natalie ann: week 46: dem apples

Monday, September 12th, 2016

Hello my favorite peeps! Happy first day of school Paulie pockets! And everyone else at byui. School is cool. But anyways my week was good, a little crazy but good!

Monday we had stake FHE. It was good. There was a lot of drama about which ward we were going to take. They finally called us late Tuesday night and we are getting Milligan Valley Ward! So we will be white washing the sisters area. It's been going pretty well so far. It's just hard cause we literally know no one!

Tuesday we got a text from Angie Nelson that Jerry Nelson died :( He is one of our less-actives that started returning since we came to visit him. I guess he had a heart attack while he was chopping wood and his daughter Ginger found him passed out on the bathroom floor. I was just super in shock honestly, he is pretty young but did have a lot of health problems. I'm just glad he was able to turn his life around this summer. It had been really cool to see. He loves the gospel and started home teaching just last month. We would sit next to him every Sunday at church. I'm going to miss him. We just went to his funeral today. We found a less-active. His wife is a jehovah witness. Their last name is the Stovers. We shared a video and she didn't look at it but she was very nice! We saw the Tisdells and while we were driving over, their grandma almost hit my car! Haha she really shouldn't be driving. We had a lesson with Brylee. She is so cute, it's just sad how much she has to deal with when she is only 9. We then saw Tyric and had a good lesson with him. He still didn't come to church though :(

Wednesday we saw Haylie in the morning. She is super cute. We then saw Nancy who is a less-active in MV Ward. She got baptized a couple years ago. She is a little crazy but really funny. We then saw the Shupes and they came to church on Sunday! They are the cutest old people. We then saw Peggy Mead! Which is a miracle because she is never home!

Thursday we had a lesson with Jessica who was a referral. I think I might have talked about her in my last email but anyways we contacted her and gave her our number if she was ever interested. She texts us back ten mins later and asks if we can do a "bible study". We say yes but we really didn't want to bible bash. She is very Christian but doesn't believe we are Christian. Obviously. Anyways we go with a recent returned missionary. We get there and immediately she shows us a printed copy of Wikipedia of Joseph smith...I'm like oh dear. I ask her if we can share with her about what we believe and how the church came to be. We teach her the restoration and she asked a lot of questions and getting into really deep doctrine. I asked her if she wanted to know if the Book of Mormon was true or not and she said oh I already know it's not. I'm like you haven't even read it!! But Jessica is the nicest person ever!!! She gave us a ton of apples of her tree. She would be such a good Mormon but we will see. We then saw Gaylon. He is still struggling a lot with smoking, dang it. He is having a lot of marriage problems and that's not helping. We met with Tayler. She is in MV Ward. I actually met her on exchanges. Lessons are hard with her cause her kids are crazy!! We made apple crisp with Cody Garcia and Ron her neighbor came! Turns out he is a member! He tells us he was only Mormon for 3 days haha. His life story is crazy. Ah I so bad want to reactive him! Or activate him cause I don't think he was ever active haha. He is so cool. He has this awesome hippy trailer. I'll take a pic of it one day.

Friday wasn't really that exciting. We did a lot of weekly planning. There is a lot of that with three wards. And none of the goals/plans for MV Ward were even showing up so we had to seek lots of revelation without even meeting the people! We had dinner with the Nelson family. We talked about temples. It was really good. They haven't been sealed but they want that as their goal. I wanna go to their sealing so bad! We then made more apple stuff with Cody that night. Daryl came and we really want them to date. Call me sister match maker.

Saturday we went to Cody's again and made more apple pie! She brought her nonmember friend, Kimberely. It was way fun. We then had a lesson with Dakota at Lisann's. He wants to get baptized! We just want to make sure he is ready. He doesn't know much about religion at all. We shared the plan of salvation and he said it made a lot of sense to him. For dinner we went to Goob's Pizza for Annalyse's birthday, I love that family. We saw Daryl and his mom. I love them so much. I taught them the whip cream game. They loved it.

Sunday was good. It was kind of crazy since we have three wards. And we had two ward councils that day. We saw Dave Jr. We talked about missionary work, he is like I'm already good at that so I don't need to work on that. Oh Dave. We then saw the Eagars!! They are doing good. They are feeding us dinner this week! We then had a meeting with President Hamblin. It was way good. It's nice to have a stake president who cares so much!

I read the book of Moses this week and that was really good. I love reading about Adam & Eve. I think it's such a simple story but has so much meaning to it. A lot of religions look at it as a bad thing, which it wasn't. But I also think that because of the fall we realize how much we need our Savior. Because of the fall we can have joy! And who doesn't want to be happy?

And remember! "All things denote there is a God" - Alma 30:44

I know that our Savior lives and loves us. God is cheering for us and I KNOW that He is in the details of our lives. We need His Heavenly guidance everyday. Love you all!

--xo: sista fisha