My brain hurts so I will try to make this fluid! This week I was trying to put in everything I had to this last week in the area.So this week has been really good. We have some amazing things going on in the area. I am trying my hardest to give it my all before I leave and it is hard, but it has been good. I hope that I dumped enough of my knowledge of Less Actives and Investigators into Sister Andreason's brain. I pretty much wrote everything out on a piece of paper. I know I opened my mission in magnolia and that I white washed cypress creek but I really feel like THIS is my baby area. I grew so much and I love it so much. I really feel like I made a difference. A big difference. Satan was working on me a few days ago trying to get me to believe that I failed in this area but the spirit and Sister Andreason helped me to understand that I haven't failed, but that I had helped many many people. And maybe it was just planting seeds. But, I was doing what the Lord needed me to do here in his field, and I loved every second of it. It was hard, and my back aches and my hnds are sore from sowing the seeds and hitting the rutts and bumps along the way, but there were some amazing things that came from it. Just to name a few? Sandra, Ashley, Lauren and of course...Frank :)
I knew I was leaving because I said to the assistants, "Okay.. on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most likely, what are my chances of being transferred?" Their response?'....."Sister King, take the number of months you have been there and that is our answer. Enough said." Being in the assistants ward has its perks I guess. :) I would say goodbye to people and everyone was like, "How do you know you are leaving? Transfer calls aren't until Sunday night!" It was funny. I went to visit a members house and since I have been here forever, right before every transfer she says, "Sister King, are you out?" I say, "I dunno I have been here forever, I think I am getting transferred...." Well... Surprise, I am still here! Haha. When we went over to her house on Saturday and told her that I was leaving she rolled her eyes and said, "pssshhh.... Yeah, SURE you're leaving, you're like the missionary who cried transfer!"
D&C 18:15-16
And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!
And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!
Alma 29:9
...this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance; and this is my joy.
How I love this work. I was packing last night and I got really sad thinking about how depressing it will be when I am packing to come HOME. I love this mission so much. It is so hard. So stressful. But SO worth it.
TRANSFERS
I knew I was leaving because I said to the assistants, "Okay.. on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most likely, what are my chances of being transferred?" Their response?'....."Sister King, take the number of months you have been there and that is our answer. Enough said." Being in the assistants ward has its perks I guess. :) I would say goodbye to people and everyone was like, "How do you know you are leaving? Transfer calls aren't until Sunday night!" It was funny. I went to visit a members house and since I have been here forever, right before every transfer she says, "Sister King, are you out?" I say, "I dunno I have been here forever, I think I am getting transferred...." Well... Surprise, I am still here! Haha. When we went over to her house on Saturday and told her that I was leaving she rolled her eyes and said, "pssshhh.... Yeah, SURE you're leaving, you're like the missionary who cried transfer!"
I DIED.
I love this ward. I don't know what I am going to do with myself when I am surrounded by screaming children... I forgot how to interact with children and adults.... like for example, in missionary correlation this week our ward mission leader asked us a question, and I shrugged my shoulders and said, "I dunno, Bro." He just looked at me and laughed, shaking his head... and I said, "I am going to die in a home ward aren't I?!" Pretty sure that won't fly in the family wards but who knows... I am going to be so out of my element! Maybe I will stay in the YSA ward.... but from what the assistants have said that doesn't seem to be the case either! Who knows though! haha.
I love this ward. I don't know what I am going to do with myself when I am surrounded by screaming children... I forgot how to interact with children and adults.... like for example, in missionary correlation this week our ward mission leader asked us a question, and I shrugged my shoulders and said, "I dunno, Bro." He just looked at me and laughed, shaking his head... and I said, "I am going to die in a home ward aren't I?!" Pretty sure that won't fly in the family wards but who knows... I am going to be so out of my element! Maybe I will stay in the YSA ward.... but from what the assistants have said that doesn't seem to be the case either! Who knows though! haha.
