Called To Serve: ONE YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!

February 22, 2016

Making my way through the palms

I'm so ancient! I can't believe that it was a year ago that I was dumped off at the good ole MTC. This week and year went by so-- so fast! I don't know where time is going! It kind of makes me ill to think about. Man I've turned into such a square.

Mowing the Elders' yard

Sister of Mary

Well we JUST picked up our car today! I just want to say HALLELUJAH!! We had lots of exchanges this week and I was in our area for all of them so I got the fancy privilege of getting to bike all the way to our area everyday! One of the days we figured we biked about 21 miles. I'm guessing I biked well over 70 miles in the last few days. Our area is forever away; it's fine it builds character. I got to work with Sister Castro for one of the days and that was a lot of fun. We biked all the way to our area and I took a wrong turn and so we ended up on this random street that I had never been to before. It was a lot like a little country road in Idaho. We locked our bikes up to a pole and knocked on this door and nobody was there. We decided to cut clear across their yard, which was pretty big and ended up on another street. We walked up to this little pink trailer and some dogs were barking at us and this lady came out. I thought she was going to yell at us. She told us they weren't her dogs and so we just walked past them and we talked with her on her porch. Her name is Janie. Turns out her son is a member of the church but he is in the military. We got to know her. It's a cool feeling to talk with random people and all of a sudden you feel like you have known them forever. We have been going by her and teaching her. She is super cool. Last night we taught her about the Restoration and the Book Of Mormon. I'll keep you updated on her.

Exchanges with Sister Castro. We found some cool hats!

The other 2 sisters we live with- Sisters Eggett and Stanfill. All of our bikes on one pole!

On Friday we got a call saying that there would be a mission meeting in McAllen the following day and that we all needed to be there at 9 a.m. Which has NEVER happened. Usually the whole mission never gets together and they would have told us way in advance. The only time that has happened was at Christmas. I was convinced that we were all going to get an iPad! I was a little disappointed to find out afterwards that we weren't. We had one of the 70 come and talk with us. He is the one that wrote "The Fourth Missionary". It was really good to hear from him. His name is Elder Corbridge. He talked about being converted and how to set baptism dates with people making sure they know exactly what they are getting into and the purpose of helping others to come unto Christ. It was a nice answer to my prayers because since becoming a leader they drill us on "numbers, numbers, numbers" and so I have been struggling with that. My district leader asks where my faith is if I don't ask everybody to be baptized and it was nice to have one of the 70 to back me up! It's hard because there is no one way to do missionary work. Like life, there is no instruction book to doing things. Yes, there are guidelines and rules but we still have our individuality and agency. Sometimes I feel as though i am trying to please SO many people; The sisters we are over, our district and zone leaders, the members, the ward mission leader, the bishop we work under, our investigators, our mission president and endless others. How often in life do we forget our purpose as to pleasing God? How easy it is to just do things so people will be off your back and how easy it is to just do things to not be criticized or yelled at. One thing I have come to learn is there are two kinds of fools in this world. Those who don't do what they are told and those who ONLY do as they are told.

My fancy study area

People think we actually do things!
I didn't realize how much I lay down in random places until I was going through all of my pictures!
Not even my bed is fine.

This area is awesome. The members are so good to us. I love this ward and the people we have to serve with. It's funny how you just fall in love with your area over and over. I love the opportunity to have this new calling to help more people. The sisters we are over are awesome. It's frustrating sometimes because i have no idea whats going on in our area but it's nice because we get to change things up a lot. I've learned that everybody and I mean EVERYBODY has something to offer and how we can learn from each and every one of them. No matter how uneducated, poor, rich, smart, unsuccessful, hard working or lazy, we can learn something new from them. Learning to listen is the key to life, then everybody becomes your guru.

Waiting for church
Our lives in a candid picture
Eggett smiling, Tervort studying, Stanfill praying, and me dead asleep on the floor!

This was on the way to go help someone move this morning. They didn't have enough room for all four of us and my bum was too big to sit on the ground so they made sure I was nice and safe!
(My awesome new shirt of the one and only Hermana Browning)

The gospel is true. This life is so precious and short. Time really does fly. The days are going to pass by anyway so we may as well make the most of them.