Ollo

Hey Hey Hey

Well this week has been pretty awesome! its amazing what an attitude change can do for you! Mom i think i finally understand what you ment when you would always tell me that noone can make me feel a certain way. only I can influence how i feel. So yeah this week has been good. Not to say that its not hard anymore, believe me, its still super hard. but i am just finding more joy in the work and learning to just treasure and love every minute of my mission because itgoes by so fast and i will never have this time back and i dont want to keep looking back and regreting things. But I am getting more used to Beaumont. I still feel like i dont know anyone is the ward, and Lake Charles still feels like my home. I dont get home sick anymore, i get home sick for Lake Charles. haha Sorry guys. But dont worry. i still miss you too. The ward is super nice and VERY missionary oriented so that is a nice change from LC and we get fed alot which is not so good. but i am doing better about not gaining so much weight. haha sister Kempton is the sister Training leader so she goes on exchanges once a week so that is good and gives me a chance to get to know the area better cause i get to do stuff. And sister Clegg just walks around like she is in a daze all the time and doesnt really do anything. poor girl. i think she is really homesick and her dad writes her a letter everyday and talks about home and sends pictures so that doesnt really hlep either. But we are doing really good. When i was home i never felt like i was funny cause dad and Kaci were always arond. but now my cmomps laugh at everything i say so i guess i am funny? who knows. you get a strange sense of humor when you are a missionary cause you dont have that much to entertain you. But i did find a huge dead beetle and i kept hiding it around the apartment to scare my cmops. that was pretty funny. then while Kempton was gone i tied him (his name is baxter) to a piece of thread and taped it to the fan so when she came home and turned on the light inthe bedroom he came flying off and flew around in the air! haha it was so funny. i was peeing my pants! baxter flew around the room for 10 minutes and she didnt even notice! so he started getting really stinky so i finally took him down. But i still have him so now i am going to hide him in the elders car so it will stink it up. haha im so mean. Oh and mom the elders here are Elder Limb who i was with in LC and Elder Ho Ching he is poly. They are awesome but sometimes they bug me and they are always asking me to make them food. but i guess hat is just guys for ya. haha So we have Karen who is our main progressing Gator. She is getting baptized on the 17th of august in a swim cap, nose plugs, ear plugs and sitting down not going backwards. she has a phobia of water and she gets dizzy if she lays down. so that will be interesting but its awesome that she is goig to overcome her fears and get baptized! she is kinda crazy and she came to a baptism on friday the ward pinewook derby on satrurday and churchon sunday and she has to be the center of attention. it is so funny. but she loved it. Kurwin is our other gator. He is awesome and committed to baptism our first visit. but he lives somewhere else on the weekeednds so he cant come to church here so we are working on that. I am in the Ghetto and there are always sirens going off and gun shots being fired but it is pretty awesome. I am atarting to love the ppl here and Today i am cutting a ladies hair in the ward who just got baptized and she just found ot that she has breast cancer. it is so sad. We do alot of tracting and LA work because there are alot of part member families in the ward. I love being a misionary and even tho i hate the heat I am loving it down here. I hope you all have an awesome week! I love yall sooooooo much!

