Tuesday, March 18, 2014

#josephsmithtabbycat


Hey girl hey!
 
Just to preface this, I'm typing all of this on my iPad instead of a computer, so there may be more errors than normal.  I'm finally to the point that the weeks are going fast.  Everyone in the field told me that your weeks go by really quickly and until this past week I rolled my eyes in my brain and scoffed because my weeks were not going by quickly.  I think being comfortable in your ward really helps with that because I know a lot of families at this point and I love them all.  I do still get overwhelmed at the fact that I still have 17 months left though, so I just don't think about that.

I had a great idea this week though.  Somehow I want to train cats to act out the Restoration lesson.  Imagine a lil' Joseph Smith tabby cat praying in some woods.  That would get so many YouTube hits and would subsequently lead so many people to the gospel.  I think the prophet needs to get on board with this.  #josephsmithtabbycat #allcreaturesofourgodandking #imisstwitter

We had a zone conference this week.  We were given more rules.  At first I was irate because I felt like we were living in the USSR.  To a certain degree we are, but I agreed to most of the rules before I got here so I'm willfully submitting myself to communism.  Anyway, I hate when the good are punished with rules that were only brought about because other people were breaking rules.  It took some effort, but I decided to not be bothered by the rules and just follow them so I can get blessings...and work on obedience.  We no longer have zone sports because too many injuries were occurring and inappropriate elder/sister relationships were blossoming.  We can't have iPods anymore and need to reevaluate our music choices.  But, we also get 2 hours to email a week now instead of an hour and a half! That is exciting, except not this week because apparently my inbox is only ever in feast or famine mode.  Either a million people email me or just you and dad do.  This week I have no friends.  They're all dead to me.  We also talked about bed bugs and scorpions at zone conference.  I am disgusted.  I thought I didn't have to worry about anything gross when I was called to to a stateside mission.

One night the family that was supposed to feed us dinner had something come up and so they just called ahead to a pizza place and ordered us a meal.  It was at Barrow's.  It's some of the best pizza I've ever had.  We have had it 3 or 4 times since I've been out and it is delicious.  While we ate a miracle of sorts occurred.  There were two televisions next to each other by our table.  One was playing CNN and the other was airing hockey.  My companion played hockey and loves it and I love the news.  There was no volume or captions, but I am officially caught up on the Crimean conflict and the lost Malaysian plane.  After we left we started to feel guilty though and decided that if that happens again we should just take our food to go because we can't fight the temptations Satan places before us and eat with our eyes averted.  #sistersinners

During one of our lessons with Harry Potter this week Harry brought up the wise man and the foolish man.  We told him there was a primary song about them and then we sang it for him.  I was shocked I remembered all of the words and the actions. He was shocked that we gave him a show.  We were brainstorming ideas to make his lessons more meaningful so I said we should create a investigator jeopardy.  We each wrote our own questions and created our own game pieces I'm going to buy Velcro later and a foam board and am going to create a legitimate set up.  I already made pretty point and category pieces and am going to get them laminated.  I am so excited, you don't even know.  

We get together with our district once a week to get to know each other better and theoretically do some sort of training, though that part never happens because we get off track really easily. Earlier I'm the evening I decided that if I got arrested I could probably get out of jail without the mission president even ever knowing that I was incarcerated because of all my connections in Arizona.  If I get arrested I'm just going to call you, mom, and you can then call everyone I know in the valley until someone can bail me out.  Well, I was sharing this theory and one of the elders in my district looked at me and said, "Sister Poppe, I imagine that you were just a wild wild woman before your mission."  Everyone else agreed.  I think they have a skewed perception of who I am, but I will embrace the bad girl persona, no one has ever believed that I'm edgy...it's kind of exciting.  Just acting like I'm edgy makes me feel edgy.  Woooooo!

 Speaking of all my Mesa connections, a family in one of my wards is relate to us.  The husband was Grandpa Harold's cousin.  Also, my roommates are in Cammete's daughters' singles ward. My companion said that if she does ever get arrested it better be with me because I literally can throw a rock in this town and it will hit someone that knows me or of me.

