August 4, 2014

My goodness! My 11 month mark is today! Can I get a WOOT! WOOT!  Ladies and gentleman.  One month from today is my YEAR MARK! Get out of town! That is just down right crazy.  How does that even happen?  

Mom to answer your question, Hansen asked me to add him to my email list and Oliver got home a couple weeks ago and has been emailing me a little so I thought I would share the love! Cause you know, everyone wants to know what is going on in the backwoods of Montana.  

I am inlove with the image of Mom hanging out with Saryn's friends without her. hahahaha I love it. :) I am glad they took good care of you. 

One of Sister Steck's companions went home in April and came back to visit one of her areas with her Mom and fed us lunch. It was really fun.  She should marry Tanner.  We ate at this delicious breakfast place called, Paul's Pancake Parlor. I am obsessed. So gooooood.  But she told me that she texted Mom and got to talk with you a little bit. She got me some Hot Tamales. :):):):) Heaven. Purely heaven. 

I know I say this every dang week of my life, but this week seems like it didn't even happen. SO FAST! Slow your roll! But! Some pretty cool things happened this week.  I was on exchanges with some Sisters for part of the week and a straight up miracle occurred. Check it out.  So they didn't have a car, so we rode bikes most of the night. AKA Sister Moline is a sweaty nasty mess.  But we rode our bikes to go tracting.  Out of no where one of the Sisters pulls over and says they hadn't ever tracted this one random street and thought we should give it a shot.  So we lock up our bikes and start. Door after door after door after door these 97 year old women answered the door and would shut it right in our face.  I thought old people were supposed to be nice! FALSE. Old women are not.  So as we are tracting part of me is like, okay let's go, none of these old people are interested.  Then we knock on a door and I see a younger looking lady peek her head through the window and roll her eyes.  Goooooood! Hold on, let me just slam the door for you lady. I am terrible and obviously have no faith at all.  But she answers and through some conversation we find out that she is a baptized member that has been through the temple and everything! GET OUT! She invites us in and we can't find her records anywhere. She has been living in Missoula with her non member husband for about a year.  We had a really interesting conversation. I asked her about the Book of Mormon and the temple and she said, "Oh of course I believe it is true. I love the temple. I love it with all my heart!"  She was surprisingly really open and honest with us and told us that when she got married to her current husband she couldn't stand the thought of not being with him after this life.. Knowing that she would be in different place than he would because of the covenants she had made.  So she made the decision to stop going to church.   We asked her if she would be interested in having visiting and home teachers and she agreed without a moments hesitation. Her husband is a pro tennis player and came home right as we were leaving and we got talking and turns out he teaches tennis to one of the young women in my ward! Get out of town! That is too crazy! SUCCESSS! That was why we were supposed to tract that street!  She said we were welcome back anytime and to give her a call.  INSANE. PURELY INSANE.  If that is not a miracle, I don't know what is.  I mean, come on! it just so happens that we find a inactive member whose records are floating around in Georgia somewhere and I just so happen to be with the Sisters to know who her husband is teaching.  Yeah. Super cool.  

Something cool I learned this week was, " If everybody did____ how would it effect the world?"  The stake president in Bozeman told us that.  For example, if everyone in the world ate a spinach salad everyday the whole world would be a whole lot healthier. Or, if everyone in the world was homosexual the the increase of humans would end in one generation.  He told us this as a formula to know if something is good or not.  If everyone in the world smoked everyone in the world would have lung cancer...blah blah blah. I thought it was kind of interesting.  What would happen to the world if everyone did ___.  