Love sister Hamilton

Sweating

Hello all my loves! I cant believe that it is monday already. This week went by super fast and July is going by in the blink of an eye. I cant believe that it is almost over. Yesterday was my "Official" six month mark and I have a year left. That is so crazy to me. I feel like i have only been gone for a month or two at the most. But i am loving my mission and This week i really took a look at myself and all that is and has happened and I realized alot of things. First of all, I need to stop complaining about everything. My Heavenly Father loves me and knows what i need, and i dont. I know what i want and what will be easy for fun for me, but i dont know what i need. I need to trust him that everything i am going thru, all the hard times, the rejection, the heat, the companions, the tears, the heartache. all of this is for a reason and i just need to learn from all of these experiences and turn them into stepping stools intead of stumbling blocks. Next thing, We have this paper that is called the ladder of accountability and at the bottom is people like laman and lemuel who just blame and complain about everything and then at the top are people like Captain moroni and Nephi, the people who make it happen and no matter what their circumstances are they make things happen. So i am working on staying on the top of that ladder and making things happen instead of being at the bottom. I am a missionary, a representative of Jesus Christ and I need to start acting like one more. Next is that i need to remember to take a step back and realize that missions are supposed to be hard!  My 18 months have the potential of being one of the greatest learning experiences of my whole life! Even tho i have never read it, i remember seeing a book titled 'If life were easy it wouldnt be hard'. I have taken that motto to my mission. If my missin were easy it wouldnt be hard. It my mission is easy and i never have to work for anything it wouldnt be hard and thus it wouldnt be worth it. I would leave and come home the same person (plus a few pounds from all the food i am eating down here) Things in life that have the most value are the ones that we have to work for the most. And i want my misison to be the best experience for myself and also for my companions so I need to crack down and remember the hard times are worth it. Next, I need to do all i can to be with christ. You may think that because i am on a mission and i go and share the word all day that i am close to christ. Wrong. Satan works on me so hard, some days i just want to give up and give in, But i cant. There are too many people who are ready and just waiting for the gospel. they are sitll in that state of Apostasy, in a famine of hearing the word of the lord and they want it as bad as they would want bread of water in a regular famine, and i can be the one to help bring them out of that state of Apostasy. Our purpose is to invite others to come unto christ. Well how can I invite others to come unto christ if i am not there myself? I need to do all i can to make sure that i am always With Christ so that when I invite others to come unto christ they will have no doubt that i am already there. There are so many things that i need to work on and imporve and it makes me sick to think of the past 6 months that i wasted because i wasnt thinking of these things and i wasnt working on them. so much wasted time but that is what the atonement of Our Savior Jesus Christ is for. We have the chance to repent and to turn away from our sin and to turn towards him and commit to follow him more fully. I am not saying that i have committed serious sins as a missionary, but repentance can be even just commiting to follow the Lord more fully in our lives. and that is what i have realized. Sometimes when i pray at night and think over my day and talk to my Father in Heaven about the day, i may not always have alot of things that i did wrong, but there is always room to improve and Concecrate myself more fully to Him and to the Gospel and Being a missionary. My brain is so full of things that i wish i could tell you. but i have never been good with words so i hope that this all makes some sort of sence. Haha I really had a good sunday yesterday and I really thought about my Savior during the sacrament and how important and sacred the sacrament is. we taught some LA members about the importance of the sacrament this week and it was a good reminder for me. One of the apostles said that if we really could understand how important the sacrament is, we would crawl on our hands and knees to get it. We dont repeat many things in our church, but the ones that we do are the ones that are the most important. Think of the sacrament, we do it every week with the same prayers and in the same way. it is very important. We had president interviews this past week and It was a good time to evaluate myself and how i think i am progressing as a missionary. I was stuck in the mind set that i am not going to learn much from this transfer becasue i am at the bottom of the bottom and i dont get to do or say much but that is the wrong attitude. I can learn and grow from any experiece if i let myself and i do my part. I cant expect the lord or simply just 'going on a mission' change me. I have to work to change myself. and believe me its going to take a lot of work, and 18 months wont be enough time. But I know that as long as i do my part and have faith and trust in my Heavenly Father that I can become the missionary that he expects and the Person that i want to become. I love you all so much! i am so grateful for every single one of you in my life and I pray for you ALL THE TIME. I Hope that all is well and that yall are having an awesome summer and that you are all doing your best to come closer to christ. we all can be closer and there is always something that we can do better every single day. I know this church is true more then i know anything else. I also know that the Book of Mormon was written for us is our day and for the trials that we will experience in our lives and that it can help us come closer to Christ then any other book. I know it is true!  I know that my savior died for me, but more importantly that he lives!

Love sister Hamilton  

Transferred (from july 8th)

Hey family!

I hope you all are doing well! I have been worried about yall this past week for some reason so i hope all is well. This was a pretty slow week for us, its so hot and lots of people leave Lake charles for the summer to get away from the heat. but we have been trying our best to stay busy and to find the Elect! easier said then done. haha

mon- we went to beaumont for our combined zone pday and we watched the best two years. it was so funny to watch all of the missionaries crack up and be like oh that makes sense now. haha it was really cool which was nice becasuea everyone has been telling me about how miserable july and august are. but we got a cool front so that was really nice. We went to visit brother Boise and i said goodbye becasue i was assuming that i would be getting transfered. I gave him a hug. Whoops. I have hugged so many men this week. I am probably going to get sent home! haha but ppl down here love to hug!

tue- we had 5 member present lessons set up and all of our gators cancled on us! it was soooo sad! so we just checked up on a bunch of formers and none of them had time for us and told us to come back later. so then we just did tracting which noone is ever home but we do our best to go to places where it looks likek ppl are home.