We helped some families do a little outdoor service on Saturday.  I'm only 48 shades of white now.

One of the youth in the Twin Knolls ward is a convert of about 6 months and she has been wanting to go on visits with us, so we took her out to contact less active people and a referral with us on Friday.  She is a lot of fun and wants to go on a mission when she is 19.  We are trying to have members with us more during these visits because I believe it is more meaningful to have a member tell you they want you to come to church then it is to have two girls on your doorstep who are there because it is their job to be.  Hopefully this was a good start. 

On Wednesday we had dinner with a family that has five kids.  The dad was still at work and the mom gives piano lessons, so we just are with the kids while the mom gave a lesson.  As we were leaving the mom of the daughter having a lesson talked to us and said she has never seen girl missionaries and that she likes that we are out serving.  Later that evening the member who was giving the lesson called us and said that the lady we talked to is interested in learning more and that she will set up a time for us to come back to her house and talk with her.  It was a miracle because no one in that ward ever wants to be taught!

In that same ward is a part member family.  I talked about them the first week I wrote home from the field.  We teach the step son (Neville Longbottom) who is a member because he doesn't know a lot because he always skipped Sunday school as a kid (and still does a lot).  The step dad (Sirius Black) isn't a member, but he comes to church every week and even has a calling with the cub scouts #drymormon.  It has never felt right to teach Sirius Black so we haven't bothered him.  We know that he knows the church is true and that he will come around when he is ready.  We figured teaching Neville would be a good way to show him that we care about people and don't just teach to baptize.  I also suggested we move our lessons with the step son from Thursday to Sunday so Sirius would overhear things.  My companion and his wife agreed so we have done that the past three weeks.  Well this weekend Sirius met with a member for lunch in another ward in our stake and told him that he has actually been reading the Book of Mormon and wants to know if it is true, but doesn't want to meet with missionaries.  The elders in the other guy's ward told us this, Sirius didn't.  We were teaching Neville the Plan of Salvation last night at our lesson and Sirius sat in on the entire thing (well the whole family did actually). We didn't have an 8:00 appointment, so we let the lesson go long and we spent over an hour just answering Neville's many, many, many questions.  Sirius told the wife a few weeks ago that he is surprised at how patient we are with with Neville and how we speak in metaphors and language he understands instead of just preaching at him.  After our lesson last night he thanked us for being patient and working so well with Neville.  We are hoping that Sirius will come around soon and will be baptized and that we can help Neville gain a testimony.  I love working with them, they're a really fun family.  They remind me of our family which is probably why I love them.  The older brother even said last night that it's a good thing we aren't elders otherwise we would have blown it with Neville long ago because elders don't have the kind patience that we do.  Neville has a hard time focusing in the basics and wants every crazy scenario explained to him.  He doesn't like the mysteries of God (like how we don't exactly know how the world was created, how black people were created, etc.) and allows that to get in the way of him believing there is a God.  Today in personal study I happened to read Mosiah 4:9 which basically says we don't have to worry about everything if we believe in God, so I sent him that scripture.

I'm up to Exodus now in the Bible and am still thoroughly enjoying it.  I don't know where Dreamworks got off with their interpretation of the Prince of Egypt though.  They sure extrapolated a lot out of the one chapter that describes Moses' birth, childhood, escape into the desert, and marriage. #dreamworksbetrippin'

Today we had a zone activity which is why I'm emailing later than normal.  We played mini golf and laser tag.  I actually did really well in laser tag.  I was shocked.  For a girl I actually did quite phenomenal.  I had the highest sister score, probably because I was a wild woman before my full time church service.  I even beat a handful of elders. #aintnobodygottimeformodesty #iamgettingridiculouswithmyhashtagsbutilovethemokay

Just a general note, I can read emails throughout the week on my iPad, I just can't respond to them until Monday, so anyone is more than welcome to email and it will always brighten my day.

As per usual, I'm sure I left a lot out, but these were the high points!  We get to go to the temple tomorrow, so I'll tell you about that next week!


XOXO

Sister Poppe


No comments:

Post a Comment