Crazy Week!! October 13, 2014

Hey Everyone!

     Wow! This has been a super crazy week! Mary was baptized on Saturday! We had to teach her everything in a week and a half! It was crazy! We taught like 4 lessons in one night! The member we had with us was a total trooper and went along with the whole thing. She just wants to know everything! She is way cool. Ok so now I will go by one day at a time because it is easier to remember things that way. Not that I can remember anything as it is. My companion says I have a freakish memory of all the rules and every training I have ever heard about anything so I guess that is crowding out all other information in my brain! I guess it's like when I had a freakish memory of so many things at the pharmacy. Now I forgot what I was going to say. Alright well we will start with Monday. Monday we went to see Tina to see how she was doing and on Monday she was doing well! We saw one of the recent converts named Barbara and she told us the person who is also a recent convert who rents a room from her named Wilbert was in the hospital because he had a stroke! Now he is in an assisted living facility. He is recovering a lot faster than they thought he would so that is good. Tuesday is when we taught the marathon lesson to Mary. I had a huge headache after that was over! We taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Tithing and fast offerings, Word of wisdom and law of chastity! It was crazy. Wednesday we were supposed to have a lesson with Tina on Wednesday but she wasn't there and she wasn't answering her phone! This is the start of the drama that was Tina this week! Just wait, it gets better. Wednesday evening Mary had her baptismal interview. She passed of course. Thursday we had ZTM. It was ok! Not the best that I have been to but that's ok. I got to see Sister McNeely again! That was fun. We also got a brand new car! I guess mission cars get sold when they get over 50,000 miles and ours was over that so on Thursday we got a brand new 2015 Toyota Corolla! It is super duper nice! Although the new car smell does make me slightly naseous sometimes. We had dinner with the Bishops family that day and Bishop was telling us all sorts of crazy stories about his mission! He went to the same mission in Taiwan his parents had been mission presidents of. Then while he was on his mission his parents got called to be the temple president of the temple in Taiwan and for the last 6 months of his mission he lived in the same apartment complex as his parents! There were just all sorts of crazy stories. Then life was pretty calm until Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning was really nice, we had Mary's baptism and it was just great. We were feeling great and happy and then in the afternoon we got a call from this sister in the ward saying she was on her way to pick up Tina for her baptism! Mind you we hadn't been able to get in touch with Tina since Monday and had not been planning for her to be baptized! It was a huge mess and we got majorly chewed out by the member for not letting her know, which was partially our fault but we didn't know she was going to pick Tina up so not all our fault! She had a lot of other things stressing her out so mostly she just kind of needed to rant. She is an interesting lady so we just let her vent. I kind of felt like I was back at the pharmacy. Well we ended up baptizing Tina Sunday after church because she didn't want to wait a whole week! We also baptized her daughter. So lots of prayers for them that they make it through this week and to church next Sunday so they can be confirmed! That was basically my crazy week! I am running a little short on time so there isn't a spiritual thought this week! I will just challenge everyone to choose one thing from conference to work on and improve! That is my week in a nutshell! Have a great week everyone and I love you all!

Love,

Sister Price

VALDOSTA-NEW AREA, LEAVING COLUMBUS AND GREAT PEOPLE! October 6, 2014

I FOUND SISTER MCNEELY AT OUR VALDOSTA ZONE CONFERENCE!

NEW COMPANION SISTER WHEELWRIGHT-VALDOSTA AREA

GOOD-BYE TO SISTER SEVY! YOU ARE AWESOME! I WILL MISS YOU SO-SO MUCH!!

GOOD-BYE TO THE FABULOUS LEE FAMILY!! YOU ARE SO BLESSED! I WILL MISS YOU!

A "PURPLE BLAZER"!!

FINALLY A SOUTHERN COTTON FIELD!!  VALDOSTA, GEORGIA

CUTE KNICK-KNACK I SAW

TRUE SIGN, JUST A BIT OF SENTENCE STRUCTURE NEEDED!

ONE YEAR!! OCTOBER 6, 2014

Hey Everyone!