wed- we usually dont tract really nice rich areas casue they have a reputation for not talking to us but we decided to anyway and we found a really solid potential so that was awesome! then we visited with a LA that we just got into contact with and he basically told us taht he dosent have time for church but he still believes the church is true and everything. but he siad that even tho his wife is catholic we could come over anytime and they would feed us. so he was super nice and we had a good visit. then we taught Carl and he told us that we are trained really well to talk about the priesthood because we keep trying to tell him that he needs to be baptized by the proper authority. he is so funny. he thinks we are brainwashed to talk about the priesthood. I said goodbye to him so if i can ever get my camera to work i will send you a picture of us! haha  then we went to visit Rose and i said goodbye to them. Rose is the sweetest lady. And i feel really bad for her. but i am glad that i got to work with her and hopefully i was able to help her in some way. After dinner we did some tracting and we talked to this lady on her porch for a long time about how much she loves her church and how it changed her life. It is so hard when you meet ppl like that becasue they really have changed and they are being blessed and they are happy but they are still missing so much! We went to check on a LA man Niraj who is from Nepal and his family they are doing well and they were having a big partry so we didnt stay very long. hopefully we will get to teach the whole family soon! well i guess sister Barton will get to teach them. But i still hope they get taught eventually!

thur- Was a really slow day and it was super hot. We went to visit maw maw jones and try and teach her friend that she has been talking to but the firend was gone so we just talked to maw maw for a minute and then we did our hour of power which got moved up to 5 for safety reasons and we knocked on 40+ doors and only two ppl answered and they didnt want us. hahah but it was good and we felt good about it becasue even tho it was a holiday and noone was home we were still diligent and obedient and did what we were asked. then we went to our ward party and had dinner and a couple of our LA that we have been working with were there so that was happy for us! and then our president wanted us with member or in our apartments unless we had lessons. and all of the members had plans and were going to watch the fireworks and wouldt be home in time for our curfew so we just went home. It was weird. i always forget that i am not in utah anymore and that lots of ppl get drunk on holidays and i guess its not safe for us to be out. haha i wanted to go do work cause evening is the best cause its not as hot and more ppl are home.

fri- we had zone meeting, my last one in the zone. it was good. we talked about being more consecrated missionaries and our zone leaders made us this chart that we are supposed to fill out and how our missions will benefit the rest of our lives. it made everyone trunky. haha then we went on exchanges so i stayed in orange with sister Hyde and erickson and Gremlin went to lake charles with sister Barton. orange is a really open area. basically everyone you talk to is open to you coming back. i wish lake charles was like that! haha Exchanges are good.

sat- I was in orange half the day so we did service all morning. and we went to the church to help give out the food from the bishops store house. that was really interesting. but it was good. Its sad how many people are struggling. it sure makes me feel even more blessed! Then after we exchanged back we went to teach a little old lady that we fould tracting but once we started talking to her we figured out that she has short term memory loss. haha so it was a interesting lesson. then we did some more tracting and checking up on potentials. then we had a prompting to go and visit Keitha, a LA lady i dont know if i have told you about her befor or not. but when we got there she was so happy and said that she had been praying all day that the sisters would come over. She is having a hard time and her brother is dying so we talked to her for a while and i said goodbye and i cired to much! i didnt think i was that attatched to her but i guess i am! she has a soft spot in my heart. Then i got the call that i was being transfered and then i really started stresssing and thinking about packing! haha i have so much stuff.

sun- my last corellation meeting i am going to miss the elders i serve with here so much! it has been a good 6 months. I am truly blessed to have been able to serve here in lake charles for the time that i did. I met so many good pelple and made so many memories that i will treasure forever. Michael bore his testimony and talked about how grateful he was for me but he calls me pocahauntis. haha and then it was really sweet untill he started talking about politics and at the end instead of saying amen he just said thank you and walked off. haha it was so funny! The reynolds took us home with them so we would have to use our miles and we had dinner with them and they made bbq in honor of me cause its my favorite. it was so cute. I cried so much saying goodbye to them. they are like my grandparent now! I went to say goodbye to Lee Savoie and he told me that i made a difference in his life and he is truly grateful for me. He melts my heart! what a cute little old man. We went to go teach a lady that we found but there was a creepy guy outside her house that wouldnt let us talk to her so we jsut left.

