I know y'all are tire of hearing from me all the time. So remember how I told you I was in the sticks? So last night, we get this phone call from our mission prez and he's like... Sister Marshall, you haven't gotten your visa yet, but I am emergency transferring you. I guess this other sister went home this morning, and he felt that I was needed there! AHHH!! So I am no longer in Grand Blanc, I am in Belle Isle now? My new comp is named Sister Decker. She's pretty tight. So... yeah, I'm in DETROIT! .. but like, a good area of detroit, so you don't have to panic, and if it makes you feel better, I got a blessing before I left that said I would be safe so just...don't freak out. 222 Edmunton St #19, St. Clair Shores, MI 48080 LOVE YOU A TON! Sister Marshall "
0 Comments
Okay family and friends. Get ready for the stories of a lifetime!!!! I don't even know where to start.
So I got here on Monday. I can't believe it's been a whole week already. I feel like I have a mission worth of stories. SO get ready. We get in, do some driving safety videos and then some of the sisters take us tracting. I got partnered up with Sister Orr, another visa waiter going to Recife. So we're talking and stuff, and she's like... guess what? today we're riding bikes. fortunately my basketball shorts couldn't fit in my luggage and I was wearing them, so it was perfect. So we go to this area in Southwood called 8 MILE. It's the closest that the sisters can get in Detroit. Which means we're 8 miles from the center of the city. It was pretty ghetto. So we're cruising through the projects because we had an appointment with this kid, D_______. Outside, we're locking up the bikes and we see these two ladies who are like... WAZZZZUP, so you know me. I'm like... hey! So we're talking to them and she's telling us about this fire in their apartment, and it sounded just like that "aint nobody got time for that" lady on youtube. It was freaking HILARIOUS. So we ask her what she's doing and she's like "just watching my grandbaby build a sandcastle" and we turn to look at her granddaughter, who's shoveling gravel and dirt into a pale and building a mountain of rocks. It was kind of funny. She told us all about her love for Jesus, and she LOVES the bible. So I bore testimony of the BOM and she was like.. "gimme one of those", so I did. Then we went up and taught D________, and we asked him to be baptized and he said yes. Of course we still need to okay it with his parents but I thought that was kind of cool. So we go back outside and this girl gives me a hand out for Weaves, and I traded her and gave her amormon.org card. It was so legit. SO we're riding home. It's 9:00 and my tire pops while we're still at 8MILE. We had 3 miles to go in 30 minutes so we just start sprinting. I loved it so much!!!!!! But heavenly father knew I was too comfortable there, and when you're too comfortable, you're not growing. So he sends me to the sticks. THis ho-dunk town called GRAND BLANC. My next door neighbors must have a big problem with glaucoma.. if you know what i'm saying.. they smoke all day every day. It's the worst!! But most the time it doesn't effect our room. Once we get back to grand blanc and one of my comps is like.. we got a referral. It's kind of sketch though. It just said "M________?" So we call her up and meet with her. Apparently her daughter joined the church and said, mom. this is the true church. YOu need to check it out. Her daughter and her have been searching for the true church for YEARS upon years, and so we're teaching her and she's like.. this feels right. so we leave, and my comp was like.... this has never happened to me before and she's on her last transfer. SO THAT WAS LEGIT. We taught her the plan of salvation on thursday. She was afraid we wouldn't want her as part of our church because she smoked marajuana for 40 years and quit several months ago. We told her more about the love of Christ, his atonement, I asked her if she wanted to be baptized and she said YES. SHe is the definition of the field is ready to harvest!!!! She's the best, we went to church with her, and she just loves it all! Her biggest problem what that syhe works at a time that conflicts with church, but she told us that if she couldn't get off of work for church, she would quit and go to a different place, but then she talked to her boss and her boss told her she could come in earlier and get off earlier!!!!! Isn't that crazy????????? So we're working with her a lot. I just love her so much. Okay, let me tell you about Brother Tripp. He really is a Tripp. He's a less active member who is a magician and comedian. He's a hoot and a half! He shows us magic and feeds us, and he has a lot of problems in his life, but he just keeps pushing which is awesome. Brother Biddle is also a cool cat. He just had surgery so we met with him while he was hopped up on pain meds. It was hilarious. He told us about how when he was younger he was "a goddess". We told him that goddesses were girls, and he was