Dearest Family,
Life is good. :)
Actually,
not a lot has happened this week, but I am very happy. I am doing
great. It is starting to get pretty cold, and last night my feet were
frozen, but we made it through. We are going to start bundling up more.
I didn't get my release date,
but I think I have known it my whole mission--I am going home March
14th, right? I did cry when I got Dad's letter about that, but I am not
thinking about it too much. It will come fast enough whether or not I am
thinking about it. So I won't. :)
Our life is good. Our area kind of suffered last week. We had Zone
Conference, Thanksgiving, a no car day (=no proselyting day), and we had
a big event at the Visitors' Center. We are hoping for a better week
this week, but we are still struggling a bit. We feel so limited by the
amount of time we have here!
Our main investigator we saw
this week was Kylie. She is married to a member, and is super nice. She
agreed to officially start investigating. We had another lesson with her
this week, but it went really badly. They had a brand new kitten that
was galloping all over the place, scratching the furniture, with their 5
year-old chasing it, yelling, all over the house. The 6 month old is
scooting now and was trying to eat legos. The kitten thought it would be
a cool idea to sneak up stairs, and then pretend to be a lion on the
hunt as it galloped down the stairs and pounced, claws extended to kill
the prey. Problem: I am not a very good catch. My arm is a bit scratched
up. Our member team up also had to leave in the middle of the lesson,
and we were still regaining the ability to breathe and think after
leaving another home that had problems with cats (and a halfway naked,
shedding dog). Needless to say, we were not able to teach her the Plan
of Salvation. Hopefully next week.
Yesterday we got to our area
to discover that we had forgotten the addresses of all of the places we
wanted to go at home. So we went to a nice looking neighborhood and
prayed for a miracle. We were able to talk to a ton of people last
night, and we felt really led, even though we couldn't feel our feel.
Sadly the only person willing to meet with us again is a less active,
but we are excited about her. She needs the gospel again. None of her
kids are members, so it could be really good.
The Visitors' Center is doing
great. We are now in the super slow part of the year. Yesterday 2 people
total came into the center, and one of them was some of the sisters'
investigator that they had invited. It is hard to just sit for that
long, knowing that the numbers in our area are pretty bad right now. It
has been good to have time to try to teach Sister Harding. She is
catching the vision of all of the things she wants to learn. I have been
teasing her because some of the things I do drive her crazy, but she
wants me to be her companion for the rest of her mission because she
feels like she could learn a lot from me. We are pretty much exact
opposites, but it has been good and we get along most of the time. Her
overall stress levels have gone down a lot. I remember going through
that.
I love my calling as a Trainer
Sister because it keeps me a little busier. We were having some dress
code problems (you can tell people before their missions to not bring
skirts that are too short, but it doesn't mean that they will), so we
brought it up again in our training meeting. One of the sisters that we
have really been struggling with approached me a few days later to show
off her modest skirt. I hadn't even talked to her personally--we just
talked to everyone in general--but she said to me, "Did you see my
skirt? I know that you were talking to me the other day. I was the
problem. Look!" She was so proud to show me that she had pinned the slit
closed and that it was long enough to cover her knees. It made her happy
to be obedient. And that is what we want for her. I love it when we
don't have to force the issue. It is a lot easier and more effective to
teach correct principles and to let them govern themselves.
Today when we were doing our
laundry, a man approached us. His personal hygiene wasn't the greatest,
and he proceeded to tell us that not only was he 27 (He looked 62), he
was cousins with the Osmonds, worked in the secret service to get
corruption out of the police forces, and that he wanted to take us out.
He was willing to find us in Utah (and he could because he is in the
Secret Service), and we were beautiful ladies so he was willing to wait.
Sister Harding has a nervous laugh, so she actually was laughing at him
while he was there. I felt horrible. It is sad how some people live. I
hope he finds happiness somewhere.
(Don't worry. We just told him that if he wanted to find our church here or in Missouri, he could go to mormon.org and we gave him a card for the website that doesn't have our number on it)
Well, I think that is the
extent of our adventures this week. I hope to have more adventures soon
to be able to tell you about them.
I love you!
Love,
Sister Atkin
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