The One With Christmas in March!...

March 21, 2016

The scriptures speak the truth! Hahaha just Kidding

So this week has been exhausting (I feel like I say that every week but that's my life) and like no one was home so not too many things to report but here's what happened...

 

So we had district meeting this week and that was really good. We had the zone leaders (Elder Knappus and Howe) and our STL's there (Sister Sperry and Hermana Koopmans). It was so sweet the Senior couple that is in our district, elder and sister Beck, took us all out to lunch afterwards at Apple bee's. That was really yummy. So the reason that the STL's were in our area was because they came to blitz our area instead of exchanges. For all you not so familiar with missionary terms blitzing is where you all go on exchanges in the same area.

That was fun, I went with Hermana Koopmans for the first half of the day, and it was cool. We saw a miracle with one of our potentials who is soon to become an investigator (he's right on the cusp). His name is Trevor and we went and showed him the Easter video and were able to talk with him and testify to him about god being there and loving us and that he really does hear and answer our prayers. He said we could come back and i hope we are able to teach him. He has SO much potential, I can just see how happy he could be with the gospel and church in his life and want that for him. Oh also on Wednesday we went to church! We got invited to church by a referral we contacted named Brian. He's a really sweet middle aged man who invited us to church with him and said he would come to our church so we went. First time I've been to a normal church service other than that ran by our church. It was interesting and definitely a learning experience.

Unrelated to that i realized that i love sister Sperry! She is so cute, she reminds me of a softer spoken version of Ashley. She likes playing with hair and giving hugs, and is always willing to jump in and serve. It was so fun having her around on Wednesday. She said that she feels like she's known me forever and i feel exactly the same way :).

So something funny, this week we helped someone wrap Christmas gifts. Yes she knows it's march no it's not for next Christmas and no she didn't get her Jesus holidays mixed up. It's a story that has to do with her daughter that I don't feel like telling cause it's really not that important. But we spent a good couple of hours helping her wrap all of her Christmas gifts which was really fun. Sister McCoy is an amazing lady. She has had so many large and ongoing trials in her life physically and spiritually and she just keeps going and is very kind to everybody. I love her.

Also the same day as Christmas in March I got an extreme taste of Hmong culture. There is a Less active lady in our area who only speaks Hmong whose name is Ngia (Pronounced Ne-yah) and she makes traditional Hmong clothes which according to sister xiong are really good quality. Ngia finagled sister xiong into buying a $60 Hmong hat. We are quite sure how that happened. I think it had to do with the fact that she completely dressed up sister xiong in the entire traditional Hmong outfit. That was cool to see, all the different parts. Then also that same day we had dinner with the Xiongs (No relation to sister Xiong ;) ) and that was interesting. The conversation was in Hmonglish. Half English (solely for my benefit cause i was the only non-Hmong speaker present) and half in Hmong. SO weird. They also made traditional Hmong food which was surprisingly good. There was a chicken broth and tofu soup (i actually really liked it, not that i ever thought i'd say that about tofu), and a stir fry that was yummy just minus the shrimp and mushrooms. I could manage the mushrooms, but not the shrimp. Luckily it was smaller shrimp so i'd just take some water and swallow it whole. I survived :)

Well sorry but that's about it for this week... until next Monday! Love you all!

-Sister Richardson

Spiritual Thought of the Week:

This week in relief society the teacher was talking about this upcoming week being holy week and what each day meant and she said something pretty profound that i had never thought of before. She said "A lot of the times we pray and are striving to be more like Christ when a lot of Christs life was spent suffering. The trials that come can be a way to become more like Christ." I never realized that. Part of what made Christ who he was was the trials and pains he went through. And likewise some of the kindest and most Christlike and charitable people we know have had monster-sized trials in their lives. Trials and pains do truly help us to reach our potential and come closer to our goal of being like Christ. They are not fun or pleasant to experience but if we let them, they can change us and draw us closer to our father in heaven and our elder brother who has been where we have been, are or ever will be.