like.. nah. But he used to get in bar fights and stuff before he joined the churhc. He also has a lot of hard times, and we are just there to keep him pushing through them. Brother Gleason: is a gem. He's this super old guy who had a stroke 20 years ago, leaving him only able to say the word, "Potato". But with that word, he told me all about how he loves art. How he was in the military. HOw to garden. His favorite scripture, which is 1 nefi 1:1, all by using one word, "Potatoe!" He's so funny. I just love old people. Debbie is also elect. She met the missionaries 6 weeks ago and knew the church was true, quit smoking, drinking coffeee, the whole shibang. We had her baptism on Saturday, and I had to speak at that, but she's truly amazing. The love you feel for people on their missions is remarkable. So my first contact- Best story ever. We're going door to door and talking to people. I just observed at first, and then we see this lady on her porch, and my comps were like.. sister it's your turn, so we walk up to her, and she kind of ignored us. I was like... hi, we're sister missionaries from the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints! she just looked at me confused. so i continued to tell her about the restored gospel. guess what. SHE WAS DEAF. and if she wasn't deaf she was sure good at faking it. We wrote on sticky notes to talk to her about the gospel, but she said she already has the bible book, so that was a bust. ANyways, lots happened, but those are the highlights. Love you guys, Sister Marshall I'm just emailing you to tell you I'm all here and working hard! And boy do I have stories! THey are LEGIT. Anyways, you'll hear all about them on Monday. I have some fun ones! My first day, I was serving out in the PROJECTS and heavenly father knew I liked it too much, so he sent me to the STICKS. But it's been awesome. I'll talk to you on Monday!!!! My new comps are sister thompson and sister goodman. All the visa waiters are in trios. Here is my address: Dear Beloved Brothers and Sisters:
Mother, I did get the Kohls shoes and I can't wait to chuck the gray ones. they are quite literally falling apart. Thanks so much for the packages and love. I'm just taking it all in before I'm out of the country. Suprise! You get to hear from me on Thursday Night when we get our travel plans. So I will be calling you latish SO PICK UP or I lose 100 minutes. That is essencial. Next week I will call from the airopuerto before i head out to the field. It's weird tot hink I've been here this long. I got a letter from Amy last tuesday, and I'll write her so she'll be getti9ng a letter soon. I just love the MTC. I'm trying to think about all of the things that happened this week. I just love being here so much. They are going to have to pry me from the MTC! You really grow to love everyone that you are with here. Our investigator, Plino, is "getting baptized" on Saturday. Our other pesquisador... we were just working through things with him regarding the Word of Wisdom. Yesterday I bore testimony that the Book of Mormon is a source of strength, and I felt the spirit so strongly. I've worked a lot this week with Irmao Walker. It's been really hard with him because he critiques A LOT. But I know that is what I need, so I force myself to get help from him. I feel like I've learned a lot this week. A couple elders in my zone got reassigned to Jville, Fl, so thats cool. I was a host this week. What that means is that I go and rip crying sisters from their screaming mothers, and say, "see you in 18 months!" I do it a little nicer than that, but I had to console many a crying mother. Oh, we taught Plino and asked him what kind of music he wanted at his baptism. he said he wanted metallica. He's so freaking hilarious. Sundays are awesome. We get to watch movies at night. We watched the Joseph Smith movie which was BOM DE MAIS! I heard a quote today: "You can pray to God in any language, but he only responds in Portugues." Haha... I just thought it was funny. yesterday was a bizarre day. One of the siters in our zone got really sick. My comp, who is the sister training leader and Sister Jory Miller spent the day helping her. Sister Hathaway and I were comps for the day, so that was super cool. We taught her pesquisador, Edmilson (Olson), and then we taught my pesquisador that night (Walker). We taught Edmilson the plan of Salvation, and I guess my drawing was really funny or something because he started laughing at it. I thought it was rather artistic. Our lesson with Helder (Walker) was the most spiritual lesson we had given. It was awesome. I'm sad because I think today was the last time we had Olson as a teacher. He was a really good teacher and you could tell that he really loved the people he served on his mission, and I can't wait to just go to Brazil and just love the heck out of people! So animado! Anywhoo.... If I think of anything else to say, I'll tell you later. Talk to you thursday. PICK UP YOUR PHONE. Love sister marshall Tudo bem familia?
