60 - Cambodian Charm

Sister Lamborn Helped Us Clean. Thank YOU!

We cleaned our old apartment aaaaaall day last Monday. 

And we owe more thanks than anything to our awesome relief society president.

She was the only one that showed up to help us clean! And she brought all the necessary supplies. We could NOT have done it without her!

Old Apartment All Cleaned Up.  :-)

We turned in the keys this week and it's all squared away! 

Good Bye Ol' Apartment.

We don't need to worry about it anymore! 

Yes!!

We retired the apartment with honor.

Off with the Jesus picture on this door and on with it on our new door!

Just Because Everyone Loves a DOUBLE Rainbow!

There was a tornado warning on Sunday, but nothing actually happened, except for a bit of rain and an awesome double rainbow!

Super cool.

This Week's Planning Session

This is what weekly planning looks like. 

Snacks and planners and area book and papers everywhere. 

We had an actually very effective weekly planning this week. 

Yay!

We have been trying an approach that one of the young women leaders used for dinner appointments on her mission. We bring a map that has our area marked on it and we have the family we are eating dinner with choose for us what street we should tract. Maybe they know someone on it or maybe it's a random street, whatever. Well, this family chose the street right behind their house and when we tracted it, one person became a new investigator! We set up a return appointment for this same week. We took the mom of the family who chose the street out with us to come and teach him, to meet the guy who we ran into because they suggested this street. Well, the appointment fell through, and all of our back-ups fell through too, and all of her less active sisters to visit teach just moved out of Williston. But she suggested that we go see her friend. So we did and she explained to her friend that we had had no luck with other people and if we could share a message about Jesus Christ with her and she said yes and let us right in and it was a great lesson and she is now a new investigator!!! Members are awesome!

Now the crowning story. I seem to have a lot of 'crowning stories' lately. haha. Regardless!

I wish I had pictures to go along with this story, but I don't have any yet.  (There's a picture at the end from the next week's blog...a "sneak peek"  :-)

It was about a month ago. It was Sunday evening and we had JUST figured our who's area was what at this point and were JUST getting done organizing our area book, so we hadn't really tracted at all. We had just gotten done of dinner at a member's house, and we decided it was time to tract, especially since the area that we were eating dinner in what now our area when it wasn't before!

We went down the street, knocking on the doors of the houses. Met a few people. Had a good contact at one door. Another few doors down though and this man answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi, how are you doing tonight?"

"Good. ...Sister Barrett, and Sister Sanderson. So where are you from."

'Hm, well, you, Mr, are a less active member of the church, probably from Utah!' Sister Barrett and I thought. Sure enough, that's exactly what he was. Super nice guy. He works not 'in' the oil field, but the stuff he does directly effects the work in the oil field. And he and his wife commute back and forth from Utah. He wanted us to meet his wife!

She was short, darker skinned, quiet, though when she did speak you could tell she had an accent.

"Where are you from?"

"I'm from Cambodia."

Woooooooooooooah! So cool! Seriously, soooo many people here in Williston.

We asked if we could come in and share a message. And thus began our teaching them. They have beautiful paintings of Cambodia, all of them having a temple in them with five main tall towers which looked all too familiar to me!

"Is this Angkor Wat?"

"Yes! You know our temple?"

"Yes! Wow, I really want to go there someday."

I didn't tell her however that I only know about Angkor Wat really because of playing Illusion of Gaia. haha.

I will call her Korwa. :) They met because of his cousin actually. He married someone from Cambodia and he was watching the marriage tape and he asked, 'who's that?' and he went and married Korwa! They were married nearly five years ago in November, and Korwa has been here for almost two years, so they had a long distance marriage for awhile. They had a traditional Cambodian marriage and she showed us pictures and they are absolutely beautiful, and holy cow does he have a crazy sideways smirk smolder face! So I will call him Flinn. haha.

Korwa comes from a Buddist background, but Flinn has taken her to temple square before. Flinn knows all about the Mormon culture, but he knows very little about the doctrine. He asked us what the difference between the old and the new testament was. We are excited to teach them! They are both open to learning!

