Week 76: Just. Read this.

Hey wonderful people in the world! 

This week was an adventure. Let's be honest, it's always an adventure. We had the wonderful pleasure of biking a lot in the rain, so you know things were good. 

Let's start with Saturday. Saturday morning was great, we got up, did our morning routine, and headed out for the day and started biking to our first appointment. Things were going great, Sister Nielsen was leading us along and I assumed she knew where she was going. About 25 minutes into our bike ride, we are finally about to conquer this massive hill, when she just stops. I knew something was wrong, and so I rushed up behind her to see what was happening. She was having some sort of asthma attack and it was the scariest thing ever! After about a minute of me instructing her to do different things to calm down (hooray lifeguard skills!), some lady runs over to us from across the street and asks if we are ok. Well.. Obviously we were not really ok, but sweet Sister Nielsen didn't want to bother her so she said she was fine. Eventually I convinced my companion that she should probably sit down for a few minutes and the lady invited us into her house. In my brain I was like 'Missionary opportunity!' 

She was so nice! Her name is Sandra, and she talked with us a bit and gave us some water. Then we started talking about religion and stuff, turns out she is a baptist. I talked about christmas a little bit and she was shocked that we believed in celebrating christmas! Come on people, we are not that crazy. So we showed her a lovely Christmas Mormon message and then she sent us on our way. She definitely was not interested in learning more because when I offered she said "I am definitely sure that you can keep things to yourself." Hey, no problem. All we can do is try :) in the end Sister Nielsen was fine, she's just getting over a cold and the whole sickness-coldness-biking combo didn't do her body any good. So we are staying off the bikes for a bit. We are thankful for the wonderful members who we called and they came to pick us up after that happened :) everything just seemed to fall into place that day after that. 

We got to see the Joseph family a couple of times this week! That was a miracle in itself. Previously the sisters have only been able to meet with them maybe once every other week, but once we explained to the father how much we needed to see them before they get baptised, he was all for the idea!

Now picture yourself sitting in a room with 7 children who are all super hyper, and you are trying to teach them about Jesus. Yup. It probably is just what you are imagining. In the end we got them all to commit to keeping the commandments, and one of them even drew me a picture of the turtle I have on my bag. I even had to take away all cell phones and books so they would pay attention, I felt like a proper school teacher. They are set to get baptised on the 12!

We met some other really amazing people this week. One is a guy named Reese (whenever I read his name I think of the resses puffs cereal commercial). He is a uni student, and after the first time we met with him he said "I can meet with you again in an hour." We were like.. whoa this guy means business! But we had another appointment and we saw him the next day. He wasn't too familiar with who Jesus Christ was and what his role is, but we explained that it's kind of like if you go to court for something you do wrong, then you will have some consequence, and Christ will take the consequences for you. He then said "Oh, so Jesus is like the guy who will step in and go to jail for you instead." The lightbulb went on in his head. The gospel is the best.

We had a wonderful thanksgiving, in case you were wondering. No, they don't celebrate it here, but Sister Nielsen and I made thank you cards and brought them around to people. It's pretty cool how having a grateful heart can really change your perspective on everything. 

Overall, it was a great week. I can't really think of what else to say now, because my brain shuts down after a certain point of emailing. I do know that this church is God's church, and that Jesus Christ changes our lives for the better though. I am so glad that he accepts us for who we are, even when we have strange obsessions with things like llamas. 

I love you all!

Love,

Sister Slack 

 going on a hike last pday with Sam!



On top of Black Rock



Christmas lights in Derby

We made smores