Snow, ice, and freezing rain = me saying "I hate the weather!"

This week has been the weirdest week of my entire mission on account of the fact that we stayed in for 3 out of the 7 days due to the weather. It's a rule that if there is snow or ice on the road that you MAY NOT drive. The car is parked. Also, if the conditions are bad enough (aka ice and snow on sidewalks that may cause you to slip and fall and hurt yourself) you are required to stay inside. This leads to me repeatedly saying "I hate the weather" while banging my head against the wall in disgust of the fact that I hate staying inside.

Monday: stuck inside...freezing rain is SO cool but not really as a missionary

Tuesday: the weather was nice enough to go out in the afternoon but we still had to walk because there was ice on the roads. We went and saw this lady named Linda. Oh she is so funny. She is like...the spunkiest person ever. She's really interested in what we are teaching but she won't pray about it! She's like, "I just feel like it's true. It sounds right." Okay, well that's all good and dandy but you need to pray about it receive a testimony of it! We will continue to work on that. 

By the evening the roads were completely clear so we were able to drive and go see this potential - this guy named Bobby and his girlfriend Krystal. Wow they are awesome and have the cutest kids ever. We taught them the restoration using the cups and invited them to be baptized and they said yes! We invited them to church and they said that they would come! But then the stupid weather cause problems with that! (I'll get to that later!) Also, the 4 year old is like, super sharp and so we decided to quiz him and we asked him the name of the guy we talked about and he forgot but we told him Joseph Smith and he said we would remember and when we went back he totally remembered the name! He's so cute! He loves reading kids bible stories so we are going to give him the children's Book of Mormon and I bet he will love that!

Wednesday: ugly weather again....stayed inside....also Sister Laws was sick...so we would have had to stay in anyway so it worked about but man I was getting antsy! It was rough! I honestly don't even know what I did.....I've probably like...blocked it out

Thursday: Wahoo we got to go out! :) We walked in the afternoon again because we didn't know what the weather would be like. We met Bennie at a fast food restaurant and re-invited him to be baptized and we already know that he would say yes but we more just wanted to set an actual date. Somehow it ended up that the date would either be March 7 or May 2....I'm not sure why...oh yeah his birthday is on May 2 so he wanted to do it then but then when we mentioned we might not be there he wanted to do it sooner. I honestly don't think it will happen on March 7. I think it will be in April probably, or May 2 is find....haha I guess we will see. 

So then right after that we met this investigator named James and we talked to him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and also a lot about the Book of Mormon. He is awesome and so sincere about learning from us. He isn't too sure about the Book of Mormon yet but you can tell that he honestly wants to know that it's true. We invited him to baptized and he also said yes but we didn't set a date with him. It was a really spirit-led lesson. Then after that we went to the Tuckers for dinner and then Willie met us there and we had a really awesome lesson with him. We talked about the Plan of Salvation again because Willie's aunt just passed away and he told us that he was really sad because she didn't get "saved" and we so we re-taught the Plan of Salvation and talked all about the Spirit world and how she is learning the gospel there and will have the chance to accept it! He said he felt a lot of relief about it. 

Friday: We had a usual weekly planning session and the weather was good so we went out (and got to drive) and saw this guy named Tom. He is pretty awesome but he has a lot of health issues that make it hard for him to come to church. But we invited him to come this Sunday because it was Branch Conference and we weren't starting until 10 and he said he would come! But then....again, the weather sucks....get to that in a minute. Then we went and saw this other lady named Niki and she has come to church a bunch of times. Her boyfriends brother is a less active and she has come a lot with him and also by herself but she doesn't seem to understand or seem interested in the things that we teach her so it's just kind of an odd situation. So then Friday night the weather just decided it was going to be really bad again and so we had to stay inside Friday night. Ugh. 

