Welcome to the Wichita Weather Forecast where it rains almost every day and we are wondering how houses are not flooded to the roof. It has rained. a lot. The basement of the Orr home is fine, there is a small crack in their foundation that lets a stream of water into the house but it goes straight into their water pump hole thingy. This week has been crazy. Last Sunday was when all the basements flooded and we had to cancel some of our plans of visiting people but spent the day helping out a ton of people. The lesson we had planned on for Sunday was canceled and rescheduled but we had to cancel it yesterday because we didn't have a sister member to come with us. But speaking about that lesson, we had something really great prepared. "The Triangle" which is the three necessities of having a strong testimony in the church.
1. Church - you have to go to church, and not only do you have to go to church but to get the full experience (of course only if health permits and other things) going to the sacrament, Sunday school, and the last meeting are essential to building a strong relationship within your ward family.
2. Pray - Sincere prayer. not just repeating the daily thing you say every day. We forget sometimes that we are talking to someone who loves us, He doesn't want to hear a voice recording everyday. He wants to be able to pick up the phone and listen to what we have to say. but first we have to pick up the phone on our side to talk with him. We need to give an account of what our day was like. our disappointments. our hopes, dreams, and desires. He is there to help us if we ask him.
3. Read - Sometimes we make excuses of not reading. Not enough time. too tired. Can’t find my scriptures. etc. etc. One thing that has become very apparent to me is that reading the scriptures daily, on your own and with your family is Vital. It strengthens family and spiritual relationships. We need to keep our scriptures at hand to be able to receive insight on how to go through daily struggles. how to take care of our children and how to bring others to Christ. Please make reading a routine habit; but don't just pull out scriptures and read. Think about what you are reading. Imagine you are there and the people are talking to you. Imagine that Christ is talking to you. It makes things so much more understandable.
I have taught "The Triangle" to many people in church and to investigators.
On Monday we had dinner with a family that knew our investigator. and it was really sad to sit there and listen to this individual talk about how our plans and who we intended to bring with us was not a good fit for this guy. I get confused as to why people think that they need to tell us what to do to help our investigators. Insight is helpful but when people are trying to tell us what and how to teach, that is when it gets frustrating. I don't think a lot of the members realize how much we pray to know what the person needs and how we should deliver the message to people.
Tuesday It was the usual studying at the beginning of the day, but the Millward family still needed help with their basement. so we spent most of the day over there helping vacuum up water and cut up wall. The Hansel family is amazing, they helped so much and they were over there from day one until the problem was under control and there wasn't anything else they could do. We ate dinner with Sister Koppa that night, I love Sister Koppa, she has such a strong heart and she loves her two kids very much. She is going through a lot in life, and things are very hard for her. She has had cancer twice but she fought hard. She always makes awesome meals. Usually spicy food, and I usually cry because the food is so out of my taste bud range.
Wednesday we did a short personal study in the morning and then went over to the Millwards to help them more. We ended up tearing out all of their walls and tearing off the paneling, and this built into wall bookshelf thing that was completely rotten. We discovered underneath the paneling on the walls some pretty intense wallpaper. Really old fashion wall paper and under that wall paper was more old fashion wallpaper. But ripping up that basement was something I needed. I needed to do something physically exerting and smashing walls was perfect. It let out a lot of bad energy and I felt a ton better after we finished. We had dinner with the Packard’s and it was a great meal, Sister Packard is super awesome and she has a puppy that is the most adorable little thing, but as all new puppies do, when they get excited, they pee everywhere. but it was great. after dinner we went and contacted a Referral who we discovered was a Methodist, and she is old enough that I feel that she will die a Methodist. because she has been a Methodist her entire life. That night we went Visit teaching with Sister Nading to the Orr's. (Funny I know, going home to Visit teach) but it was good because we were helping sister Nading!
