I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go

I don't even know where to begin right now.... this week is kinda just a blurr or emotions. Highest highs and lowest lows. That's what we sign up for when we sign up for being a missionary, right? So I guess I knew what I was getting myself into. Saturday was a rough night but other than that we had a great week! :)

GHETTO SWAP

 Sister M and I are still together! Wahoooo! BUT we have to switch apartments with the Elders in our ward because they had to give their car to other sisters and they need an apartment that is more central so they can bike. So they are switching us. I am actually really sad! We have some awesome neighbors and we were getting some headway with a few of them. Its too bad that we have to leave. Plus... I really enjoy having my own bathroom. And we are going to miss our COUCH! I convinced Elder Matu to let us keep it!  I hope that the Elders can keep up with our awesome work we have been doing in the complex. We have Alison- she lives across from us and she is battling cancer. We brought her over some fresh peaches when we first moved in and told her that we would love to come over and have bible study with us. She is this adorable little black lady. The other day she told us that she had been looking for our phone number! And our other neighbors are just starting to get to know us. We also have like a line of kids that want to come to boy scouts. We had the twins in our complex come last week and Raven volunteered to give the prayer! I was SHOCKED! He stood up and said the most adorable, humble, hilarious prayer it was so funny. The boys really accepted them it was cute.

CATS AND DOGS

 It has gotten to the point where Yosh and Tayless just run inside our apartment when we open in for 2 seconds. It is kind of irritating. I feel bad especially since Elder Matu HATES cats. So we are trying to train Yosh and Tayless to not come inside anymore. Its really hard to not feed them.... But I don't want to get on Matu's bad side when they move in to our complex haha! Also the other night we started a new game with Yosh... its called Frog Rodeo. Its pretty simple. You catch a frog, and let Yosh and the frog loose in the house. Pretty simple. Pretty hilarious. Dont worry. The frog was fine. :) 

 We rescued a dog this week. It was running full speed down the middle of a very busy road and it was a tiny little poodle rat looking thing. No one else was stopping so we pulled over and I made Sister M chase it while I followed her in the car. We chased it into a random backyard and then as we were walking away this lady pulls over and hysterically asks us if we have seen her dog, "We tell her that we just chased it into a backyard." (Which turned out to be HER  backyard.) She burst into tears and thanked us over and over again. We were late to our appointment but it was worth it. We bought a dog bone for Rambo, put a bow on it and the next day brought it over to the owners house to see if she wanted to hear more about the church. It was so funny, before we got out of the car Sister M said the prayer. She said, "please help Devin to recognize that we not only save dogs but we also save souls..." I had to stifle my laughter until she finished the prayer it was hilarious.

MINISTERS DUNGEON 

Well this should be the bulk of the email because this has taken over most of my thoughts for the week. But let me just begin my saying that so far on my mission I have had doors slammed in my face, dogs peeing on me and chasing me, people pretending to not speak english just so they wont have to talk to us... etc. The list just goes on and on. But now I can really add one to the list.... Being roasted my a Minister. 

Let me rewind to last week when I saw this adorable family playing in their yard outside. I had like a really strong feeling that we needed to teach this family. We tried knocking but they didn't answer so we left a note on their door with our phone number. (I don't know why we leave our number its not like anyone has ever actually called us from us leaving a pass along card but who knows! #keepthefaith) Anyway... this whole week I was thinking about this family and told Sister M that we needed to stop by because I couldn't get them off my mind. So we say a prayer, knock on the door, and a guy answers. He was not nice at all but invited us in... he laughed when we told him that he had a cute family and we wanted to share a message about eternal families. He called to his wife. She looked at us, laughed and said, "good luck." Then he takes us downstairs, sits down in this rocking chair, crosses his legs and says, "Alright, I have to tell you something right off the bat. I am a Minister." I look at Sister Montierth. And my heart is pounding, I swallow hard as he says, "Alright so teach me. Thats why you're here right? Thats why you knocked on my door? To teach me about this so called "TRUTH" that you have to share to people?"...

 I dont remember anything that we said but I just remember the way I felt and the way the spirit was burning inside my chest. It was the longest 40 minutes of my life. 

Hot tears burned in my eyes as I listened to him ridicule our beliefs and our testimony of Jesus Christ and his purpose here on this earth. He wouldn't let us speak, he was listening intently and when he heard something he wanted to rebuke and reject he would put up his finger, smile and say, "Ah ha! NOW we are getting somewhere..." his wife stood there listening while bouncing a baby on her hip, not saying a word. 

Before we left Sister M said, "Sir, to wrap this up I have one question for you... Have you read the book of Mormon?" He lept up from his chair and say, "yes, yes, I have. Multiple times. Cover to cover. And so has my wife." He searched his huge book shelf for the small blue book. Took it in his hands and held it out to us. We asked, "Okay Sir. But have you PRAYED about it?" He smirked and crossed his arms saying, "I do not pray about RIDICULOUS things like the Book of Mormon." The words spit out of his mouth and I cringed. I was trying to hold it together but I wanted to run as fast as I could away from that man and away from that house. I felt sad for him. I felt embarrassed that I couldn't testify more strongly against him. My emotions were getting the best of me. We said goodbye. I don't even remember if we shook hands. But he said, "Have a goodnight. Well... at least better than you have already had..." Smiled and shut the door.