We have invited Korwa to church, but we were afraid she wouldn't come because she was feeling sick when we called her Sunday morning. She sounded sick, everything. She has some sort of medical thing that has been going on for awhile that she gets sick spells randomly. 

Picture from Korwa's second week at church

BUT MIRACLE! SHE WALKED INTO THE CHAPEL BEFORE THE SACRAMENT WAS PASSED!! She was THERE! She CAME to church!!! And she enjoyed the people, you could tell. And she enjoyed the last song. I honestly don't know how much she retained of what was talked about at church, but you could tell she had a great experience! (Flinn always works on Sundays, so that's why he didn't come.) It was sooooo special. She started feeling sick again right before relief society, so she went back home and was sorry to leave, but when we texted her to make sure she was safely home, she said:

"Yep I'm now and thanks for teaching me."

YAAAY! I love her so much! I'm so excited for her!

That's it. Till next week!

59 - Moving On

We have SO little time today. 



Only thirty minutes. 

Sad face. 

:-(





Because today has been crazy.

We moved everything to the Motel apartment! 


It's very homey now.

The members that manage the hotel (I will now call them Brother and Sister Manage) live in the door on the right and we live in the door on the left. 








That's the window by my study desk!

It's weird to think that on the other side of our beds is the big lettering of the name of the Motel. But hey, it's home 'suites' home.  ;-)

As far as the other apartment, we got all the stuff out of it, but we still need to clean it, which the relief society is helping us do at 2:00 today, which is why we have so little time.

The elders came and got all the furniture out and took it for themselves. 

Goodbye Handicap Accessible Bathroom

This house that they are/were living in is really run down. 















They are looking for other housing.

They left a big junk pile. 

We threw it all away. 

Except for me of course. 

haha.

Bismarck Ward List--For my Keepsakes

Exchanges with the Minot sisters were this week. 

It's cool because Sister Cleg came here to Williston, and she's served here before, so that was super cool for her, 

AND she just served in Bismarck in my same ward! 

So I had her bring me the ward list because I forgot to grab a copy of it before I left Bismarck. Yay tender mercies!

And at our dinner appointment they had a violin, and Sister Cleg just happens to know how to play the violin, even though the E string broke, 

haha.

But one of the crowning events of this week.

We've been teaching Goldin (intentional spelling), and she's just as excited about the gospel as always. Her not-even-husband though (she's not married to him but working on it) is not. He is Pentacostal. He is off Sundays, and he hasn't let her come to church. We stopped by before church and he said she was sleeping. We told him that it was a promise that she made to God to come to church and asked if he would help her keep that promise and just shake her awake to let her know. He wouldn't do it. He gave us her number for us to call and set up an appointment.

We called as soon as we got out of there. He answered. He said she wasn't up yet. How silly. Why did you answer the phone!? I will call him Sylver. She didn't come to church. But we had already set up a week before that we would drop by after church this week.

We came with our ward mission leader and his wife. Goldin was there. She let us in. Sylver walked past us in the hall. Goldin told us she didn't come to church because Sylver was very upset about it. She was sad and troubled.

"I'm Christian. I'm not baptized I know. But I know that I am Christian. And that is enough..."

See was so sad. Sylver called her. We asked if we could still meet with her.

"I don't know..."

After a bit we all knew that we wouldn't be able to see her again. ...I asked for a picture.

A picture truly does say a thousand words. She is so sad and tired. She was wiping away tears after the picture. Her kids have classic expressions that are so 'them." The four year old's name is a combination of her and Sylver's name and the two year old is named after her sister who died in her 30's in Africa. 

This picture was taken on the couch. She had just gotten a couch from her friend. She didn't have a couch until today. She always apologized for us having to sit on the floor. She always apologized for not having a couch...

We got to sit on it once at least.

We are praying for a miracle to happen with Sylver. A miracle similar to Alma the younger's experience perhaps.

"And again, the angel said: Behold, the Lord hath heard‍ the prayers of his people, and also the prayers‍ of his servant, Alma, who is thy father; for he has prayed‍ with much faith concerning thee that thou mightest be brought to the knowledge‍ of the truth; therefore, for this purpose have I come to convince‍ thee of the power and authority of God, that the prayers‍ of his servants might be answered according to their faith," (Mosiah 27:14).

