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.
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