How are yall doing this week? It has been a really good week. I just love the MTC so much and I can't wait to actually teach people. Sometimes I wonder what people learn in English, because we are going through the ringer when it comes to language study. My teacher, Irmao Olson has been helping me a ton with the language and helping me come up with a plan to successfully learn it. I'm so excited to go to Brazil. We got our first investigator to accept baptism... His name is Plino (Irmao Olson) and he's probs my favorite investigator. On Wednesday we clappped outside the door, because apparently you do that in Brazil.. you clap outside of the gate instead of knocking on the door. Anyways, so we were clapping screaming "Irmao! Irmao!" (because we didn't know his name, so we are supposed to just say "Brother!" until you find out). So he had to hide his face from us for a minute because he couldn't stop laughing. Then he goes on to tell us this greusome work accident that involved bones popping through the skin and blood everywhere.... and I was like... "E muito triste.... Irmao, qual e seu nome(whats your name)?" And he died laughing again because it was super random and was like... "TIME OUT!!!!!! sat there for another solid 2 or 3 minutes, finished laughing, and then was like.. okay time in" It was really funny. I guess I'm just super funny or something. But he accepted baptism in that lesson. And yesterday we taught the commandments. He told us that his pastor told him that we were the devil and that we sacrificed babies in our temple and wouldn't let us in his house. I didn't really know what I was saying, but when i was planning my language study plan, he said that we handled that situation really well and he's still getting baptised So BOM. We also talked about the commandments, and I showed him a pictrue of our family. and he was like.... "spongey bobby?" But its been going pretty well. Irmao Olson is my favorite teacher. Irmao Walker is a lot more difficult. We haven't been able to get him accept baptism and he really likes alcohol and smoking and stuff, and complains that he has no money. But were teaching him tomorrow, and making a plan to quit those substances. Teaching in Portuguese is really hard, but I love it. And we do this thing called TRC where RMs come and talk to us and then we share a lesson with them. It's probably my favorite thing ever. I'm trying to think of other things that happened this week. They're all kind of blending together. I went to the temple this morning. It was super nice. I love giong to the temple on P-Days. Things that I need:Super Gluemaybe duct tapetightsHonestly, I just want a good pair of wing tips, but whatevs.Photo Album with family pics, include some of the avengers pics. those are solid.Other than that... I cant really think of anything!But Love you guys so so muito! Have an awesome week! Love sister marshall Update: 5pm (Another email) Okay, continuation. I actually don't have sterling's address :( i know so sad. Tell Sister Alcatraz I'm sorrrry! I can't think of anything else that really happened this week, other than me and my companion can read eachothers mind. It's pretty trippy, and kind of weird. I'm so excited for devotional tonight. Devotionals are always so good! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! I'm sad P-Day's almost over, but weeks are blowing by now. It's weird. I can't believe I've been gone for almost a month. Tell Amy T to write me! AHHH! I have so much I need to tell her about the MTC experience and that there are tons of girls in my zone who are going to Fortaleza. They're all super cute white girls, like herself. And Amy is going to love them because they're the best. Did you know I'm the oldest in the district? Weird right? Oh, and Happy Birthday! I'd send you a letter, but I just ran out of stamps... so... Anyways, have a great week. Tell people to write me or let my wrath be kindled against them. Oh, and tell cathrie to mail me jakes letter. I'm dying to get it.Love yallSister Marshall |