Saturday: Woke up to like half an inch of ice on EVERYTHING! We couldn't even go down our front steps. So yep, another day inside. BUT - we actually had a pretty fun day. First we cleaned out the closet in our apartment, and anyone who's been a missionary knows that people just leave random junk in apartments so we found all sorts of crazy stuff. So we pulled it out and decided to put a bunch of it on and take crazy pictures. I'll definitely attach those. This just goes to show what happens when missionaries get cabin fever from staying in half the week. Also, we had a picnic on the floor of our apartment. We watched part of "Together Forever"....but we stopped because that show is so ridiculous. In the evening I studied the Atonement for like 2 1/2 hours...it was incredible! More about that in a minute....

 

Sunday: Alright I know you're all wondering about Sunday...Church was cancelled. Oh my heck. We had soooooo many people who were like, for sure coming. Investigators: Willie, Bennie, Bobby, Crystal, Tom, James, Ryan and several other people who said they would probably come as well as many less actives! But the weather has just been so bad that they cancelled it. The weather was actually really good on Sunday but since it was just so bad there were a lot of problems that made it hard for people to come and stuff and they wanted people off the roads so they could have less traffic so people could go fix things. Bon Air is in bad shape. There are power lines down everywhere, trees fallen, there's still ice and stuff on the roads and like no one has power. It's crazy. It's fine down here though. Anyway, so they told us on Saturday so we told all of our investigators and stuff. But, Willie really wanted to go to church so we checked in Cookeville and they were combining the wards there so we went there with Willie and Bennie came too! They just did sacrament meeting but it was really good. And there were SO many missionaries there! A lot of other churches around were cancelled so there were people from a lot of different places there. But it wasn't too crowded though. After that we did facebook with the Sister training leaders. Speaking of Facebook, the pilot program for Facebook is over so while the church sets up the actual program and training's for it we will be off Facebook for 2 months. 

After church we drove home (we were able to drive because we have soooo many extra miles...we have like 450 miles to use by Friday because they don't carry over to the next month haha) and we had lunch and then we did a 2 hour study on the Atonement. Apparently any missionaries who couldn't go to church had to do a 3 hour study on it but we got to go to an hour of church so we only did a 2 hour study but wow I wish I could have done 3! More on that here at the end....

We saw Willie in the evening and had a great lesson with him. Also funny story: he told us that he doesn't want to be called an investigator anymore because he is going to be a member soon and Sister Laws was like, "Okay, what's a synonym for investigator?" And I was like, "Um...detective" and then we were just laughing because imagine that conversation. "Hello, this is our detective Willie." It was just so funny. Then we saw these LA named the Longies and wow that was the funniest lesson of my life. They are older and just so funny and so we decided to act out the chapter we were reading with them - 1 Nephi 17. Wow that was so funny. We told them we would act out 18 if they read it before we came back the next time! 

Alright well now that I made y'all soooo board with all this information about this week.....here's some spiritual thoughts for you: I read this quote other day and it sort of blew my mind: Sorry it's in a weird format.

"On the eve of Jesus Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane, He issued this benediction to His disciples: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. … Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). Of this invitation, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said, “[This] may be one of the Savior’s commandments that is, even in the hearts of otherwise faithful Latter-day Saints, almost universally disobeyed; and yet I wonder whether our resistance to this invitation could be any more grievous to the Lord’s merciful heart.” Elder Holland added, “I am convinced that none of us can appreciate how deeply it wounds the loving heart of the Savior of the world when he finds that his people do not feel confident in his

care or secure in his hands.”³

So....when we don't use the Atonement and let Jesus Christ give us peace then we are being disobedient! What? I have never though of John 14:27 as being a commandment. And I never thought about how it affects the Savior when we don't just trust him and let him give us peace! That was just a really interesting quote to me and really got me to thinking! 

Let Jesus Christ give you peace! Use his Atonement! It's FREE and it's there for you!

Love y'all so much! 

Love,

Sister Myers

P.S. Here are some pictures: these are from cleaning out the closet hahaha 

Then the next one of is of our inside picnic and the last is of me outside in all the ice....all that that you see is ICE!!! We had to be very careful just to take the picture....

