Week 49, 9/13/2021

 STORYTIME

You can tell how hard we are riding by all the smoke coming out of Sis Morley's head.

Yep this week was busy as usual! 

-zone conference

-tradeoffs

-events

-lessons

-referrals

-dinners

-:)

Art Night

It honestly was such a blur 

The mission is starting to all blur together I can't tell what happened this week vs last week

I've been out for 11 months now so that's almost a year so that's pretty wild

We got bashed again this week so that wasn't fun

I've got some goooood stories for y'all this week so let's get started:

Story time #1 

I had the busiest day of my mission/life on Thursday. We were running, biking, walking, weeding, and moving things all day from 7am to 10pm! That morning we woke up and did a HITT workout that was pretty hard, then later we BIKED to campus, (we're trying to use our bikes more) had our booth on campus and WALKED around for a few hours, BIKED back, and started our tradeoffs. I had my first tradeoff as an STL with Sister Anderson and I love her so much! We VISITED a bunch of people and then did YARDWORK at this person's farm for a few hours. Then right when we got back to the apartment at 9:30 and I was going to crash....Sister Anderson goes, "ok you ready to move all the furniture?" I was like uhhhhhwhat? Apparently their carpets were getting cleaned so they had to MOVE all the furniture off the carpet, including couches, beds, dressers, and tables. SO we stacked all the furniture in the kitchen by ourselves 😅 

I was pretty proud of us. Let's just say I slept well that night and I was very sore the next day. So exhausting but those are the best kinds of days, there is nothing wrong with hard work! Our mission president talked about the importance of hard work and how, while our bodies might want to sit on the couch all day, our spirits yearn to have the satisfaction of working hard. I've definitely learned of the joy that comes from that feeling of satisfaction at the end of a long day knowing that you worked as hard as you could. 

Tradeoffs

Story time #2

My first zone conference as an STL! We gave a training with the zone leaders and.... it pretty much went as bad as it could go...😅.  We might have saved it at the end though! The ZLs had the bright idea to start off the training either a little activity where we have an "impossible task" where we fill a bunch of cups of water and someone has to drink them all by themselves. The idea was that the task would be easier with more people but he has to do it by himself. I forgot how we even related it to missionary work but our training was right after lunch and the poor elder that we picked to drink the water had eaten a big lunch. 😬😬. He got halfway through the cups of water and started to slow down, he looked super queasy, and said, "ya I don't feel too good" he then ran out of the room to the bathroom....and yes proceeded to throw up all the water we made him drink 😳.  We didn't actually know for sure if he threw up but after the event we talked to him about it. 

Ooooh man it was so awkward! That was not how it was supposed to go! Luckily though he was super chill about it and didn't seem upset or anything 😅😅 NOW WE KNOW that making someone drink 10 cups of water after lunch is a BAD idea. Besides that our training went pretty good. And we had cookies at the end so we kind of saved it. He had a few cookies so he was fine. Haha never again though.

Story time #3 

We met with Caroline again and she's amazing. We have been studying the Book of Mormon with her, and last week she was on Mosiah 12, so we thought maybe she's read a chapter or two throughout the week. NO at our lesson this week it turns out she finished all of Mosiah! That's 17 chapters in one week! I've never taught someone who loves the Book of Mormon so much. Why is she not baptized yet you ask?? We are wondering that as well, apparently she still has some questions that she needs answered about our faith. But having a love and a testimony for the Book of Mormon is the most important thing, so she is well on her way. 

I think that's pretty much it for Story time. We also met Valentina this week, she is going to college and she requested a Book of Mormon, but when we met her she had Googled a bunch of questions about us and basically asked us all the basic anti questions. So that was not very fun. I hate getting interrogated and then judged for my faith. But there was a recent face to face devotional by elder Bednar last night and he said something that stood out to me. 

He said, "We don't need to defend the doctrine, we need to declare it. In the simplicity of the the doctrine, there's nothing to defend. It stands for itself. Others may choose to reject it, but our responsibility is to declare it, do our best to explain it, but we never need to be on the defensive." I wish I had heard that before our little meeting with Valentina! We believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are members of his church and its not complicated. His gospel is so simple! If someone makes it complicated then they don't fully understand it.  I also know that we all may have questions and that's ok, we aren't expected to know everything about this life and his gospel. But I also know that Heavenly father isn't going to give us all the answers without making us work for them. So yes we do have to put in some effort, but when we do and we are genuine about our questions he will answer us. It usually takes time, but he will answer us. 

I love y'all and I love this gospel! Serving a mission is the best decision I've ever made, even though I'm constantly exhausted and a little stressed out, it's totally worth it 😇

Have an amazing week, love y'all so much

-Sister Bonny❤