This Monday and Tuesday Sister Christiansen was away in Rapid City at the missionary doing Sister Training leader stuff. All the Sister Training leaders and Zone leaders go to the mission home almost every month to be trained my President and Sister Anderson, and then they come back to their area and each zone gives a training meeting. Yeah, mission terminology and happenings are really confusing unless you've been on a mission where you have to learn how things work, BUT needless to say, Sister Christensen was NOT here in Bismark during Monday and Tuesday, but her companion Sister Taylor was. And of course, what happens when there's a companionless sister? TRIO! I've been in a lot of trios. What with the past three weeks as well as past MLCs (Missionary Leadership Conference, and the reason the zone and sister training leaders go to Rapid almost every month).
So Monday, P-day with Sister Gray and Sister Taylor. We took forever at the store, I don't even know what took so long. You know how errands go. And Sister Taylor. needed. a new bag. It needed to happen. But she is very particular about bags. This is a very important detail of this story.
We tried the thrift store, which has Target overstock, which is where I got my bag, which she likes my bag. But no luck. We tried K-Mart because we were already there. We tried Walmart. Nothin'. So we found where Target was. A little bit further away than I thought, but it's all good. It was inside the mall here, or one of the malls here, and Sister Taylor was in awe... she hadn't been in a mall in 15 months! But we were very disciplined and went straight to Target and made a beeline for the purses.
She picked one up and put it on.
"Where's a mirror? I need a mirror. I know it's silly! But I have to see how it looks!"
Found a mirror and she looked at it..."
"I wish it wasn't brown..."
"But my bag's brown.." I said.
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| Sister Taylor and her New Bag |
"But yours is a cute brown, not a yellow orange gross color."
...I don't know mine's a little yellow but... if you say so Sister Taylor haha.
"And it's too rectangle... Sorry! I'm so picky, I know it."
We just laughed. It was so funny, just, this purse, that purse, pros cons, "is this one me?" "Yeah, it's you?" "Do you really think so?" "Well, it is now, you're buying it!"
It was done. She chose the brown bag and we were on our way out of the store, walking through the mall when..
"*SNAP* !!! What!? Are you kidding me??"
She had broken the pocket of the purse!
"That's so deceiving! It looks like a snap, but it... it doesn't even zip! It's not even a pocket!... that's so deceiving..."
We were just laughing hahaha. So we walked back to return it, and she chose a different purse that she ended up liking a lot better.
"See, Heavenly Father KNEW that you wouldn't be satisfied with that other bag, so he made you break it so you would get the other one!" I said. Cuz I mean, it's true! hahaha.
"Heavenly Father's the greatest dad!" said Sister Taylor as we all laughed.
The other funny thing that happened isn't spiritual at all, but sometimes when you get Sister Gray laughing it sounds like she's crying slightly, one of those laughs. It's not too extreme, but it's enough to say during a dinner appointment, "look, you made her laugh so hard she's crying!" and I didn't know if it would work, but I decided it was worth a shot... I dabbed my finger in my cup of water and flicked the drop hoping that it would land on her cheek and IT DID! Her eyes widened as she continued to laugh and it TOTALLY looked like a tear! We were busting up laughing! hahahaha it was so funny. It was awesome.
Something cool this week, we did service.... in the temple! The temple here is closed for two weeks for cleaning, so we got to help clean the temple! It was really neat. Sister Taylor got the best job ever. She cleaned the font. And girls? Word to the wise, don't where makeup when you go to the temple to do baptisms. There was all this black stuff by the drain from all the mascara that comes off when you go under the water. So, keep that in mind. Sister Gray and I just cleaned the changing rooms real good. And afterward, we were shown by one of the other adults there some of the paintings in the temple and he was explaining about them. It was super spiritual.
We also helped a lady move. That's one of the number one service activities you do as a missionary. Ask anyone. And usually it's just throwing things in boxes with no order at all. At least, that's been my experience.
Something else that was cooler waaaas the weather on Wednesday night. And in general this week, but mostly Wednesday night. It was in the 40s? low 40s? And it was very wet. It wasn't raining too bad, mostly just a mist which is like, foreign in Arizona. It did remind me a bit of Flagstaff though. I am so glad I had my p-coat which I bought at the thrift store two days before. It made it comfortable and refreshing to walk in when it would have been a bit too cold otherwise. We used Wednesday night as an opportunity to just walk, trying people around the apartment, not using the car for a bit. I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of a nice winter walk. After planning that night I made myself some hot chocolate. And I felt like I was staying up late, because I was up drinking my hot chocolate by myself because everyone had decided to go to bed early. It made me chuckle inside a little.
Sister Gray is still trying to get in the swing of what this area throws at you. One of our investigators dropped us again, this time because her mother didn't want her learning, and this investigator was fifteen, so there was nothing we could do. I... unfortunately have grown used to that for better or worse. Sister Gray was crushed, poor thing. I reassured her that things would work out for the best, that God has a plan for her to be successful and we did our part. Tracting is also daunting to her. It's pretty hard when you have a completely empty Saturday because of people being sick or out of town and having nothing to look forward too but tracting. She finds no joy in it. I myself struggle to break up the monotony of tracting... I'm praying for inspiration. I have faith that this week we with have an experience that will benefit us both.
We've been trying to meet more members too. With one family we ended up staying a little bit longer than we planned and we were talking about pretty deep doctrine concerning the preexistance. It was really nice because as a missionary, people think you are a spiritual power house, and you are, but you can't talk about deep doctrine except with members. I can't tell you how happy I was to be at church my first few weeks because I didn't have to be the 'teacher' while I was there, that we could converse easily with out confusing people out of their mind. So it was really therapeutic.
Something else that will be therapeutic, we're going to go to the zoo today after emailing! I'll send you pictures next week!
P.S. I had fun decorating my envelopes this week.
Civil war stamps and quotes are awesome.
Joseph Smith even prophecies about the Civil war, did you know that? D&C 87:1,4
P.S.S. It's Halloween Time in the stores! And in someone's yard who does a haunted house every year!
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| Halloween In The Stores |
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| Halloween In The Neighborhood |
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