Week 43- “The Sister’s are here!”

Transfers are tomorrow… We found out Saturday night that Sister Thomas will be leaving and that I will be staying in Butler. I am super sad that Sister Thomas is leaving. She has been my favorite companion and we have had so much fun and seen so many miracles. Transfers always make me nervous because you never know who you are going to spend the next transfer or two with. I have definitely learned that who ever I am put with is who the Lord wants me to be with. I am dying to find out who it will be. Stay tuned and you will be able to find out next week 🙂
To start off this week we went on an exchange with the Brookville Sisters. I stayed in Butler with Sister Hansen. We ended up painting a less-active’s house again. We had a lot of fun. She is pretty quiet and shy, but I kept praying to know what to ask and how to get her out of her shell. During the whole exchange I had questions come to my mind and was able to get her talking and laughing. I know the Lord was helping me and guiding me through the whole exchange.
We have an awesome opportunity to go and play volleyball with a bunch of nonmembers and a member family every Tuesday night. I love going each week and I have definitely noticed a different in the kids since we have started coming. Whenever we walk in they always yell, “The Sisters are here!” And when they pick teams they always pick us first. It wasn’t like that in the beginning. I have learned that just our attitude or presence can make all the difference in someone’s life. Also, that we never really know the impact that we have on people, so we should always strive our best to live as our Savior would.
Crazy thing happened this week. We had to get a safety and emissions inspection done on our car this week. We took it in on Friday expecting it took take maybe an hour. Nope we were there for two and we ended up leaving without our car! Our car passed emissions, but it didn’t pass safety. It needed all new tires, new break pads, and an alignment. The people at the dealership didn’t feel comfortable with us driving our car home while they order tires. So we had to call a member to come pick us up from the dealership. The workers said that they were surprised that our tires didn’t blow-out because of how bad they were. I am not telling you this mom to make you worried, but that I know that Heavenly Father protects his servants. He was definitely watching out for us and allowing us to be safe until we were able to get our car checked. I am in good hands mom 🙂 The sad part was that we had Trunk or Treat on Wednesday night. We now didn’t have a car to do it with. But we decided that we would be the heel-toe-express and walk around and park it occasionally between cars. The activity turned out great. I actually “dressed” up. I was a cat and Sister Thomas was a bunny. A lady in our ward had cat and bunny ears. Pictures will follow. Cool thing of the night! We actually had a potential family of investigators show up! They are a family that we have stopped by a couple of times, but haven’t started teaching. We invited them and they said they would come, but based off of previous experiences with other investigators we didn’t think they would show. Welp, we were wrong! They came and even passed out candy. I was surprised that they came because they didn’t know anyone in the ward. We told members to introduce themselves and thankfully they did 🙂 Their three little girls had such a good time and we were able to talk to John more. I think it was a great opportunity for them to see the fun side of our ward and to feel the spirit that is present. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but my prayers are going up that something does!
We had another really neat opportunity this weekend. We had the privilege of going out with a General Authority’s wife to do missionary work. Elder Dale Renlund and Sister Ruth Renlund came and visited our stake. We went out with Sister Renlund and our Stake President’s wife, Sister Carter. We went and saw Jeanette and Tiny. It was such an awesome experience. It was neat because they were able to ask questions to Tiny about how he felt about being baptized and just the whole thing. Tiny explained everything from the beginning. How God had been preparing him all his life to accept the gospel, he just wondered why it took so long! He cries everytime we go over. His heart has definitely been softened. Jeanette and Tiny were super torn up that Sister Thomas is going to be leaving. Both Sister Renlund and Sister Carter encouraged us to get Tiny connected in the ward and to always stay in touch with him. Tiny made us promise that we would both keep in touch after we leave Butler. Of course we said we would! It is crazy how attached you can get to people in such a short time. I will never forget Jeanette or Tiny and the miracle that occurred in Butler.
We also had Stake Conference this weekend. It was fantastic! Saturday night they focused heavily on missionary work and that the members need to start working with the missionaries. Elder Renlund gave us an equation:
Hastening the Work of Salvation = (FaithxPrayerxEffort)(Individual+Families+Full-time Missionaries)
He said that if we calculate the work that one Full-Time Missionary can do we would put in
(10X10X10)(0+0+1)= 1000 missionary units
now add another individual
(10X10X10)(1+0+1)=2000 missionary units
now add a family
(10X10X10)(1+1+1)=3000 missionary units
He talked about how much work we could do if all of us were working together. Our capacity to share the gospel increases with every person that is added. I thought it was pretty clever and helped me understand how important it is that members and missionaries work together. I would encourage you all to invite someone to meet with the missionaries. Our job as members isn’t to teach our friends, but it is to invite our friends to learn from the missionaries. We aren’t expected to do everything, but we are expected to do something. Members are to be the finders and missionaries the teachers.
The Elders have a super awesome potential family of investigators that invites us over for dinner. They are the nicest couple ever! His name is Kevin and her name is Jenny. Kevin was working for an international health company that builds hospitals around the world, but has now decided to be a CEO of a hospital. Because of this they are going to be moving 😦 I have a very strong feeling that they are going to become members when they move to their new house. They told us yesterday that they love having us come over and that they are really going to miss us. We helped clean up their leaves in the their yard. Side note: when leaves fall off the trees here they fall off the trees. They literally cover the entire ground. I could pretty much swim through them if I wanted to. Kevin and Jenny have a huge yard, so we all worked together to get it done. I had the opportunity to use a leaf blower for the first time. It was a ton of fun. You strap it on like a jet pack and just start blowing the leaves. Kevin went around with this high-tech tractor and sucked all the leaves up. It is really sad that they are going to be moving, but I know the Lord has been preparing them and something spectacular is going to happen in their new place.
The weather is changing and things are starting to get colder, but not bad yet. Oh we had this super awesome referral that we contacted this week. He told us some pretty funny jokes.
1. The signs of the second coming are happening. The Pope gathers together all of the Cardinals and Priests at the Vatican so that they may pray for the Lord’s coming. They gather together over a couple of months praying for His return. One day a Cardinal comes running in saying, “Pope I have some good news and some bad news!” The Pope says, “Well we all like good news so lets start with that. What is the good news?” The Cardinal replies, “He has come. The Savior is here, just as it was spoken by the prophets of old!” The Pope is so happy that he gathers everyone together to pray to thank God for sending His son once again. After the prayer the Pope looks at the Cardinal and says, “You also said you had bad news… What was the bad news?” The Cardinal answers, “The bad news is… that he appeared in Salt Lake.”
2. There is this man that decides he wants to write a book on all of the religions across the U.S. He decides to start in New York. He is there at St. Peter’s Cathedral look around, taking pictures, and talking with people. He notices a sign with a red phone underneath. The sign says, “$10,000 for 1 minute”. He was confused as to what this sign was for. He asked an police officer near by what the sign meant. The officer said, “That phone is a direct line to God.” The writer was intrigued by how expensive the call was, but kept moving on. As he traveled west he saw those signs all around and all of them said “$10,000 for 1 minute”. HE eventually arrived in Salt Lake. As he is looking around, taking pictures, and talking with people he sees the sign and phone again. But this time the sign said, “25 cents for 1 minute”. Again he was confused. All the other signs said, “$10,000 for 1 minute” why was this sign different than all the rest. Well he did what any good writer would do and he asked the man next to him. He said,” Why does this sign say “25 cents for 1 minute” when all the rest say “$10,000 for 1 minute”? The man looked at him and said, “You’re in God’s country. It’s a local call.”
Hopefully you got a kick out of those! I love you all and I hope you have a fantastic week!
Love,
Sister Jones