 

Transfers and what not....also Valentine's Day is so dumb

Transfers were this week so that was good. New comp: Sister Laws! :) Although this is nothing new because I told y'all this last week. Transfer meeting was great! I got to see old comps and people from Christiana so that was sooooo great. Also I embarrassed Sister Sumbot hard core because it was her birthday on the day of transfers so I told the AP's and they told President and he was giving some announcements and stuff and he was like, "I'm going to embarrass someone for a minute (he says as he rubs his hands together mischievously)....Sister Sumbot will you please stand up?" And so she does hesitantly and we all sing happy birthday to her and she just kept looking at me like, "I hate you" Haha it was so funny. 

We taught the other Sisters investigator named Willie this week :) He has a baptism date for March 21...but we will probably have to push it back because of things but he is awesome! He comes to church every single week and he posts stuff on Facebook about the gospel and he's just super solid! You wanna know how they found him? Well his parents called the church asking for food and so the other sisters took them some around thanksgiving time and they taught them the restoration but then his parents said they weren't interested...but apparently Willie was and so after a couple of weeks he called them and asked why they didn't come back!! Wow! 

So crazy miracle for you: Bennie got a blessing this week to help him stop drinking coffee (he want from drinking it all day to drinking 1 cup a day but he just couldn't seem to get off that one cup) and then on Friday we saw him and asked him how much coffee he had had and he said that he hadn't had any! And then we were like "okay don't drink any more today! You can do it!" And so then we saw him on Saturday and we asked if he had any the night before and he said that he went to his sisters house and she gave him coffee and he took it and took a sip and it tasted really gross and so he didn't drink it and hadn't had any since! Then on Sunday he was still going strong! Also all of the coffee in his house is gone and he said we isn't going to buy any more!!! WOW! Miracles! :)

We had 3 investigators and 4 less actives at church yesterday! WOOT!

This week we actually got a door slammed in our face! Wow! That doesn't happen in the south! He was really rude but whatever....

Yesterday we deep cleaned the apartment and I cleaned for like 4 hours straight. 2 of that was just working on the kitchen. Wow. Now we have to go clean out the other apartment too since they are closing it down. That's next p-day I guess :)

Also it actually snowed! Wow! Crazy...it doesn't really snow in Tennessee....like ever haha

Well sorry this letter is sooooo lame. There's not much to say for this week. Valentines day was dumb because we wanted to have a lesson with this guy at the church but we couldn't find anyone who could come since they were all busy. We were able to get Clem because he is single but we would still need one more person for it to be okay so we had to have it at McDonalds but that was fine. :) We invited him to be baptized and he totally got that his previous baptism wasn't quite correct so that's good. He's praying about a date right now. :)

Well, I hope y'all just have the best week! :)

Love,

Sister Myers

 

 

My trick got ruined......

 Soooooo I was originally going to start my letter like this: "I'm a wreck. We got transfer calls yesterday. I'm whitewashing and training a new missionary in Dunlap. I sort of knew I was going to get something like this because President clued me in that I was going to get a challenge when we had interviews with him." Then I was going to say "JK!!! That's what my companion is doing!" Yeah Sister Sumbot is leaving me to whitewash and train. Wow!! She is going to do so good! In other news, Sparta B is closing and so now there will be one set of sisters in Sparta! Sister Laws, who is in Sparta B will be my new comp! She was in the MTC with me. And Sister Hess is going to Christiana!!! Ah!!! That's my place!! Anyway so it's going to be weird to just have the 2 of us. I knew they were closing down Sparta B this transfer or next though. They are putting a cap on all the missions in the U.S. to 200 missionaries and opening more missions. So yeah they are closing down some areas. I also thought I was going to have to take over my area and Sparta B...by myself. President made it sound like that in interviews. This is a lot better in many ways. It's going to be difficult to get things all organized and stuff though....haha I'm in for a busy week!!!

Okay sorry TMI...none of you probably care. Haha okay....this week. Hm. It's been a weird week. We met this guy named Bobbie and it was crazy because he was like, "okay I have a question for you....and I've asked so many preachers and they just can't answer it." So we are thinking, "Oh no...what's he going to ask?" but obviously we are like, "Alright we'll see if we can answer it." And then he went on about how when Jesus Christ was on the earth he healed people and the apostles healed people too. Then he asked why no one had that power. And we were just dumbfounded. Wowie. So we taught him the restoration and he was like, "Thank you. That makes so much sense." He said he would come to church but he works. And we actually know his friend and we talked to her yesterday and he said he was studying the church more. Wow. He's awesome.