And now today i have been packing all moring and trying to get everything together for me to leave. I am really sad about leaving but It will be good for me to have a new place, new streets to tract and new ppl to love. Lake Charles is like my second home now and even tho i could never live here i will always love it! I am excited to find out where i am going next and the new adventures that i will have. I am so blessed to be a missionary! I would have never expected to be where i am at this point in my life but there is nowhere else that i would rather be then out here sweating my guts out talking to ppl about the restored Gospel! the church is true, i know that with every part of my heart and soul! This Gospel has brought so much into my life and so many blessings. I am grateful for all yall and the support that i get. I love you soooo much! have a good week! Dont send my anything or i wont get it forever! hahah Love yall!

Sister Hamilton

B-town ( From july 15th)

Well hello family. Its so good to get to email! i feel like it has been ages! this has been a really long week and let me just say i dont have the best attitude right now but i am working on it. this is a really hard adjustment for me and i am kinda in a depression mode cause i miss lake charles so much. i thought i would be happy to leave but now that i am gone i want to go back! haha i am in a trio now and it is a hard adjustment. having three girls in one teeny apartment is not very fun or easy. but i am trying to get used to it.but i am praying my guts out for charity and patience so it will come. It was really hard for me to say goodbye to susan. i cried a whole bunch and her and her family were crying so that made me cry evern harder! transfer meeting was good and I am just trying to get used to Beaumont Texas. its relaly different and i dont know anything about the area or the ppl and my comps arent much help. but we are working on it. I feel like i am being punished so i will have to ask pres what i did wrong. haha But I just have to think about why i am out here and why i am doing this. I love my savior and that is why i am out here. Because of him. THe work is hard and the realationships are even harder. The challenge now is to get my heart into beaumont because it is still pounded into the streets of lake charles. I dont really know what went on this week and i am out of it so once i get more used to everything i wil be able to give a more detailed email about my week. but i am alive for the moment and i am working on loving everyone! haha I am supposed to be a experienced missionary because all the real experienced ones are going home now. haha that is interesting. but Life is good. besided me being a whiney baby i am good. My comps are sister Kempton who is the boss and sister Clegg. she is really sweet and told me today thanks for coming cause if i didnt she would have gone crazy. so im glad that i am helping someone. I love you all and i miss you all sooo much! sorry for this lame email by thoughrts are all just scattered and I feel like i am living not my life. haha But i hopw all is well at home and that yall are all safe and happy. I love you all so much! have a good week!

Love sister Hamilton 

Sicky

Hey hey hey so another week has come and gone, time is going by so fast it is so crazy! i am on the second to last week of my forth transfer and i have been in lake charles for almost six months! cray cray but anyway i love you all so much and i am glad to hear that all is well becasue i slept for one hour last night and i figured it must be because something was wrong. so hopefully yall arent hiding anything from me.

mon- the elders were being dumb so we just stayed in our apartment and then they showed up and wanted haircuts right as we were leaving for a dinner appt. but i am working on my christ like attributes so i cut elder yeates hair, even tho i really didnt want to. haha but we had dinner with a member man and his LA wife. they are super nice and we had a good talk. we cant figure out why she is LA cause she talked about the church and how much she liked it the whole time. haha then we had an appt with bonnie but when we got to her house our pamphlet we left was in the door and she wrote a note that said she didnt want to talk to us anymore and sorry but then she opened the door to let her dog out when we were still standing there so then she had to talk to us. haha but she just said that we would be wasting our time because she is going to stay catholic even if God told her to change religions. so yeah, got dropped. then we had to drive to orange and we spent the night so we could go to our meeting in the morning.

tue- we had to be in vidor at 6;15 and there were five girls in one apartment so it was pretty tricky all getting ready in the morning. haha but our zone Conference with Elder Golden was AMAZING!!!  he is a really cool guy and he just told us a bunch of random stuff about how we could be better missionaries. one thing that he talked alot about was how our personal righteousness= faith. we show our faith and improve our faith by our personal righteousness, that was an interesting thing that i had never thought about before. but it has helped me. THen we had a leadership meeting and the whole time Elder Golden just talked about the priesthood and he said that the reason why elders serve for 24 months and sisters for 18 is because missions help you mature and sisters are mature and spiritually ready after 18 months but it takes the elders a little longer. I wish elder yeates was in that meeting to hear that! haha But our meetings were really nice and it was a good day. Then that night i stayed in orange with sister erickson and sister Germer cause we were on exchanges. i was really nervous and i didnt want to go! but i put on my big girl pants and sucked it up. and everything went well untill that night when we were getting ready for bed and erickson asked how long it took for ALL (we only had two and they were ones that the elders gave us when they had to change areas) of our gators to drop us after she left. And so i answered and was like we were only working with two? and she was like well I guess only i was working with them cause you did nothing. Ohhhhhhhh no you did'nt. I was so mad. i had to get up and go in the bathroom for a while to cool down. but its whatevs. im over it.

