Sabbath Day and a White Girl

Alright that was just pathetic last week. I am so sorry that I ran out of time and cut you short. Here we go on take 2!

A FUNNY

Ice Cream Sunday

We went to a family's house last night for dinner. They joined the church back in February and every time we go they ask us to teach a specific topic that they need help with. Forever ago the mom asked us to teach "Keep the Sabbath Day Holy" and we never got to it. So finally last night we remembered and planned a lesson to help their family learn how to keep this commandment. They are super bad at it. They love shopping at riding bikes and going to friend's houses and lots of super fun things that typically are avoided by members of the church.

There is an object lesson that I have been wanting to use for months now and it's about ruining a perfectly good Sunday! You make an ice cream sundae and then start adding yucky stuff like mustard and salad dressing. Basically, you are given this wonderful day, the sabbath day (ice cream), and you get to go to church (bananas) and feel the spirit (chocolate syrup) and take the sacrament (caramel). But that afterwards it's still important to do appropriate Sunday things. Going to the mall (mustard) and grocery store (salad dressing) and watching TV (mayonaisse) can ruin the otherwise perfect sundae!

Cool lesson right?

So before we head over we text the Mom and ask if they have any ice cream that we could use for the lesson. She said "no, no tengo". Ok, that's fine. So we asked the elders and they had some! Good to go. Thirty minutes later we look at the phone to a text that said "but I can go buy some" NOOOOOO hahaha no no no. By this point it had already been 30 minutes and she had already gone to the store. It was Sunday. She broke the Sabbath Day by buying ice cream so that we could teach them how to keep the Sabbath Day Holy.

I have never been so nervous for a lesson in my life.

Hermana Brown did the object lesson and she took it to the next level. She added the left-overs from her dinner plate on top of the ice cream, some ketchup, then she pulled out some hair and mixed that in, and then took of her shoe and shook out whatever gathers inside a shoe. It was awesome. Everyone was covering their mouths and laughing and gasping.

Needless to say, they now know 100% how to keep the Sabbath Day holy.

A GOOD STORY

There is a woman named Jenny that has been on my mind since I first came to Revere. I didn't know anything about her but every time we tried to see her I got really excited! She always cancelled on us. Well Hermana Laudie got transferred and I continued to try for an appointment with Jenny. One of the first times we called her she answered and asked if we could come over the next day, and so we did, but she wasn't home. Actually, her boyfriend was home but he had just gotten out of the shower. So we wrote her a note and left. Only 10 minutes later she called us and begged us to come back. We ended up having dinner with her little family and a friend. I grew to love her immediately. She is very soft, very guarded, very sincere, and very much in need of some consistency in her life. We prayed with them before we left, one of my companions Hermana Brown offered the prayer. She asked for God to protect Jenny, and her family, amongst other things. It was a really special feeling that I felt while she prayed. I asked her about it afterwards and she said she wasn't sure what I was talking about. It was just a regular prayer!

The next day we went back to see Jenny because she sounded bad on the phone. She said that during the prayer she felt like God was talking directly to her. With tears in her eyes she told us specific things that she needed to stop doing because she knew they were wrong, and she knew that Heavenly Father needed her to change or else she could lose everything. She is a member of the church, and joined when she was a teenager many years ago. Her parents never joined, just her and her siblings. Even though she's been a member for so long there were still things she had questions about and she started firing away. With every question she asked, as crazy as they were, I immediately knew the answer. To every doubt she had, I opened to the right scripture.  I got closer and closer to understanding her. I began to feel what her next question was before she even asked it. We didn't want to go but we had been there for awhile so we said our goodbyes and left.

Later that night we went back again, this time with the elders, to give her a Priesthood Blessing. Her family was home and the elders talked to her boyfriend while we talked to her. She started sharing with us a few stories and feelings that she has from her childhood and instantly it was like I got hit by a bus. WHAM. She broke past every feeling and emotion and struggle that I've ever had. Everything that she said came from my own thoughts. She shared feelings that I've had before but never shared with anyone and emotions that I've had and never heard people describe. Finally she told me that she felt like she was in a hole.

When I was younger I carried this analogy very close to my heart. I was in a hole. A dear friend told me one night that the only way to get out of the hole, was to work my hardest and ask for God's help. He said that all of my family and loved ones were standing at the top of the hole reaching their arms out to help pull me out, but that first I had to climb a little of the way on my own before they could reach me. I had to do it for myself. As I figured out how to get out of the hole I learned through the scriptures exactly what I needed to do. In my scriptures I've even drawn a little picture of a stick-figure standing at the bottom of a hole looking up next to a few verses that described my feelings. Immediately when she said, "it's like I'm standing at the bottom of this hole and I don't know what to do" I got out my book of mormon, found this drawing, and handed it to her. She covered her mouth and said "You've GOT to erase that! That is so sad. That is too sad." But then I flipped to a different scripture and handed it back to her again. This one had a drawing of the same hole, but the stick-figure is standing on the ground above it. She looked at the drawing, and then back at me, then back at the drawing. Barely able to speak I told her, "Jenny! There's a way out! There is no reason that you need to be at the bottom of that hole. There is a way out." With tears in both of our eyes she looked back up at me as I promised her that I understood how she felt. That truly, honestly, I knew what she was trying to explain. I told her that maybe never again will she find someone that understands the same way that I do. But the the most important thing to know, is that there is someone else who does understand. Her Savior, Jesus Christ. I told her that He has shown us how to climb out of that hole. That he has overcome the world, risen above all evil, conquered the chains of death and shaken the very grounds of Hell. There is not a single thing that we can not overcome if we have him as our guide. And for the first time on my mission, I looked into the eyes of someone that really believed me. I said, "Jenny can I read you these scriptures next to the drawings?" "YES!"

I find my purpose here every day. But in all that I do I am learning....

A LESSON LEARNED

learning... that it is not I that is doing this work. Truly without the Lord I am nothing. I did not pull myself from that hole, he guided me and lifted me and at times I was so pathetically weak that he build a staircase for me to climb. Without him there is no light. We walk around town sometimes and see into the lives of people who are really suffering... and they're suffering entirely from things of the World. Every day they face their own World War II and every day they feel like they're at the bottom of the pit. At the same time that I taught Jenny, I learned for myself. "No me jactare en mi propia fuerza, ni en mi propia sabiduria. Yo se que nada soy, en cuanto de mi fuerza, soy debil. Por tanto, no me jactare en mi mismo, sino que me gloriare en mi Dios, porque con so fuerza puedo hacer todas las cosas." I know that is in broken Spanish., I can't remember it perfectly right now. With God I can do ALL THINGS. Of myself, I am nothing. And I am learning that the more I put myself at his feet, the more opportunity he gives me to grow and to become like him. The minute I get confident and decide that I know this well enough to do it on my own, I stumble. Not because he made me stumble, not because he wants me to fall on my face in order to realize that I need him, but because without him I truly am nothing. With him... with him we can do all things!

GOALS

1) Don't drive like a Bostonian

2) Change the weather back to 90 degrees with PowerRanger skills

3) Organize my time better

4) Learn how to make the best mexican rice. Every time I get SOO close. But not quite.

5) Hand stand for 30 seconds

PICTURES

here's some funny ones.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
(I hate this holiday. This car freaked the heck out of me)

WHITE GIRL OUT 

(only white girl in Primary. hahahaha!)