TURNS OUT, I'M NOT A GOOD ADULT YET!!!

So here are this week's fun highlights:

We went to go teach Eugena. We were teaching her neighbor when she came out and stopped us as we were walking back to our car. She said she had talked to missionaries before and had our book and really liked it. We set a return appointment with her and when we went back...we soon realized we had been fooled. She just started going off on tons and tons of random things acting like we knew her family and she kept throwing out all these names, not letting us get any sort of word in. Then it gets better...she told us that Nelly (the singer) was her cousin...and that Drake and his girlfriend were hanging out at her house the other day...It then hit both of us that she was certified CRAZY. You can imagine our faces as we came to this realization. hahaha we got stuck in there forever listening to all of her stories. So turns out she doesn't want to talk about the gospel, she just needed someone to talk to, but hey maybe it made her feel better. haha

The Eastman family taught us how to play crazy Uno. It's tradition for every missionary who serves in Russellville to eat with the Eastmans and play crazy Uno! So we finally made the cut and got to learn. When I get home we definitely will be playing! It's a blast. I officially feel a part of the Russellville ward now that I know how to play haha. Also Brother Eastman is the closest thing to our dad out here. He's so great. I'll try to get a pic with him one of these times. That fam takes good care of us. 

As a missionary people tell us everything. We are trusted with so many personal things, we know all the issues in the ward. It’s kinda crazy. People open up to us so quickly about everything! Our name tags turn us into therapists I guess. haha Most of our gators are convinced that our prayers work better than theirs do. We explain this all the time, that God is listening to their prayers too!  But we still have people ask us to stop by and say a prayer with them. 

So at the end of the night we were coming in, I used my keys to open the door and the next morning we went to leave and there are my keys...still in the door...where they had been ALL NIGHT LONG =( Scary. haha and then it gets better, we left for our run, came back and our door was locked. Apparently when I took the key out and threw it inside it locked the door. So we were locked out, didn't have our phone or anything. Lewis found a little piece of paper (those little stick things that you use to label your garden) and eventually we pried our door open. Turns out I'm not a good adult yet.

This one isn't as fun, but remember our "BIE" Richard from last week? Yea he went on a vacation to Virginia, and then found a job there and decided to stay -_- lovely right? Satan is so real. 

We had 2 dinners one night this week. We tried to get out of it. But one was with a less active and the other with a gator. You know it’s bad when on our way to the next dinner appointment, our motto was "forget yourself and go to work" hahaha We felt so sick that night. Everything we do is for other people. Even eating. #southernprobs

We had to instruct at Zone Meeting this week. Honestly I felt pretty uncomfortable because we both are still pretty new. It is hard to stand in front of a bunch of missionaries who have been out for almost 2 years and instruct them on the work. I was super nervous, I feel so young and inexperienced. But it went fine. Hopefully we didn't sound like fools haha

So here is the BOMB story of the week. Chase. He is a member referral. He is our age, and he had every wall up possible. He doesn't really believe in God, he told us he doesn't have much care in the world. He has that "go with the flow" attitude and has never given much thought to religion. This is the first time we have been working with someone who doesn't know about Jesus Christ. Most everyone here has a belief in Christ so we have never had to start at ground zero with anyone, except for Chase. We had to start with basics. Good thing is, Chase likes to read. So we introduced the BOM to him and told him that this whole book applies to his life in every way and can help him with ANYTHING. To prove it we did something we hadn't done before. We had him choose a number between 1-15. He chose 12, so we assigned him the 12th book in the BOM, which was 4th Nephi. We told him normally we choose a specific chapter in the BOM that we think can help the people we work with, but we wanted to prove to him that any chapter would apply to his life. We went back the next day, and unfortunately we hadn't read it so we sat down and started reading with him. One thing led to another and we were skipping around to other chapters in the BOM and started teaching about The Plan of Salvation. He didn't understand why it matters if we sin, what the point of this life was, etc etc. (2 Nephi 2) This went on for a while and we started answering more of his questions and we started to explain Christ. Who He really is, what He really did for us. The spirit was so strong. I got to watch him come to the realization that Christ is real. That He actually died for us, that He loves us, and that only through Him we can reach our full happiness and be with our Heavenly Father again. Chase couldn't comprehend the love that Christ had for us. It completely blew him away.

So throw back the MTC when I wanted to leave someone in complete AWE like the Savior did. This was that exact moment I had wanted. Chase was so excited! It all clicked for him. He told us that if this is all true that this is HUGE! We told him how he could find out for himself, through reading, study and prayer. He said he wasn't much of a faith guy to receive this kind of an answer. We read him Alma 32:27. And his face was just in shock. He said "it’s like that verse was written for me at this exact moment." We were able to explain to him again just how this book applies to us in every way! 

Y’ALL THIS WAS SO COOL. We have never had a lesson this cool before! 

Grandpa-Thank you for sending me that Atonement transcript! I LOVE IT. I want to write about what I learned about it next week. 

Sorry today there wasn't anything super rad or spiritual. 

Oh one last fun/stressful thing. We are filling up the font right now to have a baptism at 3 today! SPANISH BAPTISM! WOO! Stressful thing- she owns a bakery and WORKS ALL THE TIME. And we haven't gotten a hold of her today, so hopefully she shows up. hahaha no really it’s actually really stressful right now. But hey y’all might get some baptism pics here in a few hours. We shall see. 

Have a good week, love y’all

Hasta luego. 

Falling Water - Last PDay

For P-Day last week David Button and Sam Smith took us to Falling Water! It's a bunch of waterfalls and rocks. Go look up pictures, it's sweet! I wanna go back when I can actually swim. haha We were able to take our shoes off and walk around the shallow parts :) It was fun to adventure around!