families are forever!

Hey Family!

 

Mom, holy cow I can't believe you're the new mia maids advisor!  I was just thinking about that the other day and how you've practically never had a calling in young womens.  And now here ya got one!  You're gonna love it and the girls so much so cherish every moment.  My favorite people to work with back in Baton Rouge were the young women.  One thing I learned from them was to be sure to go to girls camp and all the activities because some of their leaders didn't go and they hated it because of that.  Just love them like you do and of course they'll love you back!  We haven't really worked much with the young women here but we've been invited to their activity this wednesday and I'm super excited. 

 

I'm glad you liked the random photo of Sister Brady and I as well!  On friday we had ZTM in Hammond (just a meeting we have with the whole zone once a month) and Sister Matkins, one of the senior couples was just taking pictures with her ipad and asked if we wanted to send it to anyone so of course I gave her your email.      

 

Emily!  How was your birthday?  Haha I hear you liked the card I sent to you.  It was fun to make and write the random 18 memories!  Were you able to remember all of the memories?  Aw man thanks for being such an amazing sister.  I love you!! 

 

Dad that's a sweet idea of inviting the missionaries to come into your homes and teach the active members all missionary lessons as if you are investigators.  And then the promise that when you receive the lessons names will come into your mind of people with which you can share the gospel.  Maybe we'll have to try the same thing!  With less actives a lot of the time we ask them if we can just teach them the missionary lessons for "practice" and of course they always say yes.  That would be awesome to do with active members as well so we can have more appointments and see more people.  It's hard being out in winter because no one answers their door and we don't have much to do in the last hours of the evening.  My favorite talk from conference was Elder Ballard and how he encouraged everyone to reach out to one person before Christmas.  He didn't ask us to reach out and share the gospel of invite them to hear the missionaries, he invited everyone to reach out and love them which is where everything begins! 

 

Sarah!  Don't worry about the blog...I'm not sure if anyone even reads it so you probably don't even need to take much time putting anything on it.  Sounds like you've had quite the eventful weekends.  How's Whitney and Dee doing?  Be sure to send em my love!  You'll have to send me some pictures when you go to the animal shelter!  Haha I don't know what it is but all dogs love me down here.  We see this one old lady named Virginia usually about once a week or so and she has these two really old dogs.  So of course I always pet them when we come over and as soon as I stop they both go fall asleep and sleep for hours.  She says it never happens unless I pet them.  Haha it's the weirdest thing!  So Nik comes home real soon, like next week!  Are you excited?  I told Sister Andrade that I told you to go find her with Nik so she said she'll be looking for someone that looks like me.  :)  hey and I have something for you to try.  Go to walmart and to the hispanic section (usually by the asian section ;) and there's this drink in a tall rectangular green plastic bottle called aloe something or other.  Buy it and put it in the fridge (only drink when cold...trust me) and tell me what you think.  It's really interesting with chunks of slimy aloe or something but it's so good!   

 

And Andrew..keep up the good work with school!  I send ya a letter last week, were you able to get it?  Love you!

 