     Ok. I am trying to remember my week. It seems like the longer I am out the harder it is to remember anything including what happened last week. I guess that is why journals are so important! The old man whose house we helped clean passed his house inspection so he gets to stay living in his house. We had zone conference on Friday! That was really good! Wednesday we had a really busy day! We taught Tina and talked with her daughter. Her daughter just turned eight so they are deciding if she wants to get baptized the same day as her mom. Tina's baptism is scheduled for Saturday so hopefully they make the decision soon! We also had dinner with a family and a referral! It was so awesome. The referral's name is Mary. She has been lots of religions and has been researching things for a long time. She said she has kind of had contact with the LDS church and has observed people over the years. I guess one day she went up to Sister Ruddle (she is a member) and asked her if she was LDS and if she could go to church with her! We taught her and she wants to be baptized this week! We have a lot to teach her but she is really great! She came to conference and she loved it! The weather has also been great this week. It was super humid the until Saturday and we went out Saturday and it was nice and cool and I didn't feel like I needed gills to breathe! It was amazing! I think I have officially survived my summer in Georgia! I hope to never have to go through that again. Once is more than enough. I'm not cut out for this kind of climate. Zone conference on Friday was great! I got to see Sister McNeely and that was fun! She looks really good. President was seeing how well we knew the scriptures so he was calling people up to role-play and I got called! I wasn't sitting by Sister Wheelwright because there wasn't enough room so I was sitting right behind her. He called my name and then he paused for a minute and said Sister Trout was going to come up with me! He must have noticed that we had kind of shocked looks on our faces because he said "wait you aren't companions?" and we were like nope! He said maybe it was inspiration. It went really well though! He had questions about resurrection so we read Alma 40 when Alma is talking to Corianton and talked about that. Elder Poti (one of the assistants) said that it was one of the best role plays he had seen in the zone conferences so I guess that was good! I was super nervous and was really glad when it was over! We also got to do something else really cool but President asked us not to talk about it for a few weeks so that will be in a future email. :) Conference was awesome! I loved all of the talks! I loved Elder Robbins and how he talked about not letting the fear of man and the world sway you and cause you to lower your standards. When he said that lowering standards was a form of apostasy I was like oh wow! He isn't sugar coating anything! It was awesome though. I also really loved Elder Christofferson! I loved all of the talks about agency and how we choose who we become. There were a lot of people who talked about that. Helaman 5:12 was brought up a lot! I super loved Elder Klebingot's talk! I can't pronounce his name to save my life but I loved his talk! I love how practically he said we could apply the atonement in our lives. I loved how he talked about taking responsibility for our actions. I also liked what he said about repentance and how we need to be really good at it! I also liked what he said about forgiveness, how we need to be really, really good at that and don't ever think we are exempt from forgiving others! Basically I just loved everything about his talk and I just want to listen to it over and over! I loved President Eyring's talk about personal revelation! I love all of the examples from the scriptures that were given. I also loved all of the talks about the prophet and the leaders and how they are called and chosen and how it's impossible for them to lead us astray! My favorite at the end was Elder Bednar's! I just want to show that to everyone we talk to! Tell them that is why we do what we do and sometimes it is super awkward but it's just because we love you and we love Jesus even more! Seriously, everyone need to see that talk. I hope everyone loved conference as much as I did! I challenge everyone to take a principle you liked from conference and work hard to apply it more in your life. I know that you will be blessed and have the Holy Ghost with you more consistently as you do so! I love all of you and hope you have a super week!

Love,

Sister Price

 

Ok, I can't keep a secret, we got to see "Meet the Mormons", it was really good, I recommend it!!

PINK EYE AND CLEANING!! Sept. 29, 2014

Hey Everyone!

