Week 74

Hello Family and Friends! :)

Ok so I feel so overwhelmed with all the stuff that I want to tell you about this week!!!! It was amazing!!! :) So fun! So first of all, saying goodbye to my very best and eternal friends was really really hard, but at the same time I felt at peace about it because we are eternal friends :) hahaha Transfer meeting was amazing and I am so grateful I got to be there for my friends! :) They all have such powerful testimonies and it was amazing to see how much all of us have so much more substance to ourselves. I love all of them so much!!! :) Now let’s talk about Yelm. haha Oh my goodness! Yelm is Crazy! :) I cover Yelm, Rainier, and a little bit of Tenino. It is the land of the Ramsters! I don't know if you've ever heard of the Ramtha following, but everyone in Yelm is part Ramtha...I swear! haha I absolutely love it here! :) And Sister Stevens and I are getting along amazingly! It's kind of funny because I knew a little about her because she was in my zone for 2 transfers in Tacoma, but I never really took the time to get to know her. And honestly I never thought that we would be friends, which is funny because it happens quite often that the people you don't think you'll be best friends with usually end up being your greatest friends, and, can I just say? I absolutely LOVE Sister Stevens! We have so much fun and work hard and are obedient and it's just amazing! :) We talk WAY too much and laugh way too much and teach a ton. She is from Utah of course, :) she's 21 and goes home in 3 transfers (so she came out with Baird and Chipman) And just all around amazing :) haha She also wants to be an El-ed teacher! :) and we both LOVE teaching, lessons are powerful and so full of goodness! :) So ya, I think we're getting along... ;) jk she is like, my best friend and I have a strong feeling that that's not going to change over the next 6 weeks. We are very focused and love the work and we are very open with each other, so we just work! :) which makes everything else work :) We wake up every morning and go and run a mile, and then we get ready and just plow through the day like crazy! :) It's insane, we both had instant trust with each other and now we can't stop telling each other everything about our lives! haha We seriously never stop talking, it's a struggle to go to sleep sometimes... :) It's very relieving and just amazing....I love it! :) The work is awesome! The ward members are awesome and funny :) Their faith is great! The work here in the Deschutes River ward hasn't been so good until Sister Stevens got here! Then it just took off! There's a lot of "low hanging fruit" aka people who are well prepared for the gospel but haven't had missionaries knock on their door for a while. Or lots of PMF's and UBC's (part member families and unbaptized children) So it's awesome! So I'll just tell you about the week, Sister Jackson drove us to and from Transfer meeting. I love her and her family she's married and has 8 kids and they are a bomb.com missionary family! She took us to a UBC's house. His name is Ethan. He's 11 and LOVES marshmallows! He’s a way funny kid! His Grandma is super active but his mom isn't so we are just trying to get him to like coming to church and then he will be baptized! We know he'll get baptized sometime in August but we aren't positive on the exact date. Our district here is crazy. Yelm is a somewhat apostate district haha they're all good elders, but they just have some traditions here that I don't really agree with. :) haha So the sisters are the enforcer of the rules. It's an all Elder district again! haha I really like the elders, they're just crazy :D haha as always :) I love them! District meeting on Wednesday was fun, also on Wednesday we taught another investigator named Mary Bird she's a cute little old lady who has a Mormon son! :) she's on date and is just learning, she lives on the "bird compound" haha It's this whole family that live in trailers and houses next to each other :) Wednesday night was awesome! Ok so I have this obsession with rocks, and we went to visit this less active and she had rocks all over her house, Stevens didn't even notice all of it! haha but we got into this long conversation and she gave me a rock!!! haha people are so awesome! Sister Stevens calls it spirit nudging :) because when you leave a person’s house they have felt the spirit so they feel bad about turning us away so they give us something or say "stay dry" or "stay cool" haha so Barbara had a spirit nudge and gave me a rock! She doesn't really like the church, but she loves the missionaries now! It’s funny how when you find something in common with people every once in a while they instantly want to talk to you and love you! :) I will refer back to this later :) haha On Thursday we just went all over the place! :) That night we went and met 2 recent converts! There were 4 baptisms here in June and that's the most they've had in....a very long time! and they're all super amazing! :) James is an older African American guy that is just SO sweet and always smiling! :) And Leon is a middle aged guy who has changed his life and is just so grateful for a reason to be good and to be happy he's so sweet! This transfer I have just been praying my heart out to LOVE these people SO so sososo much and I already do! I love my companion, the people, the ward, the zone, and the area...I LOVE IT! :) That night, we got a text from the Elders wanting us to go to lunch with them the next day (which is totally against the rules) and I wasn't going. haha at this time I didn't really know how Sister Stevens would react (I didn't know her! :) ) so I was just sick in my heart, but I told her how I felt and prayed about it. :) The next day (Friday) we did companionship inventory and talked it ALL out and figured out each other’s expectations. Both of us just want to work and be obedient and do good! and man, we just really needed to have that talk. That's where we really started becoming more unified. It was awesome! :) Also that day, I mentioned how a guy in the hospital in Olympia told me that I had to find a single mom this transfer, he was a little crazy, but I believed it. Then Sister Stevens told me that her stake pres. told her that in her setting apart! and so we are searching VERY hard for our single mom. It is very cool and has helped me have more faith. Saturday we went to Clearwood it's this gated community that's pretty much just a city. We could make a whole stake if everyone was a member! haha but the gates were open because it was garage sale day! So we went and had a ton of fun and talked to a ton of people! :) It was SO good... We are going to go back, people were just so nice, we passed out 4 BOM's and gave cards to lots of others. The funnest part of that day was after dinner. haha! We went tracting in the boonies! The first door we knocked on we met Ken and Belinda they didn't really want to listen but then...I noticed they had rocks too! SO I freaked out and it turned into an hour long conversation and left them with a prayer and they gave me a crystal! :) they were WAY nice! then we found this girl named Sparkle. Sparkle is a white Hindu with a plastic rhinestone glued to the middle of her forehead and 2 kids named Shanti and Dharma. She gave us some prayer beads! So here we are with rocks, name tags and prayer beads and Sister Stevens had a cross bracelet on that an RC named Cindy gave her! We just must have looked crazy :) hahaha :) Sunday was just awesome :) We just looked for our single mom. And our ward council set a goal for baptisms this month, it's 6! so we are going to work our butts off! I'm running out of time, but basically I love it here! :) I am feeling so good, and my back has stopped hurting, and I am just in pure missionary heaven right now! Something else that's cool is Sister Stevens and I are doing this thing called "walk with Christ" we did the first day so far and my testimony of the Savior has already grown. I love being a missionary because I get to testify of Him every waking moment! I know that Christ lives! I know He loves each of us and I know that at the end of our trials, there is always a bright light, because of Him, we are free and can have joy! :) The church is true!!! :) I have so much more I would love to tell you, but I just want you to know that I LOVE you and MISS you SO much!!! :) Never forget what the Savior did for you. Think of His names and think of how he has affected your life. And Always remember Him!!!! :) I love you lots!!!

 

Love always

Sister Wilkins :)

Sister Stevens and Sister Wilkins