This week was a really good week.  I've seen the hand of the Lord in everything that we do and I'm so grateful for this gospel.  I wanted to share an experience with y'all from this past week that's close to my heart but has helped me learn so much and I'm so so grateful for it.  Last month Jed came home from his mission so of course I wrote to him and I was so excited to hear back from him.  Week after week went by and I didn't hear anything so I finally just emailed him and asked what was up.  Last week he emailed me and long story short he said he's dating a girl and we should move on.  I kinda knew it was gonna happen but I was so stinkin mad.  He didn't even give me a chance to explain anything and didn't know anything about my past two years while he's been gone.  I was filled with so much anger, denial, and frustration.  I didn't know what to do because if only I was home none of this would have happened.  While reflecting back during the week I got on my knees and prayed to know what to do, because after all, sometimes Heavenly Father's the only one that will listen.  I told Heavenly Father the desires of my heart and told him how I felt about everything.  And then it hit me that if it's supposed to be, then it will be.  I've never trusted so much in the Lord than at this point and I know for a fact that he has a definite plan for me.  Heavenly Father just listened to all my anger and frustration, but of course, he turned that anger into love and appreciation.  Because of Christ's atonement he was able to take away that anger and fill me with peace, truly an undescribably experience.  Then later in the week I discovered the new mormon message Wrong Roads which made everything make more sense.  I absolutely love that video and have watched it probably thirty times since it's come out.  :)  Heavenly Father lets us go down the roads we sometimes feel is right so that he can show us the way that we need to be going.  He teaches us through everything we go through and that's why we must go through so much.  I started reading more of the New Testament to better understand Christ this week too and he's amazing!  Matt 8:17 "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses."  He takes everything upon himself.  I don't regret any of my relationship with Jed because of how much I've learned from him and the experiences we've had.  I'm so grateful for him and will always look to him as a great friend and I'm glad we ended as friends.  I don't know what the future has in store for the both of us but I do know that I'm exactly where I need to be right now.  I'm so grateful for the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us better than we know ourselves and he loves us so incredibly much.  We truly are never alone. 

 

Anyways, here's some funny things from the week.  There's this one road we tend to drive down and the dog that lives on that road pretty much lives in the middle of the street.  Haha for real he's always sitting right there in the middle, I don't know how he hasn't been run over yet!  The next is Sister Brady and I have a curse of people falling asleep on us while we're visiting them.  It's happened twice now!  Maybe it's because neither of us like waking people up so we always try to sneak out but then they wake up and it's just awkward.  And then one of our investigators told us the other day that she once fasted for 30 days.  Holy cow and she's dead serious too, I think she's insane.  When we told the elders that they said, "Does she think she's Jesus?"  Goodness, I can't even imagine. 

 

And as always, here's a scripture for y'all to think about.  This is when the Lamanite women were taken and the Lamanites thought it was the people of Limhi so they went to war.  Mosiah 20:11 "And it came to pass that the people of Limhi began to drive the Lamanites before them; yet they were not half so numerous as the Lamanites.  But they fought for their lives, and for their wives, and for their children; therefore they exerted themselves and like dragons did they fight."  Even though they were about half in size they did fight strong because of their motives and were able to succeed.  It's something to really think about..what are your motives? 

 

Thank you for being such an amazing family.  I love y'all so stinkin much!    

 

Love Always, Sister Schmutz

 

p.s. I figured it's about time I take a picture!  Sister Brady and I had a picnic down at the lakefront the other day (sorry it's a terrible picture).  It always makes me think of the ocean! 

And the other is all the sisters in our zone.   

miracles!

Holy cow, that's a crazy story you had yesterday Dad!  Seriously it made my day hearing that you walked into the visitor center on temple square to find the elders you dropped off and Sister Andrade was right there and then just a second later Sister LaPorte was there taking y'all on a tour.  And they actually recognized you from the family picture I have.  Those two are truly wonderful and amazing!  Man I miss and love them both so much!!

 

This week has been oh so good!  There's been tons of little miracles I just don't even know where to begin.  Haha here's a funny story I'll tell y'all before I forget...just to make you laugh.  So the Mandeville Elders told us this story that happened to them earlier in the week.  Here they are just sleeping and the one night they forget to lock their apartment door in walks this girl at 2am.  She turns on their lights to wake them up, she's probably high or something because she was super mad and was looking for someone named Kelli.  I guess Kelli stole something from her so she was way mad and what not.  Haha just imagine it...two elders asleep and some random girl just walks in and wakes them up and she's real angry.  Finally she just left and I think Kelli lived upstairs because they heard her up there afterwards...and that's really all of the story.  Haha I would've been freaked out but it's all good!

