2/14/2022
This last week I have so much gratitude in my heart. I am so grateful for the good days and the bad days. I am grateful for all of you and for all of your love, emails and support. I am so grateful for my mission and I can’t express to you how excited I get to meet people that let us in their homes. I am so grateful for the members and all they do for me!! Monday night (after I talked to all of you) we set up 8 lessons to start off the week.. So so exciting! One of them was with this sweet old lady who is almost 80 years old! I have such a tender place in my heart for elderly and I was so excited to visit with her. She is a member but is recovering from a broken hip. She is doing good so don’t worry! She was so sweet! She made us cookies and loved us like her own kids. It was also super funny! We were in the middle of a conversation when her Alexa came on. Alexa was like “would you like to start your free trial this month” then paused. Sister Fullmer said “I think she turned off” in a whispered voice. Then of course Alexa came back on. Sister Fullmer was like turn off Alexa!! But she wouldn’t turn off so she got up with her walker to turn her off.. It was so funny. She sure went off about Alexa. She knows more about Alexa than I do haha. I have come to really love the members and rely on them quite heavily. I am so thankful for them. She made my day. After we visited with her, Sister Schmidt and I rode our bikes FOREVER out in the boonies to get to a certain person’s house we really needed to visit. We knocked on her door, rang the doorbell and waited. As we were waiting someone pulled into the driveway. It was her boyfriend as far as we know. Well long story short she finally came out of her house and when she saw us she no joke ran inside and slammed the door on us and her boyfriend. It was a little awkward not going to lie. She definitely did not want us there lol.
As Sister Schmidt and I had a lot of lessons for this week we decided to role play a little bit to be prepared for new situations. She started off as this CRAZY mom that was all over the place and somehow in the role play switched to this extremely southern grandma vibe. We laughed so hard together! I sure love the relationship I have been gaining with her. She is definitely more silly than you think.. just like me ! 🙂 it made me miss all my theater friends a little bit.. but I’m glad we can both be silly sometimes. She thinks I’m so funny. Sometimes I say things just being myself and she will laugh her guts off. She has started a Sister Howick quote book lol. This work is hard! I’m exhausted all the time but being able to laugh as we learn and grow together makes all the difference.
I will be the first to say that days that seem like the perfect missionary days (with many lessons) do not always end up as the perfect missionary day. Days and plans don’t always work out as I’d hoped. We had 5 lessons over 2 days and we only taught one. It’s a bummer to plan them and not actually teach them. The first one was Google maps fault. It took us out in the boonies FAR from where we thought we were going. It turns out this member’s address is wrong and not on google maps. There was no way we could have done that lesson. We had no way to get there. I have such a desire to teach and to find people who need me. It’s just so hard sometimes. I have been taught to assume the best, so I’m trying to assume that these people really did have things come up and it will work out when it’s supposed to. God’s timing is everything. I know that. I told Sister Schmidt at the end of this kinda bummer day that maybe we weren’t supposed to go there today. Maybe they are not ready for us to be there, maybe we weren’t safe there or in our travels getting there. At the end of the day I know that I have a huge desire to share the gospel and it breaks my heart to know how many people don’t have it. I know our Heavenly Father is proud of the efforts we make each and every day and that is what counts. Remember that 🙂 Do your very best you can and be okay with that. God has a plan for all of his children, timing is key.
Thursday was a special day! I celebrated my one month as a missionary and my one week in the field with Sis Schmidt! She is always talking about a place called Reed’s dairy. She loves it! We decided to celebrate by going there and getting an ice cream cone. I understand why she loves it so much, it is so yummy! On this day we were also blessed with warm weather and didn’t freeze on our bikes. I was also blessed with the opportunity to be friends with my companion…Walking to get ice cream we were able to really talk as friends and as sisters. Not just as a companionship. It means a lot to get to know her on a more personal level. She is my everything on my mission and I am so grateful for her and her guidance.