Thursday Was a walking day, we tried to meet as many people as we could but I wasn't feeling that well and so we came home and took a nap. Then we found out that one of our investigators agreed to come to the Relief Society activity! So we got all ready and went to relief society and before that we gave them a tour of the church. We didn't know that she had already had a tour... and we later decided that she only wanted to come because she has a major crush on one of the Elders... She didn't realize that they were both 19. We left early to go with one of the Laurels, Madison Thornburg, to see Investigators and Less Actives. It was sad because the last person we went to see was a Less Active member, and when she opened the door she was not happy. She asked for the bishop’s number.
Friday! Is the day that we were waiting for all week! We had Zone Conference today and we learned about rules and how they are now changing daily planning to the morning to see how that works out. We also learned that we can now only listen to church produced music... so no more 100 year old classical :( . But its okay. I just wish I had more EFY music. After Zone Conference Sister Hibbs picked us up and we went out to lunch then to the store to buy flowers and stuff. Then we were on our way toward Kingman!!! It takes about an hour to drive to Kingman. but we stopped on the way to celebrate her moms birthday at the rest home she is at and meet her sister. We then continued on our way to Vicky's house, she is a 17 year old who is very talented artist. Her family is a very low income family so she doesn't have much to work with. We talked with her and set up manometer appointment of which we can come back and teach her more. We met her father and he agreed to listen as well. We had dinner at the Huffman house and the meal was good. We left from there and went to a Less Active members home and gave a short message with her and talked for a bit then headed off to the Hansen home, where our investigator Cori was waiting to watch a movie with us. We watched the 20 minute Joseph Smith Movie. Sister Hansen is a great fellowship to Cori, She needed someone like her to keep her on earth. Sister Hansen is a very spiritually strong woman, who loves the gospel and is not afraid to help with missionary work. I wish more members could be like her.
Saturday we had mission correlation and not much happened, we don't communicate well with the ward mission leader because he is pretty much deaf and so his wife is sitting there writing everything down. After that we went out and met a few referrals and an amazing thing happened, we decided that we should stop and pray for a second and as we were praying both of us heard footsteps approaching, I was almost ready to turn around and attack. but we both looked up and turned around and a man was a few feet away. He asked what we were doing. We talked with him for a while and gave him a Book of Mormon and our phone number and we got his number and then we proceeded on our way. It was really interesting.
We had dinner with the Zogg's and after dinner we gave brother Zogg all of the changes we found that needed to be made to the directory.
And Finally and definitely not least SUNDAY!!!
We had Church and our investigator Cori came! We made sure to keep her far away from the Elders. But that wasn't the best surprise. the best surprise was when my friend Stephanie Ferweda came in! She had come in for a week to visit her family and she was there on Sunday!!! I was so happy to see her and it was just great to see a familiar face. After sacrament we went to gospel principles with Cori, but sister Fuller and I decided to do splits during church so I could go out and teach the Huffman kids, who sat out in the hall all Sunday until their parents were ready to leave. I taught them the importance of "The Triangle" and then I just got to know them a bit. After church ended, the father came over to me and thanked me. Apparently I am the first person that their daughter has ever talked to at church. We went to lunch at the Millwards. After that we went to the Hopper home and watched the Elders give sister Hopper a blessing. We went home after that and did our studies. and ate dinner with the Orr's. At 7 Stephanie Ferweda came and picked us up and she was our team up for that night. We went around and met with some potentials, and dropped investigators. Then we went over to see if we could talk to Collin, but his wife said he was too tired to talk. So we walked 5 feet and knocked on Sister Koppa's door. We met her boyfriend and his daughter. I played with her bird who is about as long as my arm. She kept trying to bite me but she was just play biting. She apparently likes me a lot because she doesn't get on other peoples arm as often as she gets on my arm. We then went home afterward and Stephanie sat in on our nightly planning session, we planned for our next day and made phone calls. We then answered some of her questions about missionary life and other stuff. We talked for a long time and it was really great.
This week has been a really good week.
Love You All,
Sister Call
IMPORTANT: If you have sent me mail and it has been sent back it is because the mail carriers don't believe that I actually live where I live! so if you write a letter or send a package write "In the care of Helen Orr."
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