 

The real miracle of the week was so many less actives came to church yesterday!  Seriously, Sunday is always the best day or the worst day of the week because they have to choose to come to church, it doesn't matter what we say to them because it's still their decision...but there were so many there yesterday.  I'll just start off naming some of the people: Pearl, Joy, Bettie, Carol, the Goffs, Elizabeth, Brittany...and so many more!  Even some members mentioned how there were tons of less actives there!  Aw man I just love being a missionary.  :)  holy cow and here's a crazy story.  So on Saturday we were trying to find a couple people on the ward roster that we didn't know so we came across this one lady named Elizabeth.  We stopped by and right when we were walking up she pulled up in her car.  We introduced ourselves and what not but her dogs were barking and she was in the middle of getting dinner ready and she said she hadn't been to church since she moved here and she didn't even know where it was so we breifly described the whereabouts, but it was super confusing.  We left real quick and just made plans to come back to see her since it wasn't a good time.  And then here we are standing at church yesterday and guess who walked in the door...Elizabeth did!  She even got up and shared her testimony, it was truly amazing!  You can see that the Lord has his hand in all the work that we do. 

 

Here's something cool I learned in my Book of Mormon study this week.  In Mosiah 9 I related everything to missionaries and what we're doing, Zeniff (missionary) goes to a new land and began to build buildings and repair the walls of the city (ward where we serve).  They started planting all kinds of seeds (investigators, less actives, actives, everyone!), and nourishing them.  It took about twelve years (long time to see progress) before the city became strong.  And then the king wanted to start a war (temptations, discouragement, etc) because he saw the city was becoming strong and he didn't want it out of his power.  So the people came running back to Zeniff (missionaries) for protection (what we teach) and he gave them bows, arrows, and all kinds of weapons (scriptures, church, prophet, etc.) and they fought back with the Lord (we're never alone).  As missionaries we're providing everyone with protection by what we teach.  And that's why it's so important that they keep the commitments that we extend to them because the commitments lead to action and the action leads to practice.  Therefore, when the wars will come, they'll be ready to fight with what they have.  We've been given all these amazing and powerful weapons, so we better know how we can use them! 

 

I hope y'all had an awesome Halloween!  On Wednesday and Thursday we had to bike all day long because the Elders had our car for one day and the next we didn't have any miles left.  It's pretty nice biking in Covington though because you can bike on the trace all the way over to Abita and down to Mandeville which is super nice because you don't have to bike along the side of the highway.  Holy cow though my legs were burning by the end of the two days...I don't know how the Elders do it everyday!  For Halloween we just did our weekly planning at night since we didn't want to be out while everyone was trick or treating.  It started pouring right after we got inside though so it was perfect timing! 

 

I've been thinking a lot about y'all and just wanted to let ya know I love you so much!  Keep up the amazing work and becoming who God wants you to be.  Y'all are wonderful and I wouldn't want to have any other family but you!

 

Love Always, Sister Schmutz

happy halloween!

Hey Family!

 

Mom, before I forget, the memory card for my camera is just an SD card, the same as the camera we have at home.  And the size is SB (small B) for carinessa. 

 

Well, the news for transfers is that I'm staying in Covington with Sister Brady for another transfer!  I'm happy and ready to work hard to get the work going in the ward here.  Bishop Elmer is really pushing for missionary work in the ward with members and the ward missionaries are gonna start coming to our weekly meetings, and I think as soon as things start picking up a little it will be smooth sailing.  I think it'll just take some time before the members really start doing their part and realizing how important their role is in missionary work, and that's really what Bishop is striving for.  I finally can remember some people names too so it shall be a good transfer.  I'm already looking forward to Thanksgiving too!  We usually only get fed maybe once or if we're lucky twice a week here, but the Conlins signed up to feed us on thanksgiving and they're an awesome family!! 

 

Since I told y'all about Celina a couple weeks ago I figured I might give ya a little update, haha and since ya asked about her.  Haha well, this is kinda why I stopped writing to y'all about specific people because as soon as we have an awesome investigator that I think will be great, I tell y'all about them and then they always drop off the face of the planet.  So after we met with Celina the time I told you about we called her but she didn't answer.  She said her phone was broken though so we decided to just stop by.  Here we are driving down her road, and low and behold she pulls up right behind us.  Of course she saw us getting out of the car but she hurried and ran inside and then wouldn't answer the door even though she saw us.  Who knows, maybe it was just bad timing or something.  Haha some people just make me laugh though.  One second I feel like Celina never wants to talk to us, the next she's open, and the next she hates us.  We're still planning on going back though so I'll keep y'all updated.  That's a typical missionary story for y'all!