wed- i was in orange all day and didnt really do anything. it reminded me of my first two transfers. then we switched back and we went to dinner with sister Gibson one of only two black ladies in our ward. she is so awesome! i love her so much. she is the one that we helped her clean her school bus. we had a good talk with her about how she joined the church but she gets frustrated cause the missionaries have only ever took her to black investigators and so she told us that if her testimony is good for black ppl its good for white ppl too! so we are going to hopefully take her out with us sometime.

thu- I woke up and i felt like i got hit by a bus. my voice was gone and i had a fever and My head was going to explode i was so conjested. so i stayed in bed and then our DL came over and gave me ablessing and made me some soup and they talked to us for awhile cause they thought it was pretty funny that i didnt have a voice. Then we had an appt with Gloria and Roger so we went to that and sister Barton just had to teach cause i couldnt talk. and then we came home and i layed down for awhile and then i got up agian to do the HOP and sister Barton had to talk to whole time for that too. Then we had Michaels new member lesson with the morris's and susan. I was sad casue i love those so much and i wasnt feeling good so i was out of it the whole time. But It was good. Michael is still doing awesome!

fri-I still felt pretty poopy but my voice was kinda back so we went out and taught a bunch of potentials and we got two new Gators! Robyn and Destiny! Then we had dinner with the Kenneys and we had a scary night! We are supposed to have daily contact with our Gators so we decided to go check on Gloria and Roger. so they live in the projects so #1 scary thing we were in the projects kinda later in the evening. so we got to there house and Roger was outside so he came over and started apologizing to us because he was "under the influence" and had been drinking cause he was mad at his mom. so we were like ok well is gloria here? and she wasnt so we were going to leave but then he started almost crying and was like i need to pray with yall. so we stood there on the grass and prayed with him and then he started getting all creepy and was calling me pretty eyes and was trying to get us to come in his house and was like im not going to hurt you dont you trust me and then there were all these other creepy guys that were walking around outside making cat calls at us so finally we were just like you know what roger we have to go and we jumped in the car and as we were leaving he was like you didnt even talk to me about first nephi and i even read it like you told me to. but it was just too creepy so we had to leave. sister Barton was so mad at me. haha

sat- we went to visit alot of ppl! we visited alot of LA members then we did some service with little Suzie and then we had an appt with a potential but she wasnt home so we went home and had dinner and then we went to visit a member who is having a hard time and had a good talk with her and then we had an appt with a kind of potential. this man we met siad we could come back and talk about God with him and his wife. His name is terrance and when we were talking we were blown away! he is a mormon he just doesnt know it! he was raised catholic but he doesnt agree with some stuff and everything he was saying was stuff that we believe it. it was so awesome and they want us to come back and talk to their sons. so that was pretty cool. we didnt get to teach them so i asked if we coudl come back and "practice" our teaching on them and they said they would love that. so that will be good. Terrance will prlbably be the bishop when i come back to visit! haha

sun- Gloria came to church! she is so cute. she loved it but she had surgery thursday so she went home after sunday school cause she wasnt feeling good and her surgery spot started bleeding. but she loved it and wants to come back! Then we had a mish broadcast from salt lake which was really good. it was alot about members becasue members are the real missionaries we are just here to help. pres monson siad that "now is the time for the members and the missionaries to labor together in the lords vinyard, doing the lords work, Joseph smith said, after all that is said and done the most important work is to preach the gospel." It made me so excited to be a member missionary so yall better get to work finding ppl for the missionaries to teach! this gospel is so amazing and we need to be Bold and talk about it often and to everyone we come into contact with! For i am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ! Be bold, do something out of your comfort zone! invite someone to church. now is the time that we need to step it up and bring souls unto christ. I love you all so much and i am so grateful for yall and the support that you give me. Dont worry about me, i have the gospel, worry about all of Gods children out there who do not have it. I love you! have a good week!

Blacktism is no more. . .