(SIDENOTE: I cannot focus right now because some really good song by Bastille is playing in the apartment office while we are emailing. I can't for the life of me remember what its called but... holy cow. I love this song. #musicdrought)
ALSO... we had an awesome activity where we went blueberry picking. It was legit. Of course it was the ONE time I forget my camera. Kevin took a few pictures so I will attach them and the Elders took a bunch so I will send those next week :) It was beautiful and reminded me so much of Utah. It made me miss the Cabin a lot. SO much fun.
FUNNY MOMENTS
1.Sister Andreason driving and she was like super deep in thought all of the sudden and super quiet so I said, "Are you okay?" She looked at me and said, "Oh... yeah.. I'm fine. I was just thinking about road kill so maybe I looked sad." HAHA!
2. A recent convert from a neighboring ward just transferred his records into our ward and he is a RIOT. Such a crazy story. He has knows that he wanted to join the church for 2 years but he couldn't until he moved out of his house when he was 18. He moved out, called up the missionaries and got baptized like a month later. But he is soooo funny. We had a potential investigator at church named Hambi (Hahm-bee) and he comes up to her and is like, "HEY! I am Max, good to meet you, your name is Bumbi right?"
You should have seen her face! Haha. #facepalm
3. Max texted us at 5:37pm when our activity started at 6pm- this was our conversation.
M: "Hey are Ya'll here?"
S: "Okay. Max, now that you're a mormon, we will teach you some lingo...have you hear the phrase, 'mormon standard time'?"
M: "I am going to go out on a limb and assume that means late...."
S: "Haha. Yes. Our GPS says that we are 31 minutes and 13 seconds away :)
M: "I have to be punctual. It is part of my quest."
S: "hahaha. Truly fascinating.. your quest?"
M: "Yes. My quest to become a super mormon."
4. At church yesterday he showed me his twitter page. He has completely revamped it and he told me that if you didn't know better you'd think it was "Prophet S. Monson's twitter page." Such a character. I am sad I only go to know him for a week! There are some brilliant quote book memories hidden in the humor of that boy.
5. Played LDS family feud at Family Home Evening last week.... that awkward moment when you have 2 non-members there and you're not in charge of the activity. There were some hard questions but the two non-members were really good sports about it. The friend that was a member said, "Just say Buddah as the answer for everything and you'll do GREAT ;)" It was funny. Afterwards we got in the car and I said to Sister Andreason, "You were TOTALLY the girl in seminary that raised her hand after every question and got 100% on scripture mastery weren't you....?... Not gunna lie. You were like my worst enemy in Seminary, dude."
Her response..."Yeah pretty much. That was me."
HAHA! We got a huge laugh out of it. So funny though. Sister Andreason in amazing with the scriptures I have learned so much from her. She has a real gift. I just wish more of it had rubbed off on me before I got transferred. 6 weeks was not long enough!
THE SIN
So one of the highlights of the week was a very cool, slightly traumatic, experience that makes a perfect metaphor for the Atonement. We were over at a potential's house helping her paint her room and had just moved the plastic tarp from one wall to the other.(I was informed by Sister Andreason that it is called a drop cloth? Did not know this.... ya learn something new everyday!) The paint bucket somehow ended up underneath the drop cloth. I was helping Sister Andreason move it and let me tell ya... he next few seconds of this story seemed like SERIOUS SLOW-MO I watched in HORROR and helplessness and Sister Andreason accidentally tipped the can of paint. Suddenly, the beautiful cream carpet was covered in over half a bucket of charcoal gray paint.
