Week 26 - La Cygne

Hello!

Kind of a weird week. Good, but weird. I can't really describe it. One example- we went to a town that we have gone to a few times, and we even had some appointments that day. But we were there for probably about 30 minutes and we just felt strange about being there. Like we needed to not be there for some reason. So we left! I don't know why we needed to leave, but we did. It worked out though, like it always does. We ended up talking to some people we needed to, and it was good. Anyway, lately I have had kind of a feeling of urgency here. Like there is so much we need to do and we need to do it now! I know that great things are in store for this area.

 

So we had the feeling last week that we needed to go to some more towns other than the ones we have been going to regularly. We felt like one of them should be a town named Amsterdam. Population 281. Pretty awesome. My favorite experience this week actually happened while we were there. We had knocked a few doors (we know nobody in the town) and no one was interested until we got to one where the man told us to come back in a few minutes when his wife got home, because she might be interested. We ended up teaching the whole family about the Restoration, which was awesome. But the best thing ever- we had just watched the movie "The Restoration" which details Joseph's experience- basically just the story of the First Vision. We get done and I ask them if anything stuck out, or what they liked about it. The cute 10 year old (who hadn't said a word the whole time yet) looks at me and says, "I thought it was beautiful!" It was so cute. I wanted to cry. Because he is right! It is beautiful. It is one of the most beautiful stories in the world.

 

We also got to go to a town called Prescott for a while the other day. I love these towns. It literally has a gas station on the outskirts of town, a post office, a town hall, and surprisingly, a really cute hair salon! And that is the extent of the businesses there. One thing we got to do was go to a nursing home for about an hour and just visit and sing to people. That was something I really enjoyed doing in High School on Sundays. It was a good experience! Sometimes it makes me really sad to see the condition some of the people are in, but you can literally make their day just by talking to them for 10 minutes. And they just love you, because you are showing love to them.

 

At district meeting this week me and Sister A had the opportunity to do a training on how the Book of Mormon and Bible support each other. For those of you who don't know, district meeting is a meeting we have every week where about 10 missionaries who serve in nearby areas get together and do trainings and just help us be better in general. So we decided that since we are the only sisters, and elders sometimes have short attention spans, we needed to do something to get their attention. We get up to the front and I ask anyone if they are hungry. Of course, they all raise their hands. So we get two pieces of bread out and Sis A starts spreading the peanut butter and I start with the jelly. Except I only let her spread a tiny bit of peanut butter, and I just kept piling on the jelly. By the end we had probably half a jar on the bread. Then we put them together and I offered it to them. Of course, one of the elders actually tried it. But it was pretty funny. We were demonstrating how we need to use both books in our teaching, and not just focus on one or the other. Of course we want to teach more from the Book of Mormon and they need to gain a testimony of it, but the Bible is there for a reason! It was pretty fun.

 

Well, besides those things, this week one of our members who was giving us a ride up to Paola for district meeting asked if she could bring a non-member friend for the ride so we could talk to him about the Book of Mormon. Of course!!! It was awesome. We went up a little early and took him on a tour of the church and even got to stand in the font. It was powerful. Then he came to church yesterday and liked it! He is cool. He is a 17 year-old kid that is just looking for truth. I am excited about him. In other news, we unfortunately won't be having a baptism this week. It is really hard to quit smoking! I wish smoking had never been invented! Stupid Satan. But we are still working on her, and I have faith she will get baptized soon!

 

Alright, well I hope you all have a good week! I love you.

 

-Sister Hafen