelmed with
their 12 people they have to visit, so we've been helping them out
with that.
     And holy cow have I gotten so much mail this week. Thank you so
much for all the love! I'm feelin it! I'm so grateful for such an
amazing ward family and such an incredible stake. I love seeing all
the actives and dances and such that are put together. Holy wizard of
oz and high end mormal venues. Dang, HB represents well. I'm so
grateful for that. So thank you all for your love this week! I love my
ward fam!
     I've been so dang busy on Facebook. Got like 5 new fb
investigators, but most of them are from Brazil or Mexico, but luckily
we have both Spanish and Portuguese elders in our district, so they've
been gettin lots of referrals from Sista C. De nada.
     We have an investigator who has 6 grand kids who are all
members. Last week she got so excited about our message that she ran
outside and had us teach her neighbor who was standing outside. Her
neighbor was super grateful and was so excited about the little
miracle she had of meeting us. So we were visiting our investigator
the other day and long story short, we sat down on the couch and this
mass of people walked through the house and we turned around and her
neighbor that we had met the week before was suddenly sitting right
behind us. She was so stoked to see us and we chatted for a good 30
minutes while our investigator was dealing with something else. It was
awesome. She cried. It was so good. So yay for lil miracles!
I spoke on Sunday. Satan is ruining my life and none of our
investigators come to church. They try, but don't come through. The yw
president took us to get Thai food. I all the time feel like I'm
serving in a foreign country rather than just In the us. It's an
adventure.
     That's really it. Nothing spectacular, nothing too fancy.
Love y'all!
Sista C

The four Normandy sisters.

Week 30

   This week has been another yelled at, no one comes to church,
everyone hides from us, Bishop still hates us, fallin off the bike,
proposed to by creepy guys on Facebook type of a week.
    Had the worst day ever last night. We go to the other sisters'
apartment and use their wifi for Facebook every night. I locked myself
in the bathroom as soon as we got there and just let it all out and
got on my knees for a good 20 minutes. Everything from the week just
piled up til I finally hit my breaking point.
    (We have this new rule that we can read our emails whenever they
show up, we just have to wait to write on pday cause it's a lot less
distracting to just read instead of staring at the blinking icon on
the iPad. Cause to missionaries email day is literally more exciting
than Christmas. I literally can't sleep Sunday nights waiting to read
my emails in the morning. We get excited for mail, we die for
packages, we lose sleep over emails. We live a sad life.)
   So anyway, I was like Heavenly Father, I'm miserable, please just
let me get one email early tonight. Just one exciting thing. So I
connected to the wifi and three showed up. And my wonderful Madison
sent me quite exactly what I needed to hear and I cried. That was a
small but greatly needed tender mercy from The Lord. Miracles.
    My lovely Hailey got baptized in Keystone yesterday! I'm so proud
of her! I've been able to stay in contact with her on Facebook,
hallelujah. We were chatting the other night and she's been going to
seminary every day and has been to church every week and she's
obsessed with everything. She was like "seminary has just helped build
my faith so much and God has just blessed me so much. Thank you so
much for everything you've taught me. Ciera and I already signed up
for girls camp. I wanted to let them know early so they'll have an
idea of how many will be there." Where did you come from child? Shes
my miracle that finished all of Faith for personal progress in one day
and was halfway done with her project the next. She's amazing. I love
her. And her sister, Ciera, my golden little child is getting baptized
on the 4th. I just love them so much. My miracle children that I was
forced to leave.
That is all
Sister Carr

Hailey's baptism with Sister Hillman and Sister Cook!