 

Mom it's wonderful to hear that the Primary Program went well and is over for you now!  I bet it was real cute.  :) 

 

Emily my best advice for applying and deciding which college to go to is to take a campus tour and pray about it.  For real, I never wanted to go to BYU-Idaho...but as soon as we went on the tour I knew it was where I needed to be!  So apply everywhere before December and then have mom and dad take you on some campus tours.  Goodness I can't believe you're gonna be graduating this year!!  Also, nice picture from monster mash..  ;)   

 

Haha and holy cow, I can't believe y'all were sick within the past week too.  Sarah, we must be twins or something!  When you said, "Have you been sick in the last week or two?  That'd be crazy if you were too!" I couldn't stop from laughing because I was sick last week too!  For a couple days it just turned super cold so I caught a little cold, but luckily I was able to bundle up in sweatshirts and a couple blankets for a few nights to roast myself and now I'm all better.  I hope you're able to catch up with all your schoolwork.  Good luck with midterms too! I've been across the causeway once and it's pretty cool.  I'll take you across it one day!  So for transfers on monday evening the zone leaders call us if we're being transferred and if we aren't we don't get a phone call.  Later in the evening they send a message with everyone being transferred as well.  And then since tuesday is pday you have the day to pack up and get ready to go to your new area on wednesday, and that's basically how transfers work!  It's crazy, this transfer no sisters in our entire zone are being transferred.  I'll kinda explain this too incase you don't know.  We have districts, which is basically just a couple sets of missionaries in your area, we meet once a week for district meeting.  And then a zone is a couple districts close by and we meet together maybe once a month for zone conference and training.  So in simple terms your district is like your ward and the zone is like your stake, but in missionary terms.  The Mandeville Elders are both staying, and then one Covington Elder, Elder Willis is being transferred tomorrow so we'll only have one new missionary in our district.  They have to take our car to transfers tomorrow because they don't have one so we're gonna be biking all day tomorrow...it's gonna be great!            

 

Well this week has been an awesome one!  I hope y'alls week has been a good one too.  We got to go on exchanges for a couple days so Sister Tiller came down here to be with me and honestly it was the best exchange I've ever been on.  I used to hate exchanges but now I'm learning to love them so much because there's tons we can learn from each other.  I just had a really fun time with her and we did lots of work too, so it was a good couple of days.

 

Let's see, here's a miracle from the week for y'all.  We go and visit this member named Bettie every week.  She's a super sweet lady, and holy cow she's one of the most stubborn ladies I've ever met, but I love her so much.  Bettie's taught me a lot about caring for other people.  She lives by herself and yes, she is super stubborn and won't take no for an answer, but she's always thinking of other ladies that live by her.  So when we were there she called up Fran, a less active lady.  Fran didn't really want us to go see her, but of course Bettie was able to convince her to let us all come over.  We were able to visit with them and talk about the atonement and hope and it was really good.  The miracle is seeing how much pure love can change any situation.  Bettie does everything because of her love for others, and ultimately that's what it always comes back down to...love. 

 

Anyways here's a quick scripture for y'all to think about throughout the week, Mosiah 2:41 "And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God.  For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of neverending happiness.  O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it."  It's as simple as that.  If we keep the commandments and do what we're supposed to we can be happy, be blessed in all things, and receive neverending happiness.  It reminded me of this video, http://www.mormonchannel.org/mormon-channel-daily/196?v=2221439363001 doing the right thing isn't always the easiest, but it is the better thing to do. 

 

Ya'll got any plans for Halloween?  Better get some good candy for the little trick or treaters comin around!  I hear that we have to be home on the evening of Halloween, but who knows what we'll be doing, or if that's even true.  Don't eat too much candy now.  :) 

 

Hey and guess what?  I LOVE Y'ALL! 

 

Love Always, Sister Schmutz