We got this awesome referral from a member of the branch counsel and we went and knocked and this lady named Diana answered and her daughter in law was there, Kristin. Oh she was so nice. They talked about how they just moved in there and they had come from Spencer (small town right by Sparta where a lot of members live) and they know most of the branch (because pretty much everyone that lives in Spencer are all Grissoms and they are related). Also, she said she is looking for a fresh start. We took Jaleta over there (she is a Grissom) and she knew the daughter in law (Kristin) because they went to school together and Diana's granddaughter went to day care or preschool or something from Jaleta's mom. So many small world moments here. They didn't come to church but they are super open and just so awesome. :)

We've been doing a lot of less active/inactive finding. We did for like 2 hours one day (there is a lot of driving involved) and out of 4 we went to find, only 1 still lived there. The others addresses just like didn't exist....like the house didn't exist. It's so annoying.

So here's a really cool experience we had this week: on Wednesday we planned to go to mutual if Ashlee came and then we planned to go see Megan, a less active - the one who stopped smoking. But then Ashlee couldn't come...then Megan cancelled. And then we tried this other less active but they said not tonight. Then we had NO ONE to see....and 3 hours. So we prayed to know what to do. We knew that Bennie had probably already gone up the mountain to go home so we didn't think he would be available to teach, but we decided to call him anyway, turns out he was at his friend Dixie's house - in town. And she had just gotten out of the hospital and was going through a lot. So we told Bennie to ask her if she wanted to meet with us and she said yes! So Bennie brought her to the church and we taught her about trials and stuff and why we have them. We also taught her a little bit about the Book of Mormon and gave her one to read. Then Bennie, after we gave her the Book of Mormon was like...bearing testimony of it!!! He was like, "I haven't read much of it....but what I have read I know is true." Oh it was so awesome!!!

Also yesterday we were talking about the Church of Jesus Christ today (last week it was the church of Jesus Christ in former times) and Bennie, sometime randomly in the middle of the lesson just leans over and says, "You know, I think this is the true church." WOW!!! He's awesome.

So we've officially become stalkers. But anyone who has been a missionary has so really it's not that weird. Let me explain: remember Kyler? Jaleta's friend? Well he got a job in Sparta at the Huddle House and we were like, "What?!" So this week we keep driving by it to see if he is there and we talk to him and stuff. Oh it's so funny. Then this week wee were going to meet Bennie there but he was late, but it turned out perfect because Kyler came in to work a little early and so we got to talk to the both of them! Woot! Haha but it's just so funny because we look like such stalkers.

Well....that's pretty much it for this week. I'm sending a picture of me and Ashlee and Sister Sumbot and also a picture of Bennie and Kyler at the Huddle House haha.

Sorry this is kind of a lame letter...today is crazy.

Love y'all
Love,
Sister Myers

 

 

The Eternity Week

So this week was SOOO long!!! Wow. It didn't feel that long during it but if I think back to what happened I'm like, "That was THIS week?!! No way!" Yeah it's been a weird week. Last week we taught 42 lessons, total, which is really crazy. Everyone was like, "How?" And we didn't know...and this week taught 17....wow....that's the missionary life though...

Aaaaaanyway.....Bennie is doing pretty good. We are just teaching him everything. We taunt him the Law of Chastity this week. I've never taught the Law of Chastity my whole mission, I've only role played it. So yeah that was just dandy. Oh and you wanna know something crazy?!! So  on Saturday we were going to meet Bennie and so we met him at Hardee's (Carl's Jr. In the south) and when we got there he was reading the Book of Mormon and we were like "Cool what are you reading?" And he was like, "Oh that chapter you assigned me." And we looked and he was reading 3 Nephi 11 and we were like, "What? We didn't assign you to read that..." And he showed us a pass-along card he was using as a book mark and it was not one we gave him. It had this other random number on it and it wasn't one that we knew. So we called it and no one answered. So then we were looking at the Book of Mormon and we thought it looked really old...it couldn't have been that worn if it was the one we gave him. So then we were looking at it and we looked inside and saw it said Elder Stout and Elder Burnham! What? "Bennie! Where did you get this! Not from us!" "Oh uh...I don't know" "Do you remember Elder Stout and Elder Burnham?" He thinks fro a minute. "Uh yeah I remember them. Nice guys. They talked to me quite a bit." What? Are you kidding? Then later the number called back and it was this random guy in Nashville who had had the number for over 4 years...so these 2 Elders were here over 4 years ago. Wow. More to this in a minute.....