Week 29

Went to the mall last pday. I felt so evil, it's unreal. Since I've
been in the country for forever, I have no skills in walking up to
people randomly and talking about Jesus, but I have mad door skills
and would so rather tract. But I had a couple of people come up to me
and start talking about religion and such. It was so great. Had a
really good discussion about the church with this guy in the middle of
bath and body works. And I didn't even have to initiate the convo.
Miracles. And they were playing 1D. First time hearing them in 7
months. Miracles.
   The missionaries in the Philippines finally contacted my golden
online investigator and she's absolutely loving it! Ahhhh I so got
them a baptism, you're welcome.
Went on trade offs. The STL's area is further away from the city and
it's this ghettoified version of Keystone. I was lovin it. We cleaned
the absolute nastiest house that I have EVER been in. I'm pretty
positive that I was sent here cause I always hated how Mom would
always make us clean and I'd so rather not. But here I get to see the
results of my way.... Heavenly Father's a clever one.
 While I was in redneck heaven, Sister Orton and our STL found this
golden miracle child. She's so ready for the gospel. We showed her the
bible video of Christ getting baptized and after I was like what
thoughts or feelings did you get when watching that? She was like, um
I finna do that but I don't swim.... total 'District' moment, I
thought it was funny. So after resolving that concern, we invited her
to be baptized on the 29th, she said 'yes, what time on the 29th?'
That took me so way off guard, I stared at her strangley for a second
before responding, honestly didn't think that far ahead, don't usually
get a yes....
 Got yelled at for the second time, but the first time they were very
drunk so it didn't really count. But that wasn't very fun. We weren't
having a very tremendous day, and I started crying right there in the
dude's front yard. I know, I'm working on it. I always try to think of
Sister Hillman's "practice smile for the second coming" face and just
picturing when Christ shows up and everyone realizes that the kids on
the bikes were right. Can't wait.
  We had the car this week, hallelujer. We'll be walking down the
street and I always feel like I'm in that scene from the first season
of Walking Dead where the main guy, (cannot remember his name for the
life of me) shows up in Atlanta on this random horse and is wandering
the streets all cautiously. And there are cars sprawled out
everywhere, there's just junk in the street, and he's like what is up
with this place, this is just a mess and every second he's
anticipating something to run up and eat him. That's kinda how I feel
about Jax, so I really like having the car.
 We had a lesson with this lady and we asked her to read this verse
from the bible. Most people around here have their king James, but she
had some weird modern one. It was interesting how much the spirit was
lacking as she was reading it. It was super awkward cause it was
totally different then what we were trying to make a point of. I'm
grateful for my complete and correctly translated bible. Never have
ever realized how grateful I am for that, but I am.

 We were working with two sisters in keystone and doing personal
progress with them and all. The older one, Hailey, wanted to wait till
she completely was done with personal progress to get baptized.... She
told the sisters that she wants to get baptized this Sunday! I can't
even... I'm so stoked for her! God is real. He's really there. AHHH

I'm so excited I can't even stand it! Anyway, hangin' in. Love y'all!
Sista C

Week 28

Called to Know the Richness of His Blessings....... 

 Everyone says that the mission is the "best two years." I was on a
trade off with my sister training leader a few weeks ago and we were
chatting away and we decided that it really isn't.  It's the worst two
years cause it's not all fun and joyful as RMs make it sound. It
stretches ya and puts you in awkward situations and you're
uncomfortable the whole time. You learn so much about yourself that
you quite frankly didn't want to know. You find out that you really
aren't as great as you thought you were, that your testimony is the
only thing that's going to pull you through It all so if it's not
strong enough you're gonna have to fix that fast, and you learn a lot
of other stuff that you always judged other people for and then you
find out, hey you're in the same boat, buddy.
   My trainer told me that you'd pay a million dollars for your
mission, but wouldn't pay a dime to do again. I can't even tell you
how true that is. I'm tired and I'm stressed, but I've experienced so
many things that I'm so dang grateful for. I think it's the perfect
combo cause if you're just sitting there enjoying life, you never
would notice the blessings. And I think that the blessings are just
little rewards for the pain. So they balance each other out, which
makes me hate it and also love it.
   I have a firm testimony that we are put in certain situations for
a reason. Heavenly Father has our best interest in mind and He won't
make us go through something if it wasn't He didn't have a purpose in
mind. My favorite line from Called To Serve is "called to know the
richness of his blessings." I believe that the seven months I've been
out here have changed my perspective so much and I'll never look at
the blessings I have the same. I'm grateful that Heavenly Father has
called me out here to the East Coast to know how great God is to us
and how rich His promises and blessings truly are. So here are some of
my rich blessings that I've been able to see this week:

-I got a new Facebook investigator who is oh so golden and is the
sweetest thing ever.
-Sister Brown drove us to our lesson on Thursday, and we didn't have
to bike the 5 miles there. Hallelujah.
-I had my first full nights sleep in weeks.
-My comp has been sick this week and is always sleeping so I got so
much extra work out time.
-Sister Orton got a blessing from the elders. It blows me away that
Heavenly Father lets us have His priesthood power on this earth. I
love it!
-A less active sister was worried about her son who is stationed at
Camp Pendelton. "Hey, I can maybe help you out with that. I got
connections." Helping across the country.
-Walmart had real tree jackets for super cheap. Didn't get one, but it
still made me happy.
-Sister Orton hasn't been able to think straight since she's been
sick, so somehow with a lot of Divine assistance, I managed to teach
all our lessons this week on my own.
-We ran into my favorite Sister Call, that was in my last district, at
target and she's in my new zone!
-Had an old lady say I was the sweetest thing ever.
-We get the car next week
-My hair looked awesome on Sunday
-Found out a less active young women we had been working with in
Keystone has come to church every Sunday since I left.
-Got our numbers a little more up this week
-Found the key to the bike lock right before we were about to go to
the store to buy a new one
-The elders had a baptism on Sunday
-Got an email from my very best friend that helped me out so much and
-I'm eating Five Guys right now. Can't complain! ;)
<3 Sista C

Me with my companion Sister Orton