YEP. The worst possible thing had happened. And there was no way to undo what had been done. I closed my eyes and scrunched my face up as I hoped that if i opened my eyes it would all be back to normal... but nope. I watched Sister Andreason panic as we both tried to scoop up as much paint as we could and put it back in the bucket. I watched as a feeling of dread and guilt and horror swept over everyone in the room. And Tara... oh Tara just stood there in shock. "Oh my mom is going to kill me!" We all felt so bad. We hadn't even taught her yet! So many things were swirling around in my mind. I saw Sister Andreason laying on the floor with her hands over her face. Guilt, shame, embarrassment, I don't even know. I knew that nothing I said or did would make her feel better or make the situation better. Because lets face it... this is charcoal paint on cream carpet. It wasn't coming out. I shouted to Tara to google how to get paint out of carpet. There were several suggested techniques many of them contradicting the others, some said use water, others said, to not use water, some said scrub, others said whatever you do DONT scrub. We didn't know what to do.
Technique one: squeegee with butter knives--it got some more goop up but didn't remove the stain at all. But it was slowly coming up. Technique two: Tara called her mom (who paints a lot) and her mom told her to peel the carpet up, put towels underneath and flush it with water and scrub with Dawn dishsoap. So we did! We poured half a bottle of Dawn soap and some water on the stain and started scrubbing with our hands. There were a lot of dirty suds but it didn't look like it was doing anything at first.But we had faith that it would work and so we kept trying. We kept scrubbing and it started looking a little lighter. We kept at it for a FULL HOUR. I was sweating so bad haha. It was blazing hot in that room because we had all the windows open since we were painting. None the less, we carried on- repeating the process of applying soap, water, scrubbing, removing the dirty suds. Our hands were pretty smooth by then end of it (who needs exfoliator? haha I think Tara's hands were actually bleeding.) So I am pretty sure that it is safe to say that blood, sweat and tears went into repairing this horrifying mistake. All 5 of us were ultimately exhausted. For a while I was stationed in the bathroom ringing out the dirty towels that we shoved under the carpet. They were soaked, stained, and needed a good cleaning too, but... you would NEVER know there was a stain there. In fact, I swear it looked even CLEANER than the rest of her carpet. We all joked, "Well, is there anywhere else you want us to clean Tara?!"
Moral of the story? Paint comes out of carpet and sin comes out of sinners.
Dawn soap=The Atonement.
Some insights we discovered?
If you scrub without the soap you won't get anywhere!- There were tons of remedies and ideas people had to try and fix it and get it clean but many of them contradicted one another and cost money. Just like there are theories and therapies and medicines that people try to fix their mistakes. But without the Atonement of Jesus Christ, you won't get anywhere.
If you apply soap and don't work to scrub you won't get it clean either. The repentance process takes work. It is not easy. There are tears, there is pain and remorse and regret. But the Savior has provided us a way to repent (have a fresh view of God, ourselves and the world) And we need to do our part. The atonement is there for us to use but sometimes we need to uproot ourselves from the floorboards we are on, and that can be painful. Change is hard and it takes time but ultimately, the joy and the cleanliness that we experience makes all that work worth it, and our hands are squeaky clean from sin.
Sometimes our sins effect others- (like the towels) and we have to get those clean, the atonement covers that also. One of the steps of repentance is to make restitution. Forgive yourself and forgiving others. We had a lesson on repentance in Gospel Principles and Kevin had us stand up and share this story. It was really neat. One of my favorite parts is the day after this incident I was writing about it in my journal and I decided to look up "dawn" in the dictionary. This is the definition-
dawn- verb \don, ˈdän\
: to begin to become light as the sun rises
: to start or begin
: to begin to be understood
How fitting when you think of the Atonement. It is probably the most perfect parallel ever, and an experience I will never ever forget.
CHURCH IS TRUE.
xoxoxox
-Sister King
Znooeee Conezzz
Elder Hillebrandt bequeathing his tie to Frank.
LITTLE FRANK- A FUTURE MISSIONARY!
Max (the super mormon) is the one choking Elder Valdez haha. Such a hilarious kid. 
Me and Janae! I am going to miss her :)
DAWNNNNNN
Me and Sandra!
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