E-Mail #50
May 21st, 2012
Helllloooo all!!
Man, i cant believe its already getting to the end of MAY!!! Craziness!!! My wonderful nephews turn 5 this week! i am so excited for them, they are getting SO BIG!!! I cant wait to play with those adorable boys when i go home! They are so wonderful, and 5 years old is such a fun age! It will be fun to play with them! I hope their birthday party is a blast!
This week hasn't been as much of a adventure as last week, but that is okay! Last week on pday we went bowling with Nate. It was so fun, he squeals and scream and laughs the ENTIRE TIME!!! Its just so fun! he is down right just the cutest guy ever. I can not wait to see him after this life, fully functioning, i cant imagine the things he will say, and it will be fun to meet who he will marry one day! He is just so cute! I'll attach a picture of us all at the bowling ally. This week we found out that someone we are teaching. Who we prayed to find and ended up finding her. Well we found out she is moving, about a half hour away, and of course in that tiny little half hour drive she is out of our mission!!! so now we cant teach her! But she still works here in Chilli so we are hoping that we can keep seeing her and teaching her, to help it be easy to turn it over to missionaries in the other mission. Maybe if we are lucky we can just get permission to just teach her anyways because i don't think there are missionaries where she lives. Totally lame. haha.
We went to visit a couple that is less-active but has been coming back to church, and her husband got baptized last year. They are just the most humble and wonderful couple ever! I love being at their house, we visit them every week and are helping Mike prepare to get the priesthood, he is super nervous about it, but we are helping him understand what it is, and what it means. We had a relief society night planned this week, but it got canceled, well as we were talking with Mary Lou she found out it was canceled and was sooo bummed. She was looking forward to a girls night. So we all talked and decided we could still have a girls night, there are some other people in the branch struggling that could really use it! So we decided to have an ice cream social. So we made a gazillion phone calls and texts and invited a ton of the ladies to the night. It turned out pretty good! I was so thankful that Mary Lou had that idea to still have a girls night. We decided that Mary Lou needs to continue to have the oportunity to grow and arise to the occasion, so we asked her to be responsible for conducting the girls night. She did so well, she was nervous, but did so well. My heart just grows beyond belief when i am around this wonderful couple. Just talking about them right now makes my heart swell. They have such a simple but POWERFUL testimony. They just want to do good, and make good choices and live right, because they know when you don't, you are not as blessed and they feel the blessings in their life now because of how they are living. Oh, i just love them! We are going to have to get a picture with them at our appointment with them tomorrow, so you all can see what a wonderful couple they are!
We also had another appointment with Maddison and Kendall who are the little 9 and 8 year old girls we are teaching. They are just so cute and so badly want to find something spiritual. I love teaching them! The girl who i talked about earlier who is moving, we finally were able to get her the Book of Mormon to have, that's such a big step because we haven't been able to really teach her because of the chaos. I am sure she has not had time to look at it, with her work schedule and moving and all that. But i hope she has!
Our Wonderful Tuesday night family the Hamiltons, dinner went so good! We talked some more about the restoration, and about the priesthood and that authority. It was such a good appointment. Even the two teenagers, Their daughter and her boyfriend stayed at the table when we taught the family. Last week they got up and left, but this week they stayed! They all committed to reading about the plan of salvation so we will talk to them about that tomorrow! I am so excited to see the small but GREAT steps that family is making. I know they will feel a difference if they don't already as they learn more! AND THE BEST PART, the dad, Neal he PRAYED!!!! He has not been willing to pray at ALL since we have been over there. But we did a little drawing of how to pray and dropped it off to him last week, so he used the paper and prayed and it was just so AWESOME!
This week we got to teach October 2 more times. That went so good. She is so close to knowing the truth, she is a spiritual person, and was raised to be, but not raised in a religion. So she kinda just filled in what she believes with a few different religions beliefs. But what is really cool is that he beliefs are just so close to what we believe. So i know that her finding the truth within the church is not going to be hard at all. She really struggles with finding that personal relationship with her Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ. But as we were teaching her and talking with her about that relationship i total had such a great spiritual prompting that told me to tell her not to worry about building that relationship, but just to worry about finding if it is true, and when she finds it true, and puts that to the test, that relationship will come. So i told her that, and you could just see the peace she felt as i said that. It was truly inspired words that came from above....not from me!
We also went to go visit Jessica who we met through Justin and ended up meeting her future roommate Cassie, and she is totally willing to have us come over and talk with her too. We are finding this domino affect everywhere we go lately. Its so fun to see how many people we are coming in contact with that have potential to be taught! we also saw Jessica yesterday, and we were talking about our services at church and how it was such a great Sunday. We told her about how we don't have one preacher, but we all teach each other, and are assigned to speak on different subject. and that no one is payed. She was so excited, she said she wanted to come check out our church. That was WAY EXCITING!!! so we really hope she comes on Sunday! with her friend Cassie it would be even better!
This week we also had a really great spiritual experience with a less active family. They want so much to make the changes they need to, but Satan is doing pretty good at stopping them. Its really sad, but i hope that our experience with them this week helped them to have a desire to really fight that much harder to come back!
Friday was a day of service, literally, i think we only taught one lesson. We had service at the salvation army that morning, and then went to lunch at our members house, and his yard was one big MOUND of tree limbs. He had 2 big trees cut down and was clearing out the yard by himself. Se we decided to help him. So we did that for a couple hours, and then later that night we helped Jennifer's boyfriend and his buddies pack up and move the stuff in her house. So we were all sorts of tired by the end of the day! it was crazy! but a way fun day to spend so much time helping others.
I cant really think of many funny stories from this week. But I'm sure there are a ton!!! i just am not sure what they are. This week is transfers, and i am sure either me or sister Larson is leaving. We have been together for 3 transfers now, and sister Larson has 2 left. So we both think she will be leaving to go to the Visitors Center because she has never served there. But the unpredictable always happens, so we really don't know what will happen. I hope i stay here, this week my love for Chilli has grown a ton, and my love for the people here! This area is just so great. Humble wonderful members and non-members are here! So next week we will see if I'm still emailing from the good ol' ChilliMo, or not. I love you all and hope you have a great week! Thanks for all your love and support for me all the time!
Sister Barnum
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