    Well it has been quite the week! There has been a lot of opposition this week. It seems like every time I get in a new area there is a transfer where everything goes wrong before things actually start moving forward. It gets a little frustrating but that is ok! The weather has been great though! Nice and cloudy and not super hot. Most of the people we tried to see this week either weren't there or got sick! We were supposed to have a baptism on Saturday, a lady named Tina but it didn't work out. We had an appt to see her on Friday but she wasn't there and wasn't answering her phone even through Saturday morning and we were super worried! She called us like two hours before the baptism and it turns out she had a really bad case of pink eye so we have had to postpone her baptism! Thankfully the YSA sisters had a baptism at the same time so we didn't have too much scrambling to do to cancel things. We were also supposed to have a dinner appt with a family who had a referral for us on Friday! We met her and she is way awesome and has been researching the church and loves everything about it. They called us the morning of the appt and said that she had to cancel because she got hand, foot and mouth from some kids in the school class she teaches! It has just been a week of people contracting diseases. Sister Wheelwright and I are doing well! I am getting more used to her. I think it was just a huge personality change from Sister Sevy. I know the things happening here aren't nearly on the level of disobedience as a lot of stories I hear about other places. I just feel like hearing those stories still doesn't justify being slightly disobedient. It doesn't work to go "well they did that and it was super disobedient so I can do this thing that is just a little bit disobedient." I guess that is just my black and white self coming out! Some things never change! I do have to tell you what we did Saturday morning though. We have this recent convert named Grandpa Red who is super old and near death and lives with his daughter and her sons. We dread going to his house because it always smells terrible and is disgustingly dirty! He has a bunch of cats and it just smells like litter box and cat pee in there. It is awful. When we went to visit him on Tuesday, he told us that the hospice people who come to take care of him had done an inspection and told him that he had 10 days to get the house clean or they were going to take him out of it! He was really upset about that and asked if there was anything we could do. Well we said we would bring it up to the ward and so we did but they basically said that there were enough people living in the house that they could clean it up themselves. We felt really bad because he asked for help so we talked with the other sisters about what to do! We just really felt like we needed to help them so the other sisters were super nice and said that they would come help us clean and we also roped the Elders into helping us. So Saturday morning was the day! Sister Wheelwright and I went and got big cleaning gloves because who knows what things we would have to clean! The house was so gross! We got it in shape though. There was seriously a mountain of dirty dishes! I planted myself at the kitchen sink and started working on the dishes. It was an interesting thing because I was surrounded by dirty dishes and the counters were nasty, but we had to clean the dishes before we could get to the counters! We had to be really creative on where to put the clean dishes to dry them. The Elders were really good sports and were a lot of help! We sang random songs and it was actually pretty fun if we didn't think about what we were cleaning! I have never cleaned so many dishes in my life! Old food, moldy food, stuff just sitting there. Ick. We got it looking so much better and it only took us two and a half hours! We also only found two dead cockroaches so that is good! None swarmed us from anywhere. we did find some baby ones though. We gave them some rules to follow to keep things clean so we are going there tomorrow and we will find out how they are doing! It was funny later though because halfway through the womens conference all of a sudden my wrist and elbow started aching SO BAD!  I just couldn't figure it out but they just hurt really bad! It took me forever to realize that it was because I had cleaned dishes for two hours! It was just really funny to be in my head when I finally realized what it was. Womens conference was fabulous! I loved all of the talks and presentations! My favorite was probably Sister Marriott and President Uchtdorf. I really liked Sister Marriotts little southern twang! It was really cute. I loved Pres Uchtdorf and how he talked about how important we are to Heavenly Father. Yesterday after church we went up to a town outside of Valdosta named Quitman! It is pretty ghetto up there. We have extra miles this month so we are checking out our farther away outlying areas. We went to see a less active who is deaf so Sister Wheelwright got to sign with her! That was fun and Sister Wheelwright loved that. It was a good day! Yesterday at church was the primary program and it was adorable! Made me think of a year ago when we were having our primary program! I am excited to see what this upcoming week will bring and am even more excited for conference! Yay! Plus my year mark is on Thursday which is really weird. It just boggles my mind that I have been away from everyone/everything for a year! I didn't even think it was possible and I am still not sure how I am doing it. I just know that with Heavenly Father's help everything is possible! I read this in Jacob 4 this week and really loved it so I will share it with you! Jacob 4: 7-9 " Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things.Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore,brethren, despise not the revelations of God.For behold, by the power of his word man came upon the face of the earth, which earth was created by the power of his word.Wherefore, if God being able to speak and the world was, and to speak and man was created, O then, why not able to command the earth, or the workmanship of his hands upon the face of it,according to his will and pleasure Wherefore, brethren, seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand. For behold, ye yourselves know that he counseleth in wisdom, and in justice, and in great mercy, over all his works."  

I just really loved this scripture! I love how it says not to despise the revelations of God, especially since General Conference is coming up and we get to hear revelations firsthand! It also made me think about personal revelation and how sometimes we are instructed to do really hard things that we don't want to do, but if God can command the earth to be made he can certainly help us do hard things! I also like how it says to not counsel the Lord because I don't know about everyone else but sometimes I sure feel like I know an awful lot! Then I am humbled and realize that I don't really know anything. Silly me. Great and marvelous are the works of the Lord and it is such a blessing to be a part of those works whether as a missionary or in any other calling in the church! Have a great week and I hope you enjoy conference because it will be so great! Love you all!

Love,

Sister Price