Well This week has probably been one of the longest weeks yet! sister barton and i cant figure it out, why is dragged on so much. it started out really bad and we were so depressed, but we worked hard and pushed thru it and it ended up being a pretty good week. lots of tracting and knocking in the heat but its good for us.

 mon- we went and taught Gloria and Rose came with us. Gloria's son Roger sat in on the lesson too. It went really well and they were very open with there comments and they were really into the lesson. it was awesome! and the spirit was tehre so strong! i think that was the best lesson we have ever taught. i t was awesome!

tue- we had an appointment with michelle and we also needed keishas permission slip signed becasue they were leaving for girls camp that day. so we went over and noone was home and when we called michelle one of her kids answered the phone and said that her mom was busy but she wanted us to call this number so we called it and it was the dad and he just started yelling at us and told us not to come over ever again and to quit calling. and that they had heard horrible things about the church and they didnt want to be a part of it. and that keisha would not be going to camp. then he hung up. so that was heart shattering! michelle was doing so good! she was excited to be baptized and sister trahan bought keisha everything she needed for camp! it was so sad. so we called sister clifford and told her. and then she called basically the whole ward so we had millions of ppl calling us and asking what was going on. it was so sad. Then we did some tracting and we helped rose move for awhile and then we had dinner with crystal and then dinner with the trahans and then michales new member lessons with susan and the morris'. it was a crazy time! but michael has really good comments sometimes. he told us about our family and why they dropped us. he is really smart sometimes. haha

wed- we finally got ahold of savannah after a couple of weeks and her major freak out. she said we could come over so we went and we were over there for almost three hours! she just kept going on and on about the randomest things. she is trying to find problems in the BOM everywhere! i think its becasue she knows its true but she isnt ready to take that step and make the changes in her life necessary and she doesnt like the way we worship so she is trying to convince herself that it is not true. which is so hard because everytime we teach her she is in tears so you know that she is feeling the spirit but if she choosed to deny it there is nothing we can do. then we went to visit deborah and we met with our homeless man at the library and taught him. he said the only way he would join the church is if God gave him a new set of teeth, cause he is kinda athiest at the moment. so that was interesting. then we did more tracting and then we had dinner withthe morris' they are alot of fun. and they help us out aton.

thu- we had lunch with sister stott. she is so funny! she was telling us to put deodorant all over our bodies and on our faces. it was pretty funny. its been so hot here lately that you just sweat no matter what so there is really no point. everyone just stinks. then we had to go have our car checked out cause a bunch of lights were on and that took awhile then we went and taught Bonnie and she said she would never change from being catholic but she will. she just doesnt know it yet. then we did our hour of power and then more tracting. it was a tracty tract day.

fri- we had district meeting and when we were at lunch Gail called and left a message and told us not to send anyone to pick him up cause he didnt want to go to church anymore and he would call us when he was ready. so all uf us went over tthere to see him and tellhim that he needs to keep coming to church. so he agreed as long as sister barton and i picked him up. he is so funny. poor little gail. he was so depressed cause he feels like we abandoned him and that we only cared about our gators and not him anyomore. then we went and helped rose move again and then we went and saw gloria cause she just got out of the hospital and Roger asked for a BOM and they are still interested in what we are teaching, but we didnt teach them cause we wanted a member withus and we didnt have time casue we had to meet the ZL at the church cause they came to blitz our area. so they went to try and find this referral that we got and we went to tract. so we talked to alot of ppl and got alot of potentials and we had a really good talk with this one guy and he said that we can come back and teach him andhis wife. so that was really cool. then we met back up with the ZL and they found a couple ppl too that said we could come back andthey found us a new gator. and we had an appt with her the next day. 

sat- we went to visit a LA and we had a good talk with her, she  siad she tries to come to church but she falls asleep. then we had our appt with our new gator but she wasnt there. so that was sad. then we went and helped susan. we cleaned her shower and i inhaled some nasty nast cleaner and my lungs have been on fire ever since. whenever i take a deep breath i cough aton. but it was so fun! cute little susan. she is so funny. she is the new ward chorister and she loves it! she has a really good voice so everyone can hear here and everyone was complimenting her to us last week. haha it was funny.  then we had a dinner with a LA man and his catholic wife that we had never met before but they were super nice and they love the missionaries and used to feed them all the time. so we had a good time with them and we had a good talk about religion and such. they are very spiritual. then we went to check on some LA and noone was home so we did some tracting.