Oh so also, Bennie bore his testimony on Sunday. That was...interesting. We were so worried about what he was going to say. We thought he was going to bring up crazy ideas. He talked about relatively normal things and then....oh gosh. He was like, "Last thing let me pray." And then he prayed. Oh it was so awkward. No one knew how to react. Could have been a lot worse though. 

So guess what? We set a baptism date with Ashlee! Wahoo! We talked to her about baptism on Tuesday I think it was...anyway, we asked her about what she thought and stuff and we talked about praying to know if she should be baptized. Then we talked about the Spirit and how it will testify to her about baptism and if it's right. Then we all knelt down and she prayed and asked if she should be baptized. Then we sat there for 1 minute and just paid attention to how we felt. Then we asked Ashlee how she felt and what that meant. She said she felt really good and that that means she should be baptized. So then we had her set a baptism date! March 20!! Woot!!! Unfortunately, we aren't sure if that will happen because she won't come to church because she always goes to her moms on the weekend and her mom hasn't started going to church yet. We shall see. We shall see. 

So we walked in the rain yesterday. The whole time. We were soaked all the way through. It was crazy. Then it snowed this morning. What? it was like 50 yesterday and its like 25 today.....oh Tennessee. 

We had like no food on Saturday..like we ran out and we were like, "Oh man. It's fast Sunday tomorrow and we have nothing." So we were like, "Well we'll just pray that someone brings us food tomorrow." We get to church and guess what? Someone had brought us meatball stew (wow that was sooooo good), homemade bread (PS the best bread ever) and coconut cake (wow...good thing it's February). Wow it was so good.

We had interviews on Friday!!! I just love interviews with the mission president! They are just so enlightening! So he was talking to me about how no effort is wasted and he was told a story about the previous stake president and how he had first met the missionaries when he was 8 and his grandma and parents weren't interested and he didn't care. Then in like...the 60's or something he had gotten married and he was actually a hippie...like full on and he saw 2 Elders walking down the street and so he gave them a ride and they accepted and he remembered how he felt when the 2 Elders talked to him when he was 8 and he accepted the message and they were both baptized! Then later, he was a stake president! And to this day he doesn't remember a thing about those 2 missionaries! And so really, no effort is wasted. So the thing that's funny about this is that then the next day the thing with Bennie and the Book of Mormon  happened and so it was just cool because it was like a "No effort is wasted" moment that happened to me personally! We are going to talk to the mission president and see if we can get some information on those 2 Elders so that we can tell them!

Today we are at Jaleta's house and she showed us how to shoe a horse! I even got to pull out some of the nails! It was sweet! Too bad we couldn't ride her. It's freezing anyway so it didn't matter. it wouldn't have been that fun anyway! But I'm attaching some pictures from the experience! :) Well, just me and Sister Sumbot and the horse and stuff. Also guess what? Jaleta is going on a mission!! WOW!!! I'm just so excited for her! 

Well, I don't really have anything more to say for this week! :) Hope all is well wherever y'all are!

Love y'all!

Love,

Sister Myers

Here are the pictures: 

1. The district! From left to right top: President Anderson, Elder Tracy, Elder Fenwick, Elder Smith, Elder Westra, Elder Smith, Elder Harrison, Elder Lim. Bottom left to right: Sister Anderson, Sister Laws, Sister Hess, me, Sister Sumbot, Sister Lim

2. Me, Sister Sumbot, J and the Sweet Pea! :)

3. Me and Sweet Pea ...oh and Molly :)