Monday, June 12, 2017

All Over the Place

Hi Family!

Even though it hasn't even been a full week since I last emailed you, missionary life has been every which-way it could possibly go--the good, the bad, the ugly, the awkward, and who knows what else.  To start off, I hit 13 months yesterday! I cannot believe it has been that long.  But even so, I've already turned into such an awkward missionary!  Being in Arizona, I feel like I regularly get small exposures to what it will be like to return from a mission, which can be good and bad.  Last Monday, Queen Creek Zone went bowling.  The actual bowling was a lot of fun, but none of the missionaries could get over the dynamics of the bowling alley--meanwhile we were surrounded by people who didn't even give it a second thought.  After we played, we got back to the car, turned on our missionary music, and it was like a breath of fresh air.  I don't know how I'll cope when December comes.

But then we got to go back to missionarying with all it's ups and downs.  We did a service project, and somehow missionaries always end up doing service projects in hoarders' homes.  We helped someone move in the Elders' area.  This house had literal animal "digested food deposits" mixed in with the kids toys.  It was nasty, but it made me grateful for my mom and how clean our house always is. . . and then I went back to our house, showered, and cleaned our baseboards during lunch.

We also had a crazy dinner experience with a family in our area.  They told us they were inviting a friend that was not LDS to dinner with us.  Sister Rogers and I were, of course, super excited.  We decided to treat it like any other dinner and taught the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even though the family got sidetracked, when they bore testimony, it was amazing.  We focused it on the family so the friend could just listen, enjoy the spirit, and hopefully not feel put on the spot, and that seemed to go great!  He even teared up a bit.  The mom got worried (and panicked) when we asked them to pray for names and faces to share the Gospel with, so we had to just tell them straight up that they were not allowed to think of the friend sitting with them to get her to calm down.  That got real uncomfortable, but even through it all, they were able to receive revelation of people they wanted to reach out to and their friend said he enjoyed listening.  I was glad he enjoyed it.  Hopefully we didn't scar the mom for life.  Everyone else seemed to enjoy it.

Through it all, we did get to experience an awesome miracle.  We've been trying to contact someone the ward members asked us to visit, but we hadn't been able to catch them at home yet.  Well, we finally met him.  His name is Lee, and he said he would love to hear our message and set up a return appointment with us.  Our stake president is good friends with him and has only good things to say about Lee.

Well, I guess by my standards, this would be a short email, but I think we are lined up to have another great week this upcoming week.  I love you, Family!

Sister Emily

1001 N Burk Street
Gilbert, AZ
85234

We've been taking a girl named Brinley out to work with us sometimes.  She's trying to decide if she is going on a mission or not, but she needs to go.  All she's missing is a name tag.


Biking in PANTS on the way to service (not the one I wrote about)

I didn't know flags were this big (and this is a "small" one)--also, I match it.



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