Hey Family!
First off thank you so much for the package y'all were able to send. I love, love, love, all the clothes in it and I actually look forward to getting dressed in the mornings for once which is a good thing. So thank y'all so much for thinking of me and taking the time to get all those clothes, especially you mom. :) as far as getting more clothes I will always be happy to accept more but don't worry about it, I've got enough to last. I love all the clothes you already sent and the ones in the pictures look great as well. Haha and Emily your faces in the pictures were priceless. The past couple days its been getting more and more humid and along with that it's getting hotter. Let's just say I'm not really looking forward to summer. The Elders say that the bugs all come out in the summer and they go crazy. And then along with that the majority of the people we visit don't have air conditioning so I'm just gonna roast all summer long. But hey it always makes you grateful for the little things you do have, right.
It's been a weird week this week...partly because they switched up our whole district and now we're surrounded by tons of Elders. I miss our old district but that's okay, we get to learn to love the new Elders. Also because it feels like we've been super unproductive this week, as in we've taught the least amount of lessons ever. But it just goes to show that we have all this time that the Lord's given us that we need to use to the best of our ability. No effort is gone on unwasted because Heavenly Father always knows how much we're trying and doing.
Here's a couple miracles though:
numero uno: We were able to go to the temple with Sister Depew as she attended for the first time. It's been awesome to see how she's been progressing from less active to coming to church and eventually heading to the temple. She was always looking for the next step as to what to do in the gospel and it really hit me that there's always a next step, you just have to find it. The whole idea of the atonement is progression and we constantly need to evaluate ourselves and make improvements on everyday things we do. It was also sweet to be able to attend the temple with her because she should've literally been at the ER. She called us the morning of saying how sick she was and she should've been going to the doctor but she chose to go to the temple first. Lesson learned, always put the temple first because as soon as you make plans to go something will come up to try and keep you away.
numero dos: Truly witnessing how the Holy Ghost has such a major impact on everyone's lives. A while back the zone leaders were visiting Sister Banks every monday but they were never able to get her to church. Because of conflicting times they stopped seeing her and didn't visit for a couple months. We asked what happened there and they told us we should go visit her so we did and she's been coming to church ever since we first saw her! I always wondered what we did differently that made her want to come to church but in reality it wasn't anything we taught differently or did. It was the Spirit the whole time. She noticed the difference when they stopped coming and she knew that coming back to church would bring the Spirit into her life even stronger. It's amazing the way Heavenly Father works!
numero tres: The other night we were sitting in the car about to get out to go to an appointment. I looked over and saw two white guys legit start fighting. It didn't last long and they went behind the bushes real quick and then one of them drove off and the other guy went inside. Well we didn't think much of it and just went into our appointment, however the guy that went inside did see that we saw what happened. When we came out of the appointment immediately the Praireville Sisters called us so Sister LaPorte was talking to them while we were getting to the car and the guy that was in the fight was waiting on the sidewalk by our car. I just got in the car and Sister LaPorte was talking on the phone but he started talking to her and mentioned how he was just in a fight. Who knows but we think he wanted to talk to us about the fight because we witnessed it all happen and who knows what would've happened. But it's just a little example that Heavenly Father really does watch over all of us everyday. It was an inspired call from the Praireville Sisters. Don't worry though, we're safe and all is well here. :)
I'm super excited to be staying in North BR for another transfer. The other day I was looking over our ward directory and literally I could spend my entire mission just in this area because there's so much work to do and so many people to see. Aw man I absolutely love it!
From the Book of Mormon this week I learned how completely awesome all these people are. The two that stick out a lot are Zeniff and Abinadi. They're both only mentioned breifly in the book of Mosiah and yet they're both such strong men and leaders. From Zeniff I learned how much he loved the people he served and did everything with them in mind. He had complete love for the people which movited him and them as well to do anything. And then Abinadi had such a strong testimony that he was silling to die for what he believed to be true. I love these examples and leaders in the Book of Mormon because those are the two things I think I've been trying to work on the most lately, love and testimony. If I was put in the same situation would I act the same way as these men did? Something cool to think about.
Sounds like everything is going well back home. Summer is finally coming around! Y'all have any vacations planned out or things you're doing this summer? Be sure to send Big Grandma my love and let her know how much I think and pray about her. I can't wait to see the new planner covers you've come up with Sarah...you're the best!
Sister LaPorte and I used to text everyone in our district special highlights from the day just to make others laugh so I figured I might as well send some of the funny things that happened throughout the week back home to y'all so you can enjoy as well. Also I tend to not write these in my planner so it will be good to reflect back on these...well I've been a major slacker at writing in my journal because we've been going to bed at 9:30 right after we're done planning. I guess you could say we're always super tired or something...weird. There's been multiple times when the office elders and zone leaders have knocked on our doors and windows when we've already been asleep and we don't hear a thing. Apparently that's what happens when you become a missionary, you cal fall asleep instantly. Anyways back to the special highlights:
-Dogs were sitting on our laps and on the couch and one of them peed on Sister LaPorte haha and then the family brought out frebreeze to clean it off.
-We saw Mike the Tiger at LSU and he was dead, not literally though.
-Drove the Office Elders in our car...it's a long story but Elders aren't allowed in the car with us (I'll try sending y'all a video explaining).
-Cut some jalepeno's and onions for some members. As soon as we cut the onions my eyes started watering and then I touched them and got the jalepeno in my eyes so then they were burning and I couldn't open my eyes one bit. While all this was happening Sister LaPorte thought it was just the onions so she thought I was crazy and was feeding me potato salad while I couldn't open my eyes. As soon as we got home Sister LaPorte touched her eyes with the japaleno's and she was crying from the pain. It was quite the experience.
-Traded our car with some other missionaries and it smells like a man.
-Elder Ageda put a kitten on my lap and I wouldn't touched him. Told him I'm allergic and he freaked out. Definitely a priceless moment.
-Gnats were invading our apartment so we got syrup from the zone leaders...as soon as we got back all the gnats were gone.
Oh and a random funny fact about Louisiana. If y'all have ever seen the city named Natchitoches you'd probably think it sounds kinda like what it looks like. But it's actually pronounced Nacadish. Don't ask me how you get that out of it's spelling because I have no idea, but still pretty cool.
Hope y'all have a great week back home. Enjoy every step of the journey!
Love Always, Sister Schmutz
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