Deep Fried Cheesecake Bites

Remember the bug that got stuck in my eye last week?

 Sis. Brog made me an eye patch the next day when it was still bothering me. 

 

Our week started out with having the STLs (sister training leaders) come stay with us.  They got here Monday night. We went on exchanges Tuesday and I worked with Sister Giddins. She came out the same time sister Brog did and she is awesome! We went tracting in Hooks which is a small town in our area and found 3 new investigators. We were scheduled to meet with them the next day but they didn't answer the door. So we called and rescheduled for this Thursday. 

 

That night we had our first lesson with the Kersey family. (they have the three kids and nephew who are getting baptized the 19th of October) They are an awesome family! They had studied exactly what we asked them to, plus some. We had a really good lesson about the restoration and left them with the Restoration movie. After the lesson we had dinner. Brother Kersey made apple pie pork chops and they were reallllly good! He promised to make it for us again! Their niece also joined the lesson and on Sunday also committed her to being baptized that same date. Brother Kersey is also working on getting the priesthood by then so he can baptize them all! It is such a great experience seeing this family grow closer together and closer to God. 

 

 I LOVE the South!

 

Sammy is amazing! This past week has been amazing to see the change in her, even in such a small amount of time. She has still been really sick all week. So Tuesday (when we were on exchanges) Sister Brog and Sister White taught her about priesthood blessings and then asked if she would like one. She said she did and I was so sad i couldn't be there! Sister Brog said it went really well and Sammy just loved it. Thursday was really scary though! She hasn't been getting better and so we were just going to give her a short lesson and then leave. At one point in the lesson we had asked her a question, she looked down at the Book of Mormon and her notes, and then didn't say anything. Sister Brog and I just sat there waiting for her to answer and she didn't. She has been taking a lot of different medication so i thought maybe she had fallen asleep or something. We went over to her and she kind of mumbled. She wasn't really responding and was having a hard time focusing so we had her lay down. We said a prayer with her and then told her we would be back later that night to check on her. When we left we called a member in our ward who is doctor. His name is Brother Woody. He told us that we need to go back and if she still wasn't responding that we needed to call 911. When we got back probably 10 minutes later she was much more responsive. She informed us that she has seizures a lot if she doesn't take her medicine and she hadn't. So she had a seizure during our lesson! Brother Woody told us that seizures aren't always when someone freaks out but they can just fade out, exactly what happened. He told us to let her sleep and check on her tomorrow. The next day she didn't remember anything that had happened and that really scared her. She had been to the doctor that morning and they took some blood samples and are running some tests. She could really use the prayers right now! Thursday we were talking with her and asking her a lot of questions. She told us she knows the Book of Mormon is true and the Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. Ahhh!!!! we were so excited. She was so full of emotion and it was amazing to watch as she realized that she had found the truth that she has been looking for for the past several years. She has a baptism date for October 26th! 

Saturday our RS had a Super Saturday, Christmas in September! It was so much fun! We made Christmas ornaments and painted a Christmas tree. We got to know a lot of the sisters more and it was fun to just visit. Me and Sister Brog made ornaments for our mission! They are really cute. 

This week i had the awesome opportunity to give a Harvest Prayer. A Harvest Prayer is a special prayer only missionaries can give and blesses people's homes. There is a phrase you are suppose to begin with at the beginning and I didn't have it all the way memorized yet so i messed up like three times! But it was cool to feel the special spirit that was present. I love this work so much and am so grateful for the blessings it gives me. 

We went back to teach Monique and her three kids this week but Monique wasn't home. She was still working so we taught the kids the restoration on the front porch. They are amazing kids. We had given them one Book of Mormon to share and they had each read some of it every night. They asked for their own copies so they didn't have to share. We are hoping to set the family with a baptism date this week! 

Monday we had our New Missionary Meeting! It was in Shreveport, which is about 2 hours aways. We have members that live in Texarkana but are assigned to the New Boston ward. Our ward mission leader is one of those people. We had dinner at his house Sunday night and instead of driving all the way back home to come back through the next morning we just stayed with the Wake Village sisters. The meeting was really good. We practiced having short planning sessions so we know what we want to say in lessons, how to get the ward excited, give commitments boldly, stuff like that! On our way home from the meeting we passed a bunch of cotton fields so we stopped and picked our own cotton! 

Funny story of the week! Thursday morning on our way to work out sister Brog asked me if I had heard anything during the night. When she said that I remembered that I heard her praying out load at about 1:30 in the morning. I remember thinking, "I hope everything is okay, but she is praying so I'm not going to interrupt her." So i rolled back over and went to sleep. Well when i told her that the next morning she told me she hadn't been praying on purpose. She was half a sleep and thought it was morning and she was saying the prayer to start our studies. When she looked at me and saw me sleeping she was really upset! Until she looked at the phone and realized it was 1:30 AM! She doesn't remember what she said but we were both laughing pretty hard. 

 

Do you like our "moonshine" water jug?

 

Random facts:

-Our district leader made us a chocolate cake!

-We tracted into a lady named Loopy

-We bought the best watermelon ever! and ate it in two days

- Sister Brog ran over two frogs and the way home

- We tracted for and hour and forty five minutes on Sunday so we could get our 7 hours for the week

-Blue Bell's peach cobbler ice cream is my favorite 

-We asked sister Pasley if there was anything service we could do for her and she had us make her family chocolate chip cookies before we left her house

-We celebrated the night we set Sammy with a baptism date. We got dessert at Sonic. Deep fried cheesecake bites.. amazing! 

 

Deep Fried Cheesecake Bites???  Yes please!