My Gospel Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune

We created a Wheel of Fortune game this week and it is so fun! We played it with the Tony Hawk family and with Hermione's family. They all enjoyed it. The Tony Hawk boys asked if I would sing for them and I said I would sing WITH them, but not for them. The youngest boy sang a line of I am a Child of God with me and then stopped so I did too and we got back into our game. At the end though the youngest boy wouldn't say the prayer, so I told him I'd sing for him if he prayed.  He prayed and then, as per Sister Tony Hawk Mom's request, I sang "Families Can Be Together Forever". The oldest boy recorded part of it and sent a Snap Chat video to who knows who, and the six year old said, "You are like a remix of an angel, Sister Poppe!" I'm not sure what the even means. I just picture an angel collaborating with Calvin Harris to create a Rihana-esque rendition of "If You Could High to Kolob" for Mormon HD Radio, but I could be off.

My Gospel Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. I'm probably more proud of them than I should be.

 We had dinner with one of my favorite families in Thunder Mountain on Tuesday. The meal was delicious, but the highlight would have to have been when the 9 year old son told us what you get when you cross Peeta and Katniss' names. It wasn't Katta...

On Wednesday, Sister D2 wasn't feeling well, so we took it easy. We had planned to stop by a lot of stay at home moms' houses in the afternoon and were going to drop by the assisted living home as well, but we figured too many fragile young'uns and elderly folk could be infected. She took a needed nap and then we prepped for our story time on Thursday (more to come later on about that), did our normal online time, watched The Testaments, and highlighted Moroni 10:3-5 and the last two paragraphs of the introduction in all of our proselyting Books of Mormon and added pass along cards with the mission office's phone number written on them inside the front cover. It wasn't the most productive use of time, but given the circumstances it was the best I could come up with; at least we didn't just sit around our apartment.

Story time was not as successful as we had hoped. We aren't giving up though. We talked to people, gathered opinions, and decided that a different time and more advertising will probably yield more attendees. We set one up for mid-November. The actual stories and activities were really great. Sister D2 had the kids help her act out the Good Samaritan story, and I told the story of Jesus feeding the multitude. Every time I said Jesus, the kids had to say, "loves me!"  When I said bread, they had to rub their tummies and make a yummy noise, and when I said fish they had to make fish lips and wiggle their hands together like a fish swimming upstream. They were actually very captivated and didn't run around like they did during Sister D2's story. She gave them an inch and they definitely took a mile...or seven.

We had the Fall Festivals in both of our wards last weekend (I'm still not sure why they weren't called Trunk or Treat...no one was really sure why they changed the name stake wide this year). We had a great time.  We were told that we couldn't dress up on Halloween, but I figured we could accessorize!  So we bought stuff to make sashes and purchased a tiara and went as Miss America candidates.  Plus, I think the no costumes rule applies more for Halloween day when we're out working than for our ward activities, though I could be interpreting it a little too liberally. A group of girls came to the TM festival from another stake in Mesa and they said, "the sisters in our ward would never be cool enough to dress up; you're cool sisters!" #winning The validation of 13 year old girls matters more to me than it should...

Sister D2 told people that she won the pageant; I was okay with that.

We all know my answers aren't PC enough to win a pageant. 

I told everyone I won Miss Congeniality though.

 

We had a great lesson this week with Sirius Black, his wife, and Neville Longbottom.  I felt like we needed to read from the Book of Mormon with them, so we selected Ether chapter 12.  Before we started, I talked about the ways in which the Book of Mormon answers our questions through the Holy Ghost, not always through the literal words of the text.  Then I invited everyone to take a second to pray about something and promised that as we read the Book of Mormon they would receive an answer.  We ran out of time, but I felt like we needed to read a verse we didn't get to, so I said that we would just skip ahead and read that verse before we ended.  After we read that verse Sirius said that verse was exactly what he needed to hear!  We aren't sure what he was looking for exactly, but we know that we facilitated a positive experience with the Book of Mormon with him.

We helped some YW in TK with family history at the YW president's house and it was a ton of fun. She is having us come over the next 3 Sunday evenings to help different girls find names for the upcoming youth temple trip. I love love love love working with them. I can't wait to have daughters.

 

We went to the Phoenix Temple open house yesterday with Hermione and her husband and his parents. We got special permission to go with them on Monday and to change our P-Day to today, Tuesday because the only day during the entire open house they could go was yesterday. I thought it was pretty, but not nearly as beautiful as the Gilbert Temple. We had lunch at a Greek place after that, and stopped at Costco with them on the way home, where I ran into your cousin Camette!

 

I'm really learning a lot lately about listening to the guidance of the Spirit. It's pretty hard sometimes! I have learned a lot about trusting the Lord lately and just letting go and handing everything to Him to fix. Not that my desires change, but I let Him be in charge and try to stop stressing about things I don't have complete control over.  Why do people have their agency?

I finished the Book of Mormon for the fourth time on my mission today!   I'm still learning more each time I read it!  I'm not sure what I'll focus on the next time I read it yet though.

That's a wrap! Enjoy the many pictures this week.

Lots of Love,

Sister Poppe

 

I bought some curlers to try and give my hair more volume. 

This is a daily thing for me.

 

This panda was at the library and I REALLY wanted a picture with it.

I waited until there was no one around and went at it.

"I'M STICKING MY HEAD THROUGH A PANDA!"

 

Banana art at dinner

 

Nug Nug's family got some baby ducks!