Starting with Tuesday night. Our carbon monoxide alarm went off at 10:20, but it was only because it was out of batteries. I wasn't worried about it but S. Clark was convinced that we were going to die, so she wrapped a scarf around her mouth and nose (still not sure what function that served) and called our district leader. He called our zone leaders, who called President Harding. Right as I was about to turn off the light and get into bed, E. Clark (zone leader) called and said that we needed to find someplace else to stay for the night. Our options were to kick the Center elders our of their apartment or stay at the church. We chose the church.
It was 11 by the time that we got there and I was feeling bitter, haha. We locked the door behind us and set the alarm, then went into the sacrament hall and made our beds on the floor.Ten minutes later, we heard the alarm go off, so we ran downstairs and tried to reset it one more time. It went off again. We punched in the code and figured that we'd be fine without the alarm set.
We went back upstairs and I joked to S. Clark that the cops were probably going to show up, and by now I'm starting to realize that whatever I joke about generally ends up happening.
I was way too paranoid to even lay down for a while because I had thought that I'd heard a siren outside. I just sat on the floor, hugging my legs and watching the windows. After a few minutes of that, I was pretty sure that searchlights were being pointed at the windows. S. Clark's reaction was to get down as close to the ground as she could, whereas mine was to try to make it very obvious that we were just little babies so they wouldn't shoot us. Very telling moment of who's from Idaho and who's from Vegas.
Nothing really happened for the next 15 minutes, so we just went to bed. I mean, roughly speaking. I was lying on the ground and waiting for the cops to bust open the door and sic their dog on me.
I'm using the lateness of the evening to excuse my dramatics, by the way.
As I was lying there, I felt vibrations on the ground like footsteps. I shot up and asked S. Clark if she could hear it. She crawled over to me (still convinced that if she stood up, she'd be shot), pointed at the door and said, "Somebody turned on the hall light."
In retrospect, my reaction wasn't 100% logical but I turned on the lights, threw open the door and called, "Allo?" That's the Russian way of saying hello, if it wasn't already clear. Right in front of me was a terrified looking President Spalvens (branch president) and a police officer.
We told him what we were doing there and thankfully he wasn't upset at all for the lateness of the hour.
Long story not so short, we didn't get much sleep that night. It was definitely something I'll never forget.
And no, there was never a problem with our carbon monoxide levels. (Insert eye twitch here.)
Something really exciting for us this week was the launching of our "Night with the Missionaries" program. We made a calendar and got some people to sign up, but basically what it is is an opportunity for members to do missionary work their way with our assistance. As missionaries, we always try to get members to come to lessons with investigators, which is called a "member-present". But this is the opposite...it's kind of like a "missionary-present" night for them. They get to choose what we do, where we go, and what we teach. They can be creative with it, too: we could bake something for a less-active and drop it off, have a party (in the most mild sense of the word, haha) with their friends that they want to introduce to the gospel, and a million other things. Lidija's idea is awesome: she wants to make a "How to Bear Your Testimony" book full of ways that will help members realize that bearing your testimony doesn't have to be at the pulpit and it doesn't have to start with the formal, "I know...".
We also held the Pinewood Derby on Saturday. The worm didn't end up looking too bad, but he's mostly like a show-horse in the sense that he's got all the beauty without the speed. 5th place, my friends. Elder Hampton dubbed it "The Little Worm That Almost Could". Ouch.
The good news is that Inna came and, because she didn't make a car, I gave her someone's who didn't show up. Of course, she ended up taking first place. She said, "I woke up and knew something lucky was going to happen today."
President and Sister Harding were there and acted as our judges. Afterwards, S. Harding went with us to Inna's and we taught her. We had planned on teaching her about prophets but it didn't feel right so we ended up talking about God's love and the Book of Mormon. Cool fact: it was Sister Harding's first time on a lesson with the missionaries in the Baltics. Woo hoo! She is an amazing teacher. She listened and applied pure doctrine to Inna's situation so well without getting distracted by little things that tend to distract me.
We had taught Inna the Word of Wisdom earlier in the week and it was definitely not received favorably. She said that it was "laughable" that we don't drink coffee and had about a million different excuses as to why she needs it. We never argued with those, but consistently pointed her back to the fact that if we love God, then we obey His commandments. Also stressed that she needed to ask God if it's really what He expects of her and she immediately said, "I know this is true, but why does God want me to be miserable?" Haha she needed some time to think and pray about it. When we met again, she said that God gave her an idea that in order to quit smoking, she needed to plan out every situation when she would feel the desire to smoke and then decide how she'd react beforehand. Чудо!
I've spent a lot of time thinking about Inna's concerns and I had the idea to write down all of my excuses that I could possibly have for being disobedient. Then, after pondering that list, I wrote down all of the excuses I could think of that Christ would have had to be disobedient.
Let me tell you, they were better excuses than mine.
The fact is that we can all find a million and one different reasons why we don't need to be obedient to the commandments, but it takes a person with true integrity of character to value the one most compelling reason to forget all of those: a deep and abiding love of God and desire to be like Him.
On Sunday, President Harding asked me to give a talk right before sacrament about the Holy Ghost. What impression came to mind was to speak on the power that the Holy Ghost has to change the very desires of our hearts when we rely upon the Atonement.
If you don't feel that your love for God is deep enough or if you don't have a natural desire to be obedient, pray for one. That is a gift that Heavenly Father is more than ready to give to you if you're willing to work for it. That is a trait that must be a part of your soul if you plan on having any kind of lasting peace in your life.
I love you. Thanks so much for your prayers and support. I'm pretty sure I've spent my whole life surrounded with some of the best people this world has to offer.
So who's the luckiest girl on the planet? THIS ONE.
(Ugh. So cheesy. Sorry.)
Love,
Sister Gooch
P.S. Sorry the pictures are so crappy...the elders took it for me real quick :) DAS MY WORM!
No comments:
Post a Comment