Roller Coaster Week! 8/24/2015

Hello! This week was amazing....but also absolutely insane! I felt like I was all over the place with my emotions! We all need weeks like that though, don't we? :)

Last Monday, like I mentioned last week, we went to the Durham Museum with a bunch of other sisters and had such a blast! Then we just hung out at the TC and emailed and everything because we were on shift that night and didn't want to drive all the way back home. Shift was pretty good. Slow though. The weather is getting cold already and I'm starting to wear my collection of scarves. Love it! Fall is in the air and some of the leaves in our neighborhood are already starting to fall down to the ground. Well, as we went to bed that night we could hear it start to rain outside and we could hear loud thunder starting so it was a little harder to fall asleep. At about 2 in the morning, we both woke up to an extremely loud warning on our phone telling us about flash flooding. It was still raining really hard outside and we could see the lightning coming in our room through the room. Now wide awake at this point, we tried to roll over and fall back asleep. A couple minutes later, we started hearing trickling from the window. Sister Strong got up, looked out the window, and felt the window sill and said "Shoot!" I asked her what was wrong, and she goes "It's leaking!" I immediately started laughing hysterically and couldn't stop! She got out of bed to turn the light on. I asked her how bad it was, as she gabs the door to stop from slipping in about an inch of water on the ground. Wow! Luckily we have tile in our bedroom and just some rugs, so we put some towels down between our bedroom and the carpet in our study room, then put another one by the window. After that we just kind of looked at each other with blank looks, and started laughing because we were still half asleep and had no idea what to do. We decided that it would be best to wait until morning to tell our members because they wouldn't be able to do anything about it at that point. Sister Strong's bed was right by the window so her bedding got a little bit wet so we had to move her bed out of the way so it wouldn't get worse. It was brutal trying to get up that next morning. The Mierzejewskis weren't very happy because their basement had flooded just the year before and they paid $30,000 to repair it. We felt so horrible! Someone came over the next day to look at the basement and see if they could fix the window from doing it again. No damage was done thank goodness!

Tuesday we were at the TC in the morning and on Teaching Center for part of it so we could relax a little bit since we were so exhausted from the adventure we had the night before. Then we saw Cynthia that afternoon and taught her about the Plan of Salvation. She is still set for September 4th and everything is going so well! We had a Finding Lost Sheep "activity" with the ward counsel where we got together and discussed less actives we could go see as a ward. It wasn't very well attended and not much success. We were going to try and go on splits with some other sisters, but no one really showed up so we just did our normal routine of finding less actives. Oh well :) It was a good effort!

Wednesday we had district meeting, Dusty had her baptismal interview with our district leader which went well, then saw Sister La Pier that night.

Thursday morning we found out that Sister Strong and I will be staying together in Elmwood for another transfer. We were both pretty happy about that! Then we deep cleaned the basement in preparation for transfers. The floor was disgusting in our room from the flood, so it was much needed! Then we spent the rest of the afternoon at the TC on shift. It's getting slower and slower every day it seems like. Sometimes you don't get a single tour all day :/

Friday was the first time I didn't have to go to transfer point in about 8 months. It was a little bit weird! We just weekly planned that morning and set some good goals for this next transfer. We're excited for what it in store for us! We saw Sister Johnson and Brother Powell that afternoon and then Gary and Dusty had us over for dinner. Gary has this best friend who is a girl and it had been causing a lot of fights the last couple days because Gary will spend a lot of time over there with her so of course it makes Dusty jealous. The issue got brought up during dinner and there were some contention and unnecessary comments and we didn't really know what to do. Dusty was crying because Gary thinks it's all Dusty's fault that she gets jealous and won't let Gary have any other friends. Just middle school drama. Anyways, things got resolved for the most part and we just told them to talk to bishop about it and he will be able to help them. We saw Christina that night and met her friend Joe that was over. That was interesting. All of her friends are a little...funny. She told us that she's dating some guy when she's still married to Josh. They can't legally get divorced until January or around there. So she's just basically doing whatever she wants since they're split up. Kind of a ridiculous situation. Anyways! Friday night we got a call from Dusty who told us that she wasn't going to get baptized on Saturday because Gary told her he wasn't going to do it. We could hear him yelling and screaming at her in the backround saying the F bomb and this and that....we were both just speechless. Dusty was crying and just told us she would call us in the morning. The spirit was completely gone and Sister Strong and I just felt like crying, so we decided to walk over to the Cottams since they live right next door. We told them everything that had happened, and Brother Cottam said that he would be willing to baptize her if she still wanted to. We said a prayer together and then they gave us some cookies that they had made earlier. I love them so much! I love that we have such a good relationship with them. They helped us so much. As we were going to bed we were getting texts from Dusty saying that she didn't want to come to church anymore and all these other things and it just broke our hearts and we didn't know what to say to her. We just told her that Brother Cottam would be willing to baptize her if she still wanted to and left it at that. A couple hours later, she texted us and told us she wanted him to do it and she still wanted to get baptized. Hallelujah!

The next morning she texted us and told us that God said let's do this, so she wasn't going to change her mind! Gary had told her he wasn't going to be at her baptism, but that wasn't stopping her. We had talked about whether we should wait until they resolve their issues for her to get baptized, but decided that if she's ready now we should just do it because there will always be things that will come up. After TC training we did some studies and then headed over to the church to prepare for the baptism at 1. It was so well attended and everything went well! Dusty had asked Sister Sister Strong and I to sing a song for her baptism, so we did that and the talks were just perfect for her. Everything turned out how it needed to! Gary did text Dusty and told her she wasn't allowed in the house anymore. He had blocked all of our numbers and wasn't going to allow us to go to his house either so she was freaking out a little bit, so bishop drove her home and talked to both of them and fixed everything! It happened so fast, and ended so fast. Almost as if Heavenly Father really didn't want Gary to baptize her. It's really strange, but I know everything happens for a reason! We went to dinner with a member in the ward that night who had also invited Gary and Dusty over. We had a wonderful time. Gary apologized to us and it was a great night.

The next day was even better when Dusty was able to get confirmed. The spirit was so strong and I just can't even describe how happy I was. I love being able to be an instrument in the Lord's hand. Missionary work has changed me so much and I am so truly grateful I was able to come to this area at the time that I did and be able to teach Dusty. I love her so much and she will always be like my little sister since that's about how old she acts ;) Such a wonderful week! Like I said, it was a roller coaster, but it always is the week before a baptism because Satan doesn't want it to happen. I love this work and all of you so much! For those of you who are starting school this week, good luck! Have a great week!

 Dusty asked us to do her nails for her baptism so we did ours also :)

Dusty also asked me to braid her hair :)