The One With A Week of Weird

January 30, 2017

 Exchanges with Sister Winters

 Holding an Albino Chinchilla

Sister Chin with a Coyote Skin

So it's that time of the week again where you devote 10 minutes to reading all about my life and adventures here in the frozen Midwest. Fun. So as not to disappoint all my avid readers here's what happened this week.....

We had exchanges this week and I took over Blaine with Sister Winters. We had an interesting but productive day. We went and stopped by a random less active that was on our list and she lets us in. I was thinking WOW that never happens! Little did we know she was kind of crazy. To give you an example of what meeting with this woman was like, at one point her dog is sitting directly in front of Sister Winters angrily breathing at her, her 9mn old granddaughter starts choking, and the lady is still going off about Satan having a child who is 3 years old. We were so confused walking out of there hahaha 

We were able to see Lauren again and help her with getting her house ready to sell, teach a guy while tracting who answered the door with a gas mask on, and get banana bread and two referrals from an older lady in our ward that we'd heart attacked. All in all a pretty great exchange.

On Wednesday we had a Worldwide broadcast for all missionaries which was really awesome. So many great things were taught and discussed. Also some exciting announcements for those who don't know the schedule missionaries live by has been changed as well as the numbers that we report to our leaders. We only report 5 of the 9 that we used to now. Crazy huh? This week will be our first week with the new schedule so I'll let you know how it goes next time. After the broadcast we ran over to an appointment with a woman named Benta. We met her tracting and had set up an appointment with her. She was actually waiting for us! She's from Kenya and she LOVES God, Jesus Christ, and the Bible. She was such a joy to teach. We only made it through about half the restoration cause we only had about 20 min. She was so funny, while we were teaching she'd go off on rants about god and Christ and then realize that she was talking for a while and cover her mouth and say something like "don't let me talk anymore! I'm speaking too much" and turn the lesson back to us. We have another appointment with her this week so we're hopeful for her :)

Thursday we had dinner with a semi-less active family. It ended up just being the mom and their oldest daughter but before the night was over the daughter committed herself to invite her friend to meet with us and we got to hold their python and albino chinchilla! Fun fact did you know that chinchillas are the softest animals in the world? Yeah, found that out and can testify to that. My gosh it was so soft!

I guess this week was the week of weird. We went over and taught a man that had been meeting with the elders for eternity named Jerry. We were able to have a very spirit directed lesson with him were I flat out promised that if he were willing to act on the answer he received about the Book of Mormon that he'd finally get answer. The weird part of his lesson was that because of his slight mental handicap he kept reverting the conversation back to hunting and eventually brought out a full on coyote skin that he'd killed and gave it to us to hold. Don't worry we got pictures of that.

Visson came to church again yesterday! Afterwards we went over to his home and had traditional Liberian food with him and Massa. She made potato greens over fish and chicken with rice. It wasn't half bad. It was pretty spicy though. Not too much that it's hard to handle but it made my nose run! I've only heard the legend that spicy foods will do that to you, this myth buster has put a confirmed stamp on that one, its true. Also on Sunday night we had a wonderful lesson with a recent convert and her active member Brother. We ended up deviating from our lesson plan and read Alma 32 with them and had a long conversation on faith. I love them. They aren't afraid to speak up with their thoughts on spiritual things and are easy to have a conversation with. The cool thing was at the end Sister Ching asked everyone to pause and think about how we can apply what we read and talked about in our life. It was amazing, I think that question was meant for me because I received a specific prompting on what I could be doing better in order to help me. I'm so thankful for the spirit in leading and guiding us.

Spiritual Thought of the Week:

( I feel like a lot of my spiritual thoughts recently have been on trials but oh well... here ya go again ;) )

 Alma 7:5 "...nevertheless I do not desire that my joy over you should come by the cause of so much afflictions and sorrow which I have had for the brethren at Zarahemla, for behold, my joy cometh over them after wading through much affliction and sorrow." 

I thought it was interesting the way that Alma phrased the way his joy came about. The promise that after going through much affliction and sorrow that we can feel joy is a promise to all of us. Everyone has to go through difficulties but it is some much easier to endure when we have faith in our father in Heaven that "all things will be for our good" and not allow it to harden us. We make the choice if we will again feel joy after hardships. 

️Sister Richardson