...But the work goes on. We will continue to pray for her. The work is still great here in Williston.

58 - Why Not Minot?

Wow. Why no time! I cheated last week and had two hours, now it's back to an hour. Darn. Till late August.

We drove up to Minot on Monday. That was our P-Day. When we got there, Sister Barrett left all by her lonesome with the zone leaders (the only time when a sister can be alone-if she's a sister training leader traveling in the car to missionary leadership council (MLC)) and I was dropped off at the bowling alley with the Sisters in Minot!

So I bowled in a dress.

And Sister Cleg, we discovered, is a bowling ballerina.

Then we went to the mall in Minot.

And Sister Williams, we discovered, is really a flower child.

And I? I don't know what I am, but I took a picture of me with crazy rings on!

Being in a trio with the Minot Sisters was SO FUN! They are so funny and we get along great and we had some adventures while Sister Barrett was receiving training. While Sister Barrett was in Bismarck, we decided to go to one of the outskirt towns of Minot.

We went to Velva, and we waited forever because of construction. But we met a couple people, including the catholic father guy of the city, and he was super nice!

Then we went to the neighboring city, Sawyer, and went on this long dirt farm road looking for this address.

We stopped at a farm house thing that looked like this and there were these kids just playing outside and they just ran up to us all excited. We asked their grandma for directions, and while she was looking on her phone, one of the little kids pulled down the other little girl's skirt! haha. We slipped a restoration pamphlet into her hand after we got the directions and as we drove away she was holding up the pamphlet to the kids, as if saying, "you see, this is Jesus, and Jesus doesn't ever pull down people's skirts!" hahaha. It was awesome.

And we went to an airforce base for dinner!

Pretty Normal on the Base. :)

It was super cool. 

Minot. It's where all the nuc's are. So when WWIII happens, DON'T come to North Dakota! Serious. 

It was super cool to see how secure the gate is but how normal it looks on base.

We picked Sister Barrett up Wednesday night after dinner on the base. 

Thursday we spent most of the day planning. Sister Barrett had to plan with the zone leaders on how to best take the training that they had received and give the same kind of training again to our zone, but catered to their needs. 

Sister Barrett and the Zone Leaders

So we did that for a good few hours.  

We also taught a few lessons with these sisters, and we also had time to just sing together.

Us four Sisters are all musical, so guess what we did for Zone Conference on Friday! 

A musical number! 

It was so awesome and fun.

We went back to our area after eating out at a Chinese place, and taught a lesson before bed.

And when we woke up... Sister Barrett opened the package that she got! Because it was her birthday! Yay!

Twenty presents for twenty years! And they were all blue, one of her favorite colors!

And the crowning pic, a camera! She needed a new one desperately.

Opening all those presents wore her out.

Just like helping someone move that day wore us out.

And you now what's crazy though? We taught five lessons on Sister Barrett's birthday. AND everyone that we taught just happened to have chocolate to give her, even though almost all of them were drop by visits!

And we then ate at one of her favorite member's house for dinner and she sent a picture of us to our moms and Sister Barrett's family sent back a recording of them singing their happy birthday song to her and that was super special. And then!

I HEARD THAT MY BROTHER IS GOING TO THE CALVARY CANADA MISSION!!!! HE IS GOING ENGLISH SPEAKING AND REPORTING TO THE MTC ON THE 29TH OF JULY!!!! I'M SO SO EXCITED FOR HIM!!!! YAAAAAAAAY!

And Sunday, our Philaphino recent convert is doing SOOO good. She got a job and she's not working on Sunday and we all started crying as her husband told us that the first thing that she would do coming home was separate 10% from her tips. WE ARE ALL SO PROUD OF HER!!!

This is the song that Sister Barrett and I sang at her baptism. It was written by Sister Barrett's mom. :)

Well that's it! Bye!

P.S. The hallway to Golden's apartment looks like the hallway that turns upside down in the Forest Temple In Zelda Ocarina of Time. lol