ALOOOOOHAAAAA!!!!
How is life, my wonderful family and friends!? Just so you know, I love being a missioanary. I can't express that enough. We are always working and we're always so tired, and we're almost always rejected haha, but we're always happy! It's kind of weird haha.
So let's see what happened this week. To start things off, we did some tracting in this trailer park. Not for very long, because the property manager of the park yelled at us and kicked us out. We called president to ask him about what we should do because we're not breaking any laws. He just told us to keep going there and if they can find a law that says we can't be tracting, we will be in contact with our lawyers. It was a really good neighborhood. We had 2 potential people interested in 4 doors that we knocked. That rarely happens.
In other news. We almost got dropped by P this week. She's brought up a lot of concerns because of things like the word of wisdom, tithing, etc. She quit smoking several weeks ago, and freaked out because she is gaining weight. What I love about being a missionary is that when we feel prompted to make promises, we know that we can make them. I know that the only reason we can do that right now is because we're representing Jesus Christ. I felt prompted to promise her that if she would pay her tithing, God would bless her, enough so that she could help those in need as well. She's reading the Book of Mormon so much, and praying, and she told us that she knows that she needs to do those things that we've told her. It's also cool, because her daughter's best friends from high school were mormon. When she talked to her daughter, apparently her daughter went to the Detroit Temple Open House with her friends several years before, and told her about how beautiful and amazing it was and that she was proud of her mom's example to be baptized and would like to be baptized as well. We'll have to see where that goes!
I also had the opportunity to go to the temple this week.
On Saturday we visited one of our investigators, D. D is A's mom. We started teaching her this week, and she was going to come to the Relief Society Broadcast, but issues at home prevented her from coming. The next day she was going to come to church, but her kids got in a fight the night before and one of them ran away, so that prevented her from coming to church the next day as well. This is the point in my mission where I have to say THANK YOU for raising me in the gospel. Every time we visit D or A, I just thank my lucky stars I was raised in a family that loved eachother.
The Relief society broadcast was just what I needed Saturday night. I was so excited all of Saturday. General Conference is a whole other thing as a missionary. We really are feasting on the words out here, and me and the other sisters have to wrestle to even get a glimpse of the Ensigns. More revelation from our leaders is like... Christmas as a missionary. Christmas. The broadcast was so good. We went over to P's last night and watched the talk by President Monson. She LOVED it. The bread story was amazing. It was funny because we were teaching her and asked her to pray and ask if Thomas Monson was a prophet of God because she was a little skeptical as well. She texted us like... 20 minutes later telling us that she randomly opened up to a general conference talk by President Monson titled, "Til We Meet Again." And she said it was life changing haha! I thought that was funny because those talks are always the talks where president monson just says.... well.. see you in 6 months! But she loved it. She's so funny.
Here's another funny story. So we were studying early one morning, and we get a phone call, that says, "PRESIDENT GERBER". We all panic because you only get a call when something crazy has happened or you have done something crazy and he's calling to reprimand you. We freaked. So then we pick up and he sounds so happy. At this point I'm like.. Oh my gosh, I got my visa. So he's talking to Sister Hoskisson and askes her how the area is and then pauses, and says, "Is Sister Marshall there?" So now I'm shaking and pretty much crying and he's like.
PRES GERBER: sister marshall how are you?
ME: doing good president.
PRES GERBER: thats great. how are you liking ann arbor.
ME: i love it president. it's a great area with a lot of success
PRES GERBER: don't you wish you could stay in ann arbor for forever?
(at this point I thought for sure I got my visa)
ME: yessir, I love it.
PRES GERBER: thats good to hear. bye!
I'm pretty sure, he does that to all the visa waiters just to mess with us hahahaha! I was so mad, I almost trashed the apartment. Haha just kidding. But I thought it was funny. If I were the mission president, I would do that occasionally just to mess with the missionaries. I love that man. He does the funniest things.
So the latest cool thing that happened was that we started teaching a part member family and we're working on getting this girl, S, baptized. She's super cute and 9 years old. As we were leaving her house, this little 9 year old boy walks up to us, and says, "have you gone to my house yet?" and we told him we were just visiting so he asked us if we were church people. So we said yes, and he told us that his mom really wants to come to church and so does he. How dang cute is that? This 9 year old kid just walks up to us and tells us to start teaching his family. He showed us where he lived. Unfortunately we were heading to an appointment, but we will be stopping by tomorrow and hopefully we can start teaching a family! Children are the best. No wonder why Jesus always wanted to handg out with them. Theyr'e so pure in heart.
Anyways! Have a good week. Thanks for being awesome!
Love Sister Marshall