sun- we went and got Gail and it was crazy. i was pushing him and i started coughing so i let go with one of my hands and he vered to the right and crashed into the curb. haha it was sad but it was so funny! then sister barton took over and then she crashed him into the curb too. hahah then all the sudded there was this kitten in Gail's wheel and it was about to get crushed by this 500 pound man in his wheel chair! so i picked it up and tried to make it go away but it kept coming back so i must have liked gail, but he hates cats. I told him he needed to say hi to the kitty so he just waved and siad hi. he is so funny. i pushed him home and we had a good talk about the holy ghost. We visited the conners after church and they are doing better health wise but still notcoming to church. they need friends at church casue they dont have anyone to talk to so i think they are not very motivated to go. its really sad. then we had dinner with president newton and his family and that was good. then we went and taught gloria and Roger and finished L1 they are so awesome! they told us that they pray for us all the time and thank god for sending us to them. they are so cute. i love them. they are both really into what we are teaching them and they are oging to start praying about it. Then we went and took Cookies to Rod for fathers day and had a little chat with them. they are so cute. they are my lake charles family. I love them. Oh yeah i forgot to tell you that we are having elder Golded from the 70 speak to us tomorrow that will be cool! and i am going on exchanges with sister erickson, so that will be really interesting. wish me luck! haha

This was a hard week with our gators dropping us. we are not teaching anyone that we were teaching last transfer. we have had to start over from the beginning. we had the most success tracting this week so that was good. hopefully we can get some new gators out of all the potentials. i know that the lord prepares those who are ready, and i guess that those we were teaching were just not ready for the gospel yet. but we did alot fo prep work for the missionaries who will come after. The work is hard and sometimes i want to give up and cry cause it seems like everyone doesnt want anything to do with us, but i know that it is all part of the work and when we get to have a good day and teach a lesson it makes it all worth it. Gloria and Roger are keeping me going. And i am so thankful that we are able to be teaching them. I hope you all had a good week and that lacrosse is going good. Love you all so much! have a good week :)

sisters....nobody likes them

Well this week was pretty rough. . . but i am not going to complain too much because everything happens for a reason and obviously there is something we need to be learning from this experience. I have had emotional overload this week and I cant even count the number of times that i have cried. Sometiems i am a baby but you just gotta get it out. it feels good to cry. But there are miracles in everyday, even if they werent finding 10 new investigators or teaching 6 member present lessons, they are miracles non the less. That helps me get thru to the next day, when i look back and find the good in the day. it makes it seem not as bad.

Mon- the elders are so dumb. they are obsessed with us going to watch them play sports on pday so we get nothing done, its annoying. so today we are not hanging out with them. But i made them do the kool-aid challenge that was pretty funny. I barfed so i lost but it was fun. then we went to meet these ppl that sister bartons aunt and uncle are best friends with casue they used to like in lake charles. so that was interesting. they arent really opent o the gospel but we are going to work on it. we had dinner with our favorite family in the ward casue they are moving! its really sad. but it was good.

tue- we are trying to contact all the LA in our area so we went to alot of houses and hardly anyone was home. we went to one guys house and talked to his wife who is a non member. they have 8 ppl living in the house and they are all from nepal, so there was indian music playing real loud up in there house, then she fed us this stuff she made, it was really interesting but she was super nice and she says she is going to talk to all the other ppl and get there permission to have us come back. Its her husbands mom, dad, grandma and grandpa and brother that live there with them. what a happy family. then we had dinner with maw maw jones my favorite person ever. what a cutie. she was telling us all about her missionary work she is doing and how it makes her sad when her friends dont want to come to church with her. andhow when someone hurts her she is going to hurt them back and tell them she wont go to their church! haha we gave her a BOM and challenged her to give it to someone that she prayed about and felt like she should give ti to them. She told us yesterday that she already gave ti to someone! she is so awesome. Then we went to visit rose and Gloria casue rose wasnt at church and we ended up mowing glorias lawn in our skirts oh and they live in the ghetto so we had lots of G's driving past or walking past laughing at us. hahah it was a good memory. lots of fun.

wed- we had a lesson with carl, i dont know if i told you about him or not but susan came with us. what a cutie. she loves coming out with us. we didnt get to say anything the whole time. we maybe said 5 words and he just talked about all this evidence that the BOM is true which is good but he needs to have a testimony of it not just know that it isnt a fake book. and he told us that we need to go find other ppl that need jesus, he already has jesus so he is good. it was frustrating cause we both felt so prompted to knock on his door. so we are still trying to figure out what we are supposed to do with him. Then we went to mama fruge and deborah and then did some tracting. nothing too eventful happened.

