Putting My Heart in Texas: STARVING WITH MUSIC & FAT WITH FAITH

CARSICK

Okay... so the area that we are in is HUGE. Like really huge. Like we drove 100 miles in one day this week. We are getting really sick of driving in the car. Especially since we have like NO music. I mean we have like a few CD's but I am so sick of them... the Assistants gave us two new CD's they are the Piano Guys, ya know John Schmidt and that Cello dude? Yeah. The first song that came on was their cover of Titanium. I literally started crying when it started playing. I attached a picture. Sister Loo was DYING. Also... Rhianna's Stay just came on in the office here where we are emailing and I grabbed Sister Loo's arm and like had a mini freak out. Oh man.. I miss music. Now shakira is playing and Sister Loo is jammin out in her seat while she is typing... oh man I am dying hahah. We need help. I mean I TOTALLY get why the rule is in place like obviously missionaries aren't supposed to be listening to "hips don't lie"... well frankly no one should be listening to "hips don't lie" haha. I don't know why I am suddenly craving music... I think its just a TON more noticeable when you have to be stuck in the car for hours each day. It takes us 30 minutes to get to most of our appointments. Some people drive an hour to get to the singles ward on Sundays.. pretty nuts. But the cool thing about this area is that it covers Magnolia, Cypress Creek, Spring and into downtown a little bit so its HUGE. But it is pretty neat that I can go and visit the Young Single Adults in the areas that I have served in before! Like we are going to start working with the Gieske's daughter and try to get her to come to the ward. It's kinda cool to see it come full circle. I met a kid at the food bank my last day serving in Magnolia and now he like wants to get baptized so we are working with him! It is really exciting.

GAME PLAN

We had a great week this week! We have a really cool girl that we are teaching. She had a lot of mormon friends and we just randomly found her On Sunday, while we were at the church looking for the ward mission leader and the Assistants and while there we noticed a girl who walked in with Jeans on. Sister Loo was impressed to go and talk to her and we soon found out that she walked in to the church hoping to get a Book of Mormon. She is 20 and her name is Julie. She grew up Catholic but had a bunch of Mormon friends. We shared with her that at 1pm the YSA ward would begin and to come back for that meeting which she did. It was awesome because the speakers were fantastic! We taught her on Tuesday and she had SO many questions. It was really cool though. She told us that she had a bunch of mormon friends in High School and she was watching the Pope like being carried through the streets on a gold throne and people were like fainting and passing out and crying and Julie's mormon friend said, "why are they like worshiping him like he's Jesus Christ..like that is just wrong. He's just a man." And then Julie started thinking about it and thinking about the prophet of our church and like how we dont worship him like that, we worship Jesus Christ. She is super analytical and really smart. I guess she was watching the youtube videos of a family called the Shaytards? She like loves them haha They are mormon and they did a youtube video of their LDS faith and Julie LOVED it and wanted to know more! I will keep you posted on that!

HOMELESS IN HOUSTON

Well first of all let me just start off with a interesting phone call that we got on Tuesday... Rebecca our investigator who was kicked out of her house? Remember her? I mentioned her in my last email. But one of our ward missionaries drove her into downtown Houston and after waiting for 3 hours got her admitted into the Women's shelter. We weren't really sure what was going to happen.. but we told her to call us when she got situated at the shelter. So Tuesday night we got a phone call from Officer Kyles...

"Hello, this is Sister King and Sister Loo-"

-"Good evening ma'am... this is Officer Kyles from the Houston Police Department..*stomach drops* I have a young women here who would like to speak with you."

"Thank you officer, please put her on the phone."

Through her tears Rebecca begins to tell us that she doesn't want to stay at the shelter anymore and that she is scared. We asked her if she had been praying and she said that she had been praying ALL day but that she didn't know what to do. She told us that she didn't want to go back to live with her mom. She gave us the name of a family friend who lived in Houston and so we miraculously used a members iPhone to google the name and the first phone number turned out to be the right one! #miracle. The family friend came to pick up Rebecca BUT... apparently Rebecca can only stay there until tomorrow so... we are back to square one. No job, no phone, no car, no home but a desire to be baptized... it is a pretty difficult situation. Keep Rebecca in your prayers for sure!

FELONS AND FACE TATS

So Saturday we had like no plans at all. It was actually pretty funny. We were planning on Friday night before we went to bed and we were like well... "Our day is just JAM PACKED. Like I dunno if we are even gunna have time to eat lunch... " Good thing we had NOTHING for the whole day haha. People just don't really want to meet with us on the weekends... but hey I dont blame them. I am a Young Single Adult. I know how it is! Anyway... so Sister Loo and I made plans to walk to the park and try to contact some people, then walk around Target and contact some people and then drive to the Woodlands Mall to my favorite place to eat called Salada (I am going to buy this chain when i get home and bring it to utah. It's the next big thing. Like Cafe Rio. SO good.) Anyway.. that was our game plan. It worked out really well and we had a blast. We talked to a lot of people! It was cool we saw two other sets of missionaries yesterday and we had like 3 members come up to us and talk to us. It was really cool to think that there are 300 missionaries just in our mission here in Houston. There are so many missionaries and we are all here for the same purpose! It is SO cool.
At the Woodlands Mall we can't approach people about the gospel. Like we can't actively proselyte. So we just walked around carrying Book of Mormons and hope that people come up to us and ask us questions. The elders said that people come up to them ALL the time. But as Sister missionaries, we aren't quite as recognizable unless you see our name tag or the epic book we are holding. But we did have this way cute 19 year old kid run up to us. He is leaving on his mission to Brazil in December and he was like, "GAH! Missionaries! Teach me! Get me pumped! Teach me a lesson!" We taught him a little lesson on the restoration and he was like, "Man! That is so cool. You are both just SO happy! I can't wait to be a missionary!" It was really cute. I love being a missionary.

Man.. people are so funny here. We contacted this one guy on the side of a busy street and he told us that life is really hard right now and hes just lost. We told him that we would love to meet with him and try to get him back on his feet and get stronger faith in Jesus Christ. We told him about the LDS employment center He said, "What about felons?" Just totally non-chalantly, it was kinda funny looking back on it haha. It caught us both off guard. But we told him that we would look into it and see how they could help him. Sister Loo and I have met a lot of people this week that make you realize that the Gospel of jesus Christ is for EVERYONE. It doesn't matter if you have a criminal background or like the guy we just talked to at the Taco Cart with the face tattoo. Whoever they are, they need the Gospel and the atonement in their life.

RANDOMS

-Speaking of Taco Carts. Sister Loo and I have started to try a different Taco cart each p-day. Mannnn they are SO good!

- The other day I said, "HUZZAH!" to a member and Sister Loo looked at me like I was crazy"SINCE WHEN DO YOU SAY THAT?"... I just shrugged and said, "You've never see Arrested Development have you?" It was pretty funny.

-As a Sister Missionary you forget what your knees look like. I decided that the real reason why we have longer skirts out in the mission field is because our knees are so nasty and bruised from praying so much! haha. True story.

-Also... I need ya'll to send me IBuprophen. Sister Loo's mom sent us a Jillian Michaels workout and I am SO sore. #biggestloser

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Love this gospel! church is true.

Put your faith in Christ! He RUNS to us when we turn to him.

Even though we are tired, I wouldn't trade this for the world! At Zone Conference this week cute Sister Pingree said, "I just love looking out to see all your beautiful faces! You are all glowing! And yes, you look exhausted. But as disciples of Jesus Christ we may have bags under our eyes but we have a smile on our face!" True true.

xoxoxox

-Sister King

Hearing real(ish) music=real tears.