OHMYGOODNESS! Get this! So I don't know if you remember Kaylee or not. But I wrote about her a couple weeks ago.  She was a friend of a guy getting ready to go on his mission.  We taught her the Plan of Salvation and it was golden. GOLDEN.  She accepted the invitation to be baptized and she set up the next appointment.  Then, boom. Nothing. We don't hear from her at all.  We called, texted, facebooked and even creepily found her address and tried her at home. Nothing.  I finally came to the conclusion that her friends talked her out of it.  She asked a lot of questions about the churches stance on homosexuality because she had a lot of friends that were gay. So I just thought that she told her friends and they talked her out of meeting with us. So, while I was on exchanges we decided to stop by her house because it was technically in their area.  As we approach the house, one of the Sisters is like, " are you sure it is this house?  Because i have definitely been here before."  We look it up and turns out Kaylee's mom is a member! HER MOM IS A MEMBER AND WE HAD NO IDEA!!! Get out of town.  Then it just so happens that her mom pulls up right as we get out of the car.  We start talking to her and she very bluntly told us to respect her decision and to leave her family alone....sad way to end the story.  BUT it was her mom! Not her friends! She could still be interested!!! And! We just planted a seed that is going to explode later in her life.  I should have been upset but I really wasn't because I knew I did what I was supposed to.  I feel confident that I followed what the Lord would have had me do and I did all that was in my power.  Maybe all the Lord needed was for me and Sister Steck to give her an opportunity to feel the spirit so that she would recognize it at some other point in her life.  The Lord has His finger on everything, and I know that everything will work out.  Right now I can't see it all, but I trust that He can and is using me to fulfill His purposes.  God is good. I love Him. 

We had interviews with President this week.  What a wonderful man.  He sat me down and he talked about my very first interview with him 11 months ago.  He said he knew I was a leader the moment I opened my mouth. :) TENDERS! Stop that! Although I am doing well and I am really happy, it was comforting to hear those words or reassurance that I am doing a good job.  

ANOTHER MIRACLE THAT I ALMOST FORGOT! Okay rewind to a month or two ago.  Sister Steck and I had dinner at a less active's house who was working on being reactivated.  She has some health issues so she has a nurse come in everyday and help her.  She invited this nurse to dinner with us and we had a really neat lesson.  Before we left I asked her if there was anything we could do to help her out in any way.  She said she was needing help moving her things to a new apartment and had no one to help lift the heavy things.  We quickly agreed and set  up a time to come help.  She was moving to an Elder's area so we invited them to come and help and hopefully get something going with her.  GUESS WHAT! We got a call the other day from the Elders and she is getting baptized August 16th! That's what I am talking about! Holla! Holla! Planting seeds for the win! That really just made me that happiest person evvveeerrrr.  

Earlier this week Sister Steck and I were walking back to our car one evening when we saw two guys working in a garage.  Sister Steck dared me to talk to them, and I totally didn't want to, but I couldn't go home knowing I chickened out. So I said hi and we started talking to them.  One of them was in his late 20's and actually is studying to be a Lutheran Pastor and the other was an older man that didn't belong to any denomination but just believed in God. we had the most wonderful conversation with them.  Sister Steck and i left both feeling really accomplished.  They both accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and were really intrigued by the time we left.  It was really neat to be able to have confidence in all the answers we were able to give them to their questions. We were able to bear testimony and confidently talk about the Book of Mormon.  Sister Steck and I have been praying to find a family to teach and we both felt very strongly about the Lutheran Pastor. Cross your fingers that he is the one! He's got the evidence in his hands.  Let's just hope and pray that his heart is open to it.  

Okay family I best be going. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! The gospel is real and it changes lives. I know this, because it has changed mine. I am so thankful for the knowledge that I have. Dad, you always talk about faith and living by faith. I was reading in Ether and the Lord does not and will not always require us to live by faith. Faith is just the stepping stone to knowledge.  But that is what is difficult for some people they want the knowledge to build their faith.  When in reality faith is the precursor for obtaining knowledge.  It says in Ether that the Brother of Jared's faith was so great that the Lord could not hold himself back from appearing to the Brother of Jared. And it says that he had faith no longer, for he knew, nothing doubting.  The test is if we have enough faith so that the Lord cannot keep us from within the veil.  We all have that capacity, but most of don't realize or believe it. 

Anyway, sorry for my wicked long tangent and email. I love you!  The church and the gospel are true! LOVE YOU!

Sister Holy Moley 

(a man thought my name was Holy Moley this week and kept calling me that. hahahahaha)