Week 23

January 23, 2012

Hola familia!

This has been a really nice week. On Tuesday we had interviews with President Kunz. That was really nice! It's not an intense interview or anything. It was basically him just seeing how we are all individually doing. In my interview it was us mostly discussing how the area is going and how Sister Ashby is doing. He said some really nice and encouraging things and overall just let me know that I am doing exactly what I've been sent to do here Grand Island. It was a very uplifting interview. :)

After the interviews all of the missionaries took turns giving a 10 min lesson on any two random principles from the 1st 3 lessons and were filmed. It went pretty well! We basically did a role play where one of the missionaries pretended to be one of our investigators and we taught them whatever two main points they told us to... making sure we used scriptures, analogies, asked questions. Before we started doing the role play I couldn't stop laughing just because of how weird it was that they were filming us and there was only 4 of us in a little room. We taught about the Fall of Adam and Eve & Agency and Our Life on Earth. It went really well and then afterwards we watched ourselves teach. Good news everyone! I don't make weird faces or have awkward gestures when I teach! haha! It was cool to watch us give a lesson though because we were able to evaluate what we can do better. I noticed I need to leave longer pauses after I make a statement or read a scripture. Sometimes I tend to just jump back to talking too fast and don't leave much time for them to think about it. Overall that was a really good experience!

On Wednesday and Thursday we were walking the whole day and it was really windy. One of the days i believe the high was 20 degrees. We were totally bundled up and it didn't seem too bad. Somehow it always works out that it cold an windy when we are walking. The elders get really lucky! Yesterday it snowed but it wasn't too bad. I heard this week it will start warming up and get into the 40's and 50's! Yay!

Lately we've been doing a lot more tracking- knocking on doors. That is always an interesting experience because you never know what is behind each door. Sometimes we have good conversations with people who are interested, other times we have conversations with people who are nice but not interested, and the rest of the time we have funny experiences with people who aren't interested at all. haha! Missionary work can be really funny sometimes. People are hilarious, even when they aren't trying to be.

Funny woman #1: She just opened the door...

Me: Hi! How are you doing today?

Woman: Ehh, not too good.

Me: oh no! What's wrong.

Woman: My stomach and feet hurt... so i better get off of them. Bye. (starts closing the door.)

Me: Wait! Can I give you a card with a really great website? (Me smiling, handing it to her)

Woman: Fine, whatever. (i accidentally started laughing a little because it's been so long since I've heard an older woman say "whatever." She was a funny one! Maybe you had to be there to find the humor.

Funny story #2: We met a younger man named Joseph (maybe about 16yrs old) and he said we could come back and talk to him and his family. So a few days later we came back and talked to him outside his house and he went inside really quick to "check his schedule" and he brings out his aunt... who is a nun, named Sister Agitha.

Sister Agitha: Hi ladies. Joe here is a beautiful Catholic boy with great faith. And i wouldn't want anything to happen to his faith. So i would appreciate it if we just stopped here."

Us: basically explained we don't try and tear down anybody's faith and are there to strengthen it.

It was just really funny because Joe "the beautiful catholic boy" was so embarrassed that his aunt called him that and was being kind of harsh when we were all having a nice pleasant conversation right before. it was pretty funny though. She was wearing normal clothes but with a black nun hat on. At least she was nice and firm in her beliefs.

Those were some fun experiences this week. We also found about 5 new investigators!

Next wednesday is our next preparation day because of transfers! Transfers are on Feb 2nd! That should be interesting because I have a feeling we'll be getting affected by the change. We'll see! Stay tuned for next week, on Wednesday!

Love you all,

Sister Jones