This week was very interesting. Met a lot of kooky people haha! This week was all about finding people! We are trying to find 3 effective new ways of finding new investigators, and our goal which just became the zone goal is to pass out at least 1 Book of Mormon everyday and teach at least 1 principal from the restoration as we do it. I passed out 10 Book of Mormons this week! Most of the people were probably mentally unstable... but it's okay, they're all children of God right. The first BOM I passed out was to a sweet old man named Norman, he was walking around the parking lot of my apartment complex, I think he was very lost, but we had a nice conversation about the church and what he thought. I asked him if he wanted a BOM and he got really excited and said he wanted to read the whole thing! So I gave it to him, and then I gave him like a 3 minute lesson on the restoration, gave him a pamphlet, he said he was excited to look at all the pictures, so then I gave him a pass along card with my number on it. It was great! I'm pretty sure that he has dementia, and walked away from that not even knowing what we talked about.. but it was a good experience for me! It's been pretty amazing actually, it was harder at the beginning of the week to pass out BoM's. I talked to my STL's (sister training leaders) and they said to just always keep a BOM in your hand instead of my bag, and that I will be able to pass it out! Then she sent me to the gas station across the street with my companion to try it out. And it works!!! 99% of the time, if I keep a copy of the BOM in my hand, I will find someone who is willing to accept it. It's awesome! I met some really interesting people this way. I met a guy who kept trying to bible bash with me, and then turned around and was trying to hold my hand and asked if I wanted to hang out. I tried to explain what a missionary does and why I'm here. But he was different... so I ended up having to tell him I was a nun 😂 it got really weird because he kept telling me I was too pretty to be a nun...
Also met a lady who got mad at me because I believe in a book that wasn't written by Jesus... don't worry I was very warm and friendly. But the whole time I'm thinking, oh okay, so what books have you read recently that are written by Jesus?? News flash, Jesus didn't write the Bible. I thought it was pretty funny.
Got pretty sick this week. Everyone made fun of me and said its because I'm from Seattle, but I didn't know you could get sun headaches! I definitely gotta go find a cute sun hat or something, but the sun is killing me. We went and did more service at Catalina state park, but it was way harder this time! It was 3 hours of hard manual labor in the blazing sun. I had a great time, but I got so sick from it. I got heat stroke, no fun!
Then we stayed home all day Saturday because my companion got really sick! She slept all day. She kept getting bloody noses, headaches, sneezing like no other, fever.. It was no fun. I got so much done though, so it was kind of nice. But by the end of the day I was starting to go crazy. I called some other sisters to go on exchanges with us so that I could go to an appointment with a recent convert and pass out a BOM. So that was actually a lot of fun to go out with someone other than my companion. Learned a lot from her and actually got time to get to know her.
Because this week we were focusing on ways to find people we tried a lot of new things. One thing we tried was doing sidewalk chalking the side of the road. We drew out the whole plan of salvation. It was actually pretty cool! But I thought I was going to melt to death!! I kept burning my hand on the blacktop just trying to draw. But it was kinda funny because it turns out that the spot we chose was actually a bus stop. So as we were finishing, a bus load of people came and were asking us a bunch of questions about what we were doing. I can't believe it actually worked hahaha!!
Friday was actually a pretty good day! It's our planning day, so normally we dread it. But we called the other sisters, sister Hammond and sister Johnson, they are who we did the chalk with and who we went on exchanges with, and we went out to lunch. There is this place to get gelato that everyone talks about. Apparently it's like the best place in Tucson to get it. So we went, and it was sooo good!!! And as we were all going to pay this family walks in, it turns out they're Mormon, so they were like oh hey! Sister missionaries! We'll pay for all of you! It was so nice!
Then we went and got pizza and took it back to the church to do our planning.
There were so many little miracles this week, it was amazing to see how strong of a role Heavenly Father plays in my life and in this work. It's been amazing to feel and see my prayers being answered. One thing that I love is that my zone is all about sharing miracles. Our zone leaders text out a few miracles that people shared every night. It's really fun to hear all the different stories.
Not sleeping too well.. It's super hot at night, I never use a blanket. But the worst part is that we have a mosquito problem! I think they are coming from the vents. But I wake up everyday with more bites. Just on my right foot I have 10 bites. I don't bother to count how many I actually have because it just makes me mad haha. So I have to start putting on bug spray before I go to bed or something. My ankles swell so much from all the bites that it hurts to wear certain shoes.
All is good though! Anyone doing something special for labor day weekend? Nothing crazy here, just did some shopping, now my zone is just hanging out at the church playing sports and using the WiFi! Email lots of pics! I love to hear from everyone 😊
Love you all!