If the subject doesn't say it all, I will.. I BOUGHT A WOOL JUMPER at goodwill last pday and I'm way excited about it. Now I can say that I'm that much closer to living completely by the white 'missionary hand book' bible! (It says that sisters should wear jumpers and i've always thought it was hilarious but now I love)
Another week, another email. This week was filled to the brim with many an emotional roller coaster, but such is missionary life. I'm gonna be a stone cold killa when I return from the mish, ready to conquer ANYTHING that life throws at me, haha. *knock on wood, I don't really want anything too crazy thrown at me* But it really is crazy. I have learned quite a bit about the importance of 'bridling our passions, so that we can be filled with love'. If anyone knows me well, they will know that there's a small part of my soul (maybe not small) that is a self proclaimed 'feminist'. And if anyone knows me well, they will know that I may or may not enjoy a good, healthy argument. And.. yeah. Basically everyone and their dog here loves Jesus and thinks they've found Jesus and that you're on their porch for them to preach to. Which really isn't the reason we're here in Crewe, but we get a lot of people preaching to us and it's hard to get out of the situation and so you end up spending an hour and a half of the Lord's time listening to why you're wrong. Anywaysss, this was happening with this guy and he said something about how Eve didn't have a clue what she was doing when she partook of the fruit and that's why it wasn't her transgression and my little feminist part of my heart burned within me and it was just bad. I left the talk with the guy realizing that all I had testified of was Eve and her knowledge and bravery and.. I hated myself literally the entire rest of the day. YIKES. But, such is life. We live and we learn and I am learning SO much every second.
So we have a sweet part member family who attended our branch once, and we decided we needed to go visit them. At church they gave us directions to their house in a TINY not even town called Greenbay, but we basically forgot them so all we knew was that they lived in Greenbay.. and there may have been something about a bridge.. or two bridges.. and, maybe an orchard, and that's it. Haha, so we were sent on a wild goose chase through the backwoods of VA to find this family. And it was CRAZY. Haha, everyone we saw or felt like might know something about them we stopped to talk to, so we got to talk to a LOT of people about the gospel and little by little each clue led us closer and closer to their home. One of the neighbors told us the house of the father of the family's father, so we went there and to our amazement found a literal hound dog farm. We must have counted like 30 hound dogs and it was crazy and sad and weird, but then.. out of all the hound dogs there emerged a HUGE hog. And, I don't know why, but I totally wigged out. I thought it was going to kill me. And it was trotting after us and I was sure it was chasing us to attack us and needless to say I need to CHILL out. Haha. But it was such an adventure, and finally after hours of searching, we were talking to a family when the father of the family we were looking for pulled into their drive way! What? Prays are answered, tender mercies are everywhere. Haha. It ruled. And we got to visit with them for a while, and invite them to the Branch Chili Cookoff that night and they CAME! It was awesome. And then they came to church yesterday, so #miracles all across the board.
After the chili cook off on Saturday, we attended the fiesta de cumpleanos of C. Garcia and ate the most DIVINE stuffed chilis that ever existed and I nearly died. All of the extended family members think i'm insane because i'm this super white chick that really really really wants to be Mexican, but I can't help it. Haha. How I love hispanics. We were contacting a lady when we saw one of our hispanic investigators at the park across the street surrounded by other hispanics, so naturally we went over to visit with them and the kids wanted to show us how fast they could run and their cute little chiuaua and that led us to a conversation about perros and one of the little kids told us that his family is raising two dogs to eat.. uh. And I didn't know if I understood him correctly, I thought he may have been saying that they were so cute he could just 'eat them up' but.. no. Haha, so that's that. If we end up teaching his fam I'm gonna be REAL careful about what I put in my mouth, that's for sure.
ALSO basically every hispanic we meet is a 'cradle catholic' meaning they rarely attend, but are not shy about the fact that they are CATHOLIC. And every one of these humans has an obsession with Maria. And I will tell you that yesterday the ninos had stolen my camera and I saw the poster of Maria on the wall and used it to my advantage. I asked, 'What would Maria think of your behavior right now'?! To which G. quickly replied, "bad..." And I never thought I would be the one to use the term "What would Maria do?" but there you have it. Haha.
We have this sweet returning member lady in our ward that we go and do scripture study with some days. She is older, single, so funny and she just recently was suprised with a kitten on her doorstep. She really felt that this kitten was a manifestation of God's love for her and is just absolutely in love with the thing. So after we read scriptures, we are headed to a dinner appointment. She tells us not to hit her kitten, as we see it run behind the car. So we pull out and still don't see it but figure it ran behind and past the car. I made some joke in passing about how I really hope it didn't climb into our motor or anything, and what if it did and we were off. On our way to the appointment, the member calls us to tell us that the cat is lost and she can't find it anywhere. So now we're really hoping that it didn't climb into our motor. ANYWAYS like an hour later we're just eating dinner in the house with the family, and one of the ladies went out to smoke. She comes in and says that there's a tiny grey kitten out there that she's never seen before. Hma Clark and I both jump straight out of our seats and run outside and what do you know, cute little Tinkerbell is outside! Three towns away from home! She must have hid in the undercarriage of our car all the way! It was absolutely INSANE! Like the greatest miracle that the lady was outside at that exact time to see the cat and it was all just too perfect. So we called the member to tell her the news, finished with the appointment, I got to ride all the way home with a kitten in my arms, and we returned her to her momma. It was seriously MAGICAL. The member just held us and cried. Our Heavenly Father really does love us, really does care about the little things. It was so beautiful.
Miracle of the week! So we have an investigator, D, and we love her so much but she is difficult sometimes. Like she tells me all the time how I dress like a grandma and what not.. haha. Well after one of our lessons with her, I had the smallest little prompting that we should ask a member of our branch, Charlotte W, to come to our next lesson. So we did, and she agreed. At first it was crazy because D. was having a bad day and we didn't know if she was going to let us stay, but she did and I am SO glad because as her and Charlotte talked, they realized that D. had been in the hospital having a huge surgery for epilepsy at the same time as her daughter Robyn and they just clicked. Charlotte understood EVERYTHING she had gone through because she'd been through it before. It was nuts. We left the room for a minute to look at D's new fish tanks, and we never wanted to go back in because Charlotte was just saying EXACTLY what she needed in ways we never could have said them. After the lesson D. texted us to thank us for the lesson and for bringing Charlotte. It was SUCH a blessing and I was so grateful to have been prompted to do that. It's incredible to me to know that the Lord knows His children SO well. He knows exactly which random member of the branch will be able to change our investigators life.
Follow up on D, however.. we have a feeling that she was VERY close to getting her answer and getting baptized last lesson with Charlotte, because she is going through a lot of struggles now. A bunch of people have been telling her all sorts of terrible things about the church and she doesn't know what to think. We are trying to help her understand that the only way she can know for sure is to ask God. Keep her in your prayers! I love her so much and I know that the Lord will help her to know. I am so grateful to know that He is there and watching out for all of us. His hand is incredibly apparent sometimes in the work and it truly is a blessing to see it!
I love y'all! Be strong, be happy and be GRATEFUL because, the gospel provides SO much hope in our lives. Things WILL work out as we follow the Savior.
<3 Hermana Yost
PS My camera is not working, but be way prepared for 10,000 photos of the crazy rabid hog next week, okay love you bye
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| A couple of pictures taken at a Zone conference in Richmond that I stole off of Sister Wilson's facebook page. :) |
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