January 13, 2014

Goooood Niggghhhhtt!! It has been a crazy one!! I literally feel like I fall asleep before I lay down most days. After we pray at night, we usually wait for each other and we talk about our day together and about all of our tender mercies and almost everyday this week one of us was asleep by the time the other was finished praying! haha  That just means that it is a great week! The more tired you are the better it is! We love being busy! As for Sister Cowley she is great I love her!! She is super funny and always makes me laugh!! Well Mom, Sister Angila’s ring is just the plain black CTR ring like the crest one and she is a size 6. She wears it on her pinkie.  Anyways, I hope the girls get to dance that would be so amazing and so fun!! Plus Tara is the best! Cami, Happy Birthday and know that I am thinking about you!! We have a deep clean day tomorrow so I will whistle while I work the Happy Birthday song!! haha Our whole mission is deep cleaning!! I hope Josh is ok and I can’t believe Clay is getting ready!!! yyyayyy!! He will be the best missionary out there... does that mean there will be a snip snip coming?! nooooooo! But it is for the best I guess!  I can’t believe Chantz is getting married I am pumped!  As for everything else I hope it goes well! Know that I am so jealous about the temple! You know how I love the temple!!  It will be amazing! I want to go the day after I get home! It will be great! Well as for this week’s weather... it’s been crazy! One day it was freezing and they canceled school and then the next it is raining so hard that no one goes on the roads and now we live in a swamp... no joke our yard type thing is flooded! But it has been super fun and Sister Cowley and I secretly pray for a tornado sometimes because we think it would be neat to see!!  Anyways this week we have good and bad news... good news we found a man named Clement and he never wears a shirt... he is this old man and he always smokes through our whole lesson and has his huge belly hanging out... but other than that he is amazing!! He is super interested in learning and he wants his whole family to know about the gospel! You kind of just fall in love with him when you meet him but he lives in this crummy single-wide and as soon as we left his cousin told us that he is a multi-millionaire!! hahah We died laughing but we were wondering why each of his grandkids came in asking for money or just took his cards haha he is great! Other good news we are working with Tanya Melton to commit her to stop smoking. She just got out of the hospital so when would be a better time! On Wednesday I took her cigarette case and taped a picture of Christ to it when she wasn’t looking she said it made her feel guilty when she went to smoke later that day! We are down to 2 cigarettes a day--but she will get there! The other good news is Brother Goodman brought a new investigator to church her name is Angelique we met with her last night and the bad news is that we found out that she is Stefanie’s daughter and now Stefanie thinks that we are crazy and she doesn’t want to meet with us. One thing I have learned out here is that we all have our free agency, we can’t force people to choose but when they know it is true and they choose not to act-- it breaks my heart to watch it happen, so we had to let her go.  Hopefully, Angelique will be an example to her!! hahah Other than that, we have had a pretty great week! We are still meeting with some of our other investigators and they are coming along! Our ward is doing a challenge of reading the whole standard works this year and so we are all kind of in the same general area. We read the Pearl of Great Price first and now we are in Genesis, I really love Abraham! He has such great faith and Sister Cowley and I talk all the time about how in Heaven we can’t wait to watch family movies with all these people and to ask them questions! I hope that one day I have faith like Abraham! I think that sometimes we feel lost and like our Heavenly Father leaves us.  Since I have been out, I have really been searching to find the way that the Lord speaks to me personally. When we find the way He speaks to us we are able to look for His promptings! Everyday I feel like I learn something new or I recognize the Spirit in my life a different way. Sometimes it is just the peace I get when I lay in bed and remember that everything that happened that day the Lord had already planned out. There is such a bigger picture to this life and I have noticed that when things cancel or don’t work out it is because the Lord has something else for us to do! It then is our job to figure out what that work is, and when we find out it is usually the most rewarding time. This week all our appointments cancelled on Friday night and we went to find some less actives that we have never met and we passed by one of the bishops houses from our ward. He is pretty much the founder of the Pembroke ward--a missionary hero!!  We passed his house and I asked if we could turn around and just stop for a second and have a lesson with him. He is old and lonely because his wife died about 10 years ago.  We had a lesson with him and the spirit was so strong in his house and I just started to cry. When we were leaving we said thank you to him and he said, “No sisters, I cant explain how much I needed that.” I love finding out what the Lord has planned for me each day and I am so grateful that He leads and guides me! I hope you all know how much I love you!! You are the greatest family!! You mean so much to me and I hope you know that!! Have the best week!!

Love always

Sister Oliver