Week 73: Mud and Service

Hey people I love!

This week has been full of adventure. It was one of those weeks where everything out of the ordinary happened. To start, it was a week full of rain. You're probably thinking "that's normal for England". That's probably true, but it finally hit the part of autumn where now it rains every day. This means there is a lot more mud on the roads, and that bike paths turn into little streams. Sister Grant and I didn't have mud guards on our bikes up to this point, and we figured we'd be fine and save ourselves £3.50. This attitude worked out until Thursday, when the heavens opened and water would not stop. We went to an area to stop by a recent convert and a few members. I looked at the map and noticed that there was a lovely bike path that seemed to take us directly to our next destination!

Great idea, right? Wrong. That bike path was literally all mud. We could only bike a few feet, and I turned around and asked "Sister Grant, should we just take the long way?" And she said, "nah." So we trudged on in the mud, and it turns out the path got smaller and smaller until it was literally just a line of mud surrounded by spiky plants, and it eventually led to a farm. It was good fun. The next day we went out and bought mud guards. 

We had the opportunity to do lots of service this week. We stopped by a less active we'd never met before, and she accepted our offer to come back and help her out! Her name is Jannette. We helped her clean her front room and fold all of her family's laundry. After we left from cleaning her house, we felt a bit awkward and weren't sure why. Later that same day we helped out a lovely less active clean all the mold off of her walls! Her name is Cherise. We destroyed the mold with lots of bleach, but it looked and felt soo much better after we had finished the job. After this service project, we felt happy and like we had done some good in the Nuneaton world!

After we left Cherise's flat, I pondered the difference between helping Jannette and Cherise. Why did we feel weird after Jannette, but not Cherise? I realized then it was because of gratitude. Cherise was so grateful for our help, and she made it known. She was so happy that we had helped her and she definitely felt relieved that we had gotten rid of the mold. Jannette's attitude was a bit different. She seemed slightly annoyed that we were helping, and then when we had to leave she expressed she felt we hadn't done very much. Now I'm not one to look for praise or to expect anything from someone when we help them out, but the difference in feelings was clear. I learned that an attitude of gratitude not only affects our own perspective on life, but also affects the feelings of those around us. I definitely felt like I understood a little bit more about the 10 lepers. We are always happy to help, and both Cherise and Jannette needed it. We were glad that we were able to make a small difference, even if we couldn't see all of the impact.

We got to see Sabrina again this week! She is incredible. We spoke about a little bit of everything, but the spirit was strong in the lesson. She had been reading from the Book of Mormon in random places, and it had just flipped open to Alma 36. This is the chapter where Alma the Younger tells his conversion story, and it really hit home with Sabrina. She was so excited to share with us what she learned and that she really felt it was meant for her. It is so cool to see the hand of God in other people's lives!

It was Bonfire Night on Thursday, and on Friday we got to go to a little bonfire party! Nothing like celebrating the death of Guy Fawkes. There were so many fireworks lit off over the weekend. We would bike home every night in the dark and it would scare us sometimes when these giant explosions would happen right behind us, but we also felt like we were in a movie. 

Darren came back from holiday this week! He is our ginger friend who is learning about the gospel, and he came to church this week. We taught him about the ten commandments. We teach them using hand signs so they are easy to remember, and the 8th commandment is "thou shalt not steal". The hand sign shows that they used to chop off your thumbs if you stole stuff in the old days. He said to us "well they can still do that today. I can just send a dog after people!" Watch out world. Darren might get a thumb eating dog.

That's it for now, but I love being a missionary!

Love,

Sister Slack 

Ginger power!

Last Pday we hung out at the Brown's

Walking through fields.. this was the easier bit with not as much mud