GOLDEN!!! We had the coolest, most exciting experience of my mission yet regarding a new person. I don’t know if I wrote about it last week or not but we got a referral from our bishop last Sunday. We were able to prepare a lesson to teach this boy named Anthony. We arrived at Anthony’s house and the mom said, ” Oh you didn’t get the message?” Her foster son showed up unannounced with a big life issue. It was very unexpected for this family. As she was standing on the porch she began talking to us about her son Anthony. He has had a very troubled childhood and was in and out of trouble. She said he came into our home and began seeking this light we have. He has never been religious but does believe there is something. He began going to church with his friend. He truly wants to be baptized and is needing us to teach him so he can. It is so cool that we have someone who is truly seeking the truth. Our Heavenly Father put Anthony in our paths because he is SO ready. We could have put him on date to be baptized that moment he is that ready. We did have a concern arise though, he is on probation because of his past mistakes. After some contacting and phone calls we found out he is still able to be baptized.. though through a little bit of a different interviewing process. Miracles do happen! Toward the end of our short porch conversation we got to meet Anthony. He is so sweet and has the biggest desire to change. I felt in that moment I got a glimpse of how our Savior and Heavenly Father feel about us coming to them which was Genuine love and genuine excitement. Anthony obviously has been into trouble in the past. He did some things that are considered bad, but in that moment I felt pure love. I didn’t care what he had done, I only cared about where he was going with his desire to change. I felt it didn’t matter what we had to do to help him but we were going to do it. I felt pure love and excitement. I can’t wait to teach him this week!
Service! We had a super cool opportunity to serve at a clothing bank and at a food bank this week! We have so much fun just being out in the community and being able to help others in need. Another way we decided to serve this week was by heart attacking our less active families doors. We thought it would be a good way to let them know we are thinking of them and love them. Valentine’s day really worked in our favor.. It was a good excuse to be able to serve some families we usually couldn’t. Service has definitely become a fun and exciting thing I look forward to.
Hands down the best dinner yet! Costa Vida sweet pork salad. Yummy! Also a sweet member asked us what we really wanted for dinner. We requested breakfast. Both Sister Schmidt and I love breakfast for dinner. We were so excited for this meal! They also took the time to make our favorite chocolates homemade! I got Reese’s peanut butter cups and Sister Schmidt got mint chocolate. Members are the light to our missionary work and I love them. They are so sweet!
This week we were asked to speak in sacrament. It’s crazy to be the missionary speaking in sacrament! I remember sitting at home thinking how amazing the missionaries are and how influenced by the spirit they are. It’s super cool to be the missionary and be on this end of the work. The ward is so sweet and I felt super good about my talk. Poor Sister Schmidt was up at 4:30 in the morning editing her talk because she couldn’t sleep. Together we were both nervous we wouldn’t fill the whole time because we are the main speakers now. I still feel like I should be the youth speaker. But we did it and I think we did good! I talked a whole minute longer than I needed to and we got many compliments. I can tell you my talk went in a different direction than I thought it was originally going to but it was what I needed to speak on in the end. Sundays are so extremely exhausting but we had a good one for sure.
Sunday night we had a member visit. In one of our wards we have this special needs girl who just hugs us all the time. She loves the sister missionaries! Last week we asked her family if we could come by for a visit to get to know that family better. When we got there they asked us to come follow me with them. Of course we said yes! It was super nerve racking at first because we don’t study that daily like we used to and we are asked to teach on the spot! Ahhh! It was so cool to see where the conversation went and how thoughts came into my mind so clearly. It was such a good teaching opportunity for us as a companionship. Funny story from this visit though… The one daughter was so excited to give us a treat. She went into the kitchen and grabbed rice krispy treats. I went to grab mine and it was SO stuck to her fingers. It was so sticky it was all over the place. We grabbed a napkin and then we couldn’t get them off the napkin.. Afterward we were riding our bikes and Sister Schmidt and I busted out laughing. She was like “Those were the worst rice Krispy treats ever. They were stuck onto those napkins like cement. I love that we both gently turned our napkins over and continued teaching.” We were both super nice and she ate a whole thing to be nice. We laughed so hard because the daughter was so sweet but we truly couldn’t teach we had stuff all over the place. We laughed out of the love in our hearts. Such a sweet family!
Some funny quotes Sister Schmidt has kept track of from this week:
A person expressing their concern about us biking everywhere… I said “ahhh it’s okay I already told my mom I’m coming home buff!”
Me riding our bike and stopping at the right house. Sister Schmidt riding down the road. I said where are you going and she said” My bike takes me where it wants to go.“
Love you all
The first one is my dear sweet Sister Fullmer.