thu- We had a really good weekly planning and then we went to michelles house to try and meet with her but she wasnt home and we were all scared caseu we thought that she was just avoiding us. then we tried to go teach elizabeth but she wasnt home either so we tracted alot and it was raining so that was fun. i love the rain. we only found one girl who siad we could come back. so hopefully something will come of that. Then we did our HOP with Bro adams and bro ortiz they are the cutest best friends. Bro ortiz is amazing. he is here working and his family is back in mexico. he dosent know english very well but he is trying. he was telling us about how he has to pray to have the strength to go to church every week even tho he doesnt understand hardly anything that anyone is saying. it was really sad. but i am amzed by the strength of converts to the church. they go to churh all alone and they dont have any family to go with them but they go every week becaseu they know that this church is true and they know that they need the power of the spirit in thier lives everyday. We taught a lesson during HOP but the guy said that he isnt ready to slow down yet but when he is he would be interested in our church. but it was a good lesson. 

fri- we had zone meeting and sister erickson is in my zone now. so that was awkward. i didnt know what to say to her and it was just weird. we went to see rose after and she is moving so we helped her pack a litle and then went to glorias but she was about to take a nap so we went to keithas andhad a good lesson with her. then we had dinner witha family inthe ward and then we went to kizzas and she told us not to come back. I was really hurt. I felt like i had such a good connection with her and that we really understood each other. I had put alot of time and effort and prayer into that relationship and then she was just rude and slammed the door in our faces. i was really hurt. It was a hard day. I broke down and just cried all night. i dont even know why. I have just been super frustrted lately and the only thing that would help is to cry. so i did. hahah 

sat- we did some service for susan and dug out her living room so that she could actually use the couches and vaccumed the floor. i love susan she is so funny.  then we taught a lesson to a referral that we got and hopefully we can keep teaching her. then we went to see crystal and then susan and her family took us out to dinner. then we went to find michelle and she was home and let us in and told us that she has been waiging for us to come back and that she missed us. so that was weird casue she would t answer our phone calls and wasnt home whenever we went over. so that was a relief and she still wants to be baptized she asked us about it. 

sun- well sunday was "everyone bash the sisters day" it was rough. i hated it. so bad. in correlation mtg bro clifford started yelling at us cause i guess keisha is texting his wife non stop and is freaking her out. I was so mad. its not our fault. we only asked sister clifford to give keisha a ride twice and everything else that she has done was of her own free will. Keisha is the oldest of 9 kids and she is basically raising them. she gets no attention and she just needs somwone who loves and cares about her. Sister clifford went and bought her a ton of stuff with sister trahan and then would call her everyday and ask if she was still going to camp so she was the one who started it and then all the sudden its out fault? yeah i was so mad. and then he was all like my wife is not going to do anything for you ever again. im not going to let her. so then we had to find another ride for keisha and her sister to come to church. then elder yeates started making all these comments about how girls shoudlnt go on misisons casue its a mans job and that he would have done things so much better. i had to leave the room or i would have beaten him to a pulp. Then in ward council everyone was bashing on us too about the same thing. Ok we are sorry that our investigators like to call you and talk to you. that is totally our fault. let us just fight all your battles for you. then elder yeates went off again. and then when the meeting was over and we were leaving he turns around and is like i need a hair cut tomorrow so you need to be at the church. yeah right. i was so mad i just left. ahhhhhh i had steam coming out of my ears i was so mad. I think i have anger issues. Then we went and had lunch with sister matheson, she is so awesome. i love her. Then we found some LA and set up appts with them. so sthat was good. 

Oh i forgot what day it was but it rained alot and we got stuck in some mud and we said a prayer and then we found this guy who helped us get out! it was a miracle. The biggest one of the week. Michelle and her family are hard to work with cause they dont want to come to church but they want to get baptized. But atleast we have them to work with. I am glad for the hard weeks casue then i appreciate the good ones even better. Michael rides his bike or walks 30 miles to church every sunday. what an amazing guy. If he is crazy i dont care because he is dedicated to the gospel and i dont know many ppl who would walk 30 miles in this weather to go to church. I am so grateful for the gospel and expecially the book of mormon. it is such an amazing book that i always took for granted. my testimony of it is growing more and more every day as i watch it help ppl change their lives and come closer to christ. I am so grateful for the gospel! i love being a missionary and even tho i am always sweaty i am learing to love it. I lvoe you all and i miss you so much! thanks for all the prayers. i love you! have a good week!