haha hey everybody! My love to all!I'd just like to alert everyone to the fact that I'm moving to Scott's Mills, Oregon when I grow up.
We've seen miracles this week, mostly consisting of the beautiful scenery and sunsets. Things that leave you speechless. Which for me is hard to be...so be impressed.
We did a hard day's work in Scott's Mills and while we were there, everyone was so nice! About rejecting us. They'd always smile, and tell us to keep warm (It's getting to the high thirties here), and that they were happy in their faith, though. Sister Johnson is a great trainer: fearless and bold, but not high and mighty. She talks to and stops mostly everyone while we're going really anywhere. People never stop to hear what we have to say, but as we try, it makes us bolder, and less afraid. We were tracting down a road in Scott's Mills, and saw a man down the way in his driveway with his dog, (a spunky Marbled Australian Shepherd named Sage :), who said he had the time, we could talk to him. That makes it sound creepy, but honestly, he was so nice: I thought he was a member just messing with us, because no one had said yes before! :) He was a very nice Catholic man, with two daughters and a wife who were out at a basketball game. He'd had some hard times in the recent past, with a 40 wk to term stillborn baby.
We're teaching almost 13 lessons this week, and he'll hopefully be one of them. He had so much strength! It was reassuring to see that there are such good people out there!
FUN GAME: well, we think it's fun.
Flip through the scriptures and say "Pitch." Your opponent then says "swing," picking where you stop flipping. They then say left center, left left, right center, right right, picking where on the page they want to call from. You give them the verses on the page and they pick which one. You read it, and they guess where, (Alma 26) the verses come from. See if you can stump dad! We don't keep track except if the person wasn't even close, and then it's the other person's turn, but if you did, it'd be 1 chapter away and you get three bases, 2 chapters away two bases, 3 chapters away one base, and then an out.
{Did I already tell y'all that Tyler McPhee was one of my Zone Leader's favorite Zone Leaders? Christopher Pister's family is in my stake, and Sister Johnson's cousin is Chase Bastian? A kid I almost had a thing with freshman year at BYU? Funny funny}
We met this lady and she wasn't interested, but we also ask if there's anything we can do for them, and she said if we ever wanted to weed, we could! Haha so we're probably going back on Wednesday, and doing that with her. Non-members are suprised there are "lady missionaries" haha it's so funny. We just say, yep, but there are few of us!
I can't believe I've been out for almost two months! Pssht, sixteen more is nothing, practically. But the thing is, we set goals every week, through inspiration and prayer, and by the time we have our next goal setting thingy, I think WHAT THE HECK, WHERE DID THE WEEK GO?! So I'm not getting "trunky," haha just going crazy and getting really excited about goals. It's fine, haha. I love and miss everyone, but honestly, I just wish y'all could be here with me, because my life's so fun, funny, spiritual, crazy, and humbling, and it'd be a blast to experience it with all y'all, but Sister Johnson's great, as well. I love making her laugh, and trying to feel the Spirit with her 24/7 is a lot easier because of how close she is to being charitable in all things. She prays and prays to love me... it takes a lot, sometimes, I'm sure. ;)
As the people we love and teach progress, I've learned and seen that when people don't progress, they are not happy. I used to think that missionaries just wanted people to come to church for kicks, or they got awarded if all their people made it, or something. But it's the oddest feeling when your investigators don't come, and it's not that you don't care...per se, but it's more along the lines of sad for them, because they missed out on a Sacrament meeting where they could renew their baptismal covenants, and meet all the lovely people who care so much about us in the ward, and then you just try next week.
All I've learned this week, if I could sum it up, would be selfishness is the root of all the unhappiness I experience:
We were closing our day, yesterday, and had half an hour before we had to be back home and talk to our District leaders, plan, etc., and then miracle of miracles, we get forty five minutes, give or take, to write letters!!!!!!! I hadn't gotten to write any last week (a huge thorn in my side, as there was NO WAY I'd even ever catch up), and I was freaking out excited to write some last night.
But, like I said, we had thirty minutes, and Sister Johnson felt prompted for us to go fifteen minutes away to Mt. Angel, Oregon (home of the Benedictine Monastery), to visit a lady and her daughter. The daughter hadn't been at church, and is less active, probably it has a lot to do with how much pain she's in (less actives in Oregon are most often almost to the point of deathly-ill.) However, this lady is A TALKER. A HUGE ONE. And so we told her the lesson would be very brief. (We try and visit less actives and investigators half and half during the week).
It wasn't.
We tried and tried, and well, mostly sat there. (We're getting WAY better though! At jumping in and keeping things relevant!)
All of the sudden, it was practically the time we were supposed to be at our apartment, I was almost dying from anger and frustration because I just wanted to write my letters.
Then she says, "Well, girls, I started the temple prep classes, today."
And all of a sudden, it wasn't about us, the less active daughter she had, or anyone I'd ever wanna write a letter to, it was about her. She needed to tell us that, she needed to talk about the temple with us, and how I'm going to be a Visitor's Center missionary, and she's going to take her daughter, and her daughter's going to help her with the classes. It was moving to say the least, and the Spirit rushed in, to be the best lesson we'd had this week, probably.
The Spirit's amazing, and that feeling? I wouldn't trade it for all the drugs, alcohol, immodest clothing, or superficial self-esteem, in the world.
I love it here. I think my heart was already open to Oregon, and Silverton's cracked it WIDE open.
Best experience this week was having a 55 year old and a 77 year old lady who were mother-in-law and daughter-in-law get together in this teeeeeeeeny tiny apartment, seeing as one is in an electric wheelchair, and one's in a wheelchair she pushes around with her feet, and having them chat about the Gospel. One's a Native American who believes that people have gifts, and that God is holding back the Authority from all the other churches because they martyred Joseph Smith, (non-member, baptized in the RLDS church) and the other lady winking at us, so we could share the Gospel with the first.
Best second week, ever.
Love love love,
Sister Bothwell.
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