Putting My Heart in Texas: PRAY FOR RAIN

Hello! I have yet to hear anyone say "Howdy!" so that is a stereotype if I ever heard one. Man.. well this week has been super interesting. I will put it in segments because there is too much to say!

Everyone has those down days...

Well... we all have those down days and this week we had a few "lets wallow in self-pity" kind of days....being a missionary is so hard but you have to stay positive! Remember Kimber? We found her thanks to a miracle! Well... we were both so excited to teach her and we prayed for her every day and had the restoration all planned out to teach her. I was so excited because it was going to be my first real lesson. Annnnd.... surprise. She isn't there. We just smiled and shrugged our shoulders and then walked over to our referal Eva's house, she lives just a few doors down from Kimber. We have stopped at Evas house probably 8 times and she has never been there. BUT this time someone answered and we were so excited when we saw the light turn on. A man comes to the door, we ask for Eva and he says, "uhhh.. she doesn't live here." It wasn't too fun to be lied to. So we get in the car and decided to just sit and wallow in self-pity for a minute. Sister Folsom and I just kept saying, "GAH! Where does the lord want us to go!? Where are the tens of thousands!"... we called our district leader to vent and he and his companion just had the exact same thing happen to them...so we talked and decided that we needed to just get out there and get back to work! The support we give each others as missionaries is pretty amazing! It is so cool that we all have the same purpose!

Everything Happens for a Reason

The other day we stopped to get gas and the gas pump wouldn't work. We tried pulling it out, putting it back in, swiping the card again, switched gas pumps, and repeated the frustrating cycle... still no avail. So we look at each other and I say, "Well... maybe we are supposed to go talk to the guy inside!" Sister Folsom said, "I was thinking the exact same thing!" So we went inside and talked to him, he told us how to get the gas to work and then we gave him a Mormon.org card, who knows if he was interested but while we were in there we were a voice behind us say, "Stay away from the beer Sisters!" and it was a member from the Woodlands ward. So we talked to him for a bit and he told us about his mission in Japan, then we talked to two firefighters who were waiting in line to buy Gatorade. Who knows why we were supposed to go back into the gas station but we ended up talking to 4 different people about the gospel just because our gas pump wasn't pushed far enough into the car! Maybe we planted a seed somewhere along the way!

Love for Strangers

Man, everyday we meet someone with a heartbreaking story. So many people are going through divorces, are on disability, got kicked out of their house, lost their job, are fighting for custody, have a loved one in the hospital, or are recovering from an addiction... and with Christ's name on our chest it is our duty to use our time to help these people come and find the gospel, or if they are not quite prepared to hear it, which is often the case, it is our duty to just love them as the savior would. It is our duty as missionaries. We are on the Lords time, not our own.

We went with a member in our ward and visited a less active member who is struggling. She just about broke my heart she has 7 kids with different fathers and right now she is fighting for custody for her 7 year old son. She is currently in the middle of a divorce, and she is being sued by her ex-husband. She is just lost. She told us that she knows that god will help her and he knows what is best, but she is just about ready to give up. We shared with her D&C 121 and told her that her afflictions will be but a small moment. I felt so much love for this woman and for her children. When we knocked on her door she was in the middle of reading her scriptures and she has so much faith but she just needs to hold on a little bit longer!

Elder Golden is Golden

Every so often a general authority visits each mission and we had Elder Golden from the Seventy come and it was so good! He is such an amazing man and the spirit was so strong. There was a fireside on Thursday night for Recent Converts and investigators, and Elder Golden spoke! It was amazing. We brought a member from our ward who has been struggling and before anyone had even started speaking she was crying. Once the musical number started Rachel just started sobbing. She felt the spirit so strong and it was amazing, she just kept apologizing and we said, "it's okay! don't apologize!" I told her that I am a crier too and that made her feel better!

Friday we met with Elder Golden and he kinda gave us a pep talk, man it was so deep! But he really inspired Sister F and I to be better! So friday night we went tracting at the trailer park and it was awesome!

Trailer Park Tycoon

We had a few doors slapped in our faces, lots of tattooed shirtless men, one jealous girlfriend who didn't want two pretty christian girls hitting on her man, one very drunk atheist who wanted us to walk his dog with him (yikes, we said no), a million mosquitoes and lots of yappppy yappy dogs. But we met with a few awesome people who invited us back! We are excited about it! Trailer parks are DA BOMB. All the rich people are so content and so its so nice to tract trailer parks because they are so humble and most of them are going through pretty tough stuff right now. We talked with these women with like 2 teeth left in their mouth, we asked them to pray and they grabbed our hands and we all stood in a circle. I like got way nervous and didn't know what to say in my prayer because they were like all humming and had cigarettes in their mouth. Sister Folsom said that happens all the time and its only a matter of time before someone in the middle of your prayer people will shout "Hallelujah!" or "AMEN! Praise the lord!" If you start the prayer you are the "leader" and so if you ask someone to pray and then say, "sure you can lead!" then you pray and they pray after you and its like a chain effect of prayer. I think its so funny! But we pray on people's porches all the time and its like totally normal its bizarre!

Toilet Troubles

Well... we woke up the other morning to see that our water pump broke... COOL. Sister G called and told us that they were going to drive over to the Nursery to shower and that we could come with them, I groaned and said, "ummm I think we are okay, we showered yesterday. Thanks though!" Apparently Sister F and I were still half asleep and we didn't really understand the gravity of the situation. NO WATER=SHOWER, TEXAS HEAT= DAILY SHOWER OR ELSE DEATHLY STENCH. NO WATER= NO TOILET... good thing we had really spicy food the night before and we drink like a million bottles of water a day so we dont melt when we step outside. The combo of spicy food and no toilet is really really awesome. When we realized the gravity of the situation we jumped out of bed and freaked out.... we texted every single missionary in our zone and asked them if they knew how to flush a toilet with no working water pipes. We would have just pulled on the chain and let the cord go but the Geisekes have like way powerful toilets like the kind that make you jump when you flush them... and they were like way high tech so that plug thing wasn't even there!... we were screwed. I almost just went in the pasture. We were laughing SO hard at the situation. All the elders just texted us back laughing their butts off giving us any knowledge they had of the plumbing world... it was so so funny. We ended up going to the Hermana's apartment and using their bathroom and shower. Oh it was so bad. So now if we want to go to the bathroom we have to either go outside, or drive 5 miles to the nearest gas station. It is pretty bad. Sister G rented a room at La Quinta hotel so they could shower and it was so bizarre being in a hotel room! I felt like we were on vacation.

Brother Geiseke was so mad. I went in to wish him happy Fathers Day and he just looked at me from behind his tiny reading glasses and gave me a look JUST like dad would in that situation. It was pretty bad. I guess they aren't sure if the well pump is broken....? If it is then they will need to replace it and they will have to like rip the roof off of the shack where the well is and get a huge crane to come and lift the pump 200 feet in the air so they can get the huge pipe our of the ground... BUT it could also be that the well is empty... YIKES. In that case, they will have to dig a whole new well and that is going to take a lot of money and like 2-3 weeks. We will find out what is wrong later today... but gosh. it has been a rough few days with no water. PRAY FOR RAIN. The poor Geiseke's garden is so beautiful and it will be so so sad if it dies!

Anyway.. this week has been so random but there have been lots of good things! I wish I could tell you all of our stories but there are way way too many!

LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU!

-Sister King