 I couldn't contain my emotions anymore. Sister M and I hugged as we stood in the dark street next to our car. I just kept thinking "WHY did god lead us in there?! What was he trying to teach us?!" It was a silent car ride home. We were spiritually exhausted. We came home, and I looked in the mirror at my smeared mascara and the thought came to me, that in that moment I knew how Joseph Smith felt. Just a taste of it. I knew a tiny bit of how Jesus Christ felt. Betrayed, persecuted and alone. Not everyone is ready to hear the gospel. But there are those that are and we must find them. It was a very humbling experience. 

On Sunday Sister M and I both bore our testimony in church. That Minister may not have wanted to hear it but there are people who do, who need this gospel. And we have to find them! 

We had a lesson on charity on sunday and the scripture Matthew 5:44 was read. It hit close to home after our experience and we have been praying for the Minister and his family. We left them cookies on their porch yesterday with a note. I felt so much animosity toward that Minister that it was the only thing I could think of to do. Who knows if they ate them. They probably thought they were poisoned which is a really shame because Sister M makes a MEAN chocolate chip cookie. SO good. 

Anyway... I learned a lot from that experience and this week we learned that sometimes the spirit teaches us and sometimes it teaches others. The church is true. Some may call that experience faith shaking... but Sister M and I both agreed that it caused us to have even more faith and appreciation for the gospel and the work we are doing. 

The church is true. Man. I KNOW It is. 

Love you all. Thank you for your prayers and letters!

xoxoxo

-Sister King

 This is a picture of our District before transfers! Who knows why I am making that ridiculous face. Just ignore that.

 LOVE this girl.

I was pretty proud of this frog rodeo picture. Check out how creepy Yosh's eye in the background is.

Just call me Grandma

CATS

We are seriously up to our ears in cats. Our neighbors went out of town and just left Yosh outside. Good thing its like 100 degrees outside or pouring rain. So we let Yosh inside a ton. We pretty much have a third roommate. All she needs now is to read the book of mormon and help with the dishes. She just falls asleep on me during our studies and its pretty darn cute. We bought some cat food for her and Tayless. We really are cat ladies. 

JUST CALL ME GRANDMA

The spanish Elders texted us the other day and wondered if we could sew. I volunteered to sew his satchel bag for him. (The church came out and said that they don't want missionaries using backpacks anymore. So... all the Elders have had to buy man purses. They are not happy about it. I am not either. I guess I can still carry Yosh around the house in my backpack.) Anyway... I sewed his satchel because the strap broke. Pretty sure I am going to be mending all the satchels in the whole district pretty soon. Everyone already calls me grandma because we go to bed so early and I am like one of the oldest sisters out here right now. I think its hilarious. 

PRIMARY PRO

Sister M makes me sing Primary songs to her sometimes while she does my hair. I feel like a three year old, and she sometimes does pigtails and says, "okay, all done." I just glare at her lovingly until she takes it out and actually tames my frizzy mess into a less frizzy masterpiece. 

I don't know how but Sister M knows like every single Primary song in the book. Her mom just sent her a mini one and the other day I asked her a Doctrinal question about the spirit of Elijah and she says "hang on...." then she grabs her Children's song book and like gets a scriptural reference from the bottom of some random song I had never heard of. She like uses it as a manual! Its so strange to me but its awesome at the same time. She is going into elementary education and she is going to be so good at it haha. She wrote this kids book about being like Jesus and I colored in the pictures that she drew on each page. We share it with families with little kids when we go have dinner with them. They just eat it up! 

PANDA REACTIVATION

We were trying to call random less actives and schedule appointments with them and we called up this guy named Tom Rice. We met with him and turns out that he hasn't been to church in 10 years. He is like 60. He is way nice and supper smart and like way funny. He loves animals and dinosaurs and stuff. He works at the animal shelter and at the natural history museum. We talked with him and invited him to church and he said that he would think about coming. That Saturday I was coloring in the childrens book Sister M had made and there was a panda. I couldn't remember if the pandas eyes were black and its head was white or if the head was black and the eyes were white. I said, "you know who could solve this debate?.... Tom!" I call up Tom and he gets all excited and give us the correct information in much more detail than I would have liked. I think he even gave us the scientific name for Pandas and some other facts about extinction or something haha. Anyway... he came to church the next day wearing jeans, a spirit shirt with horses on it and his hair in a ponytail. And he came up to us holding all these pictures that he had printed off of Pandas. Like probably 6 different pictures. It was the cutest thing ever. He was all excited to give them to us. Dont worry I kept them.

 I was pretty sure that he has just gotten baptized and then just didn't have support from members or the ward and had then just fallen off the bandwagon. That happens to almost all of the Less Actives that we are working with. So when he went to the normal sunday school class instead of coming to the Gospel Principles class I was a little worried. ESPECIALLY when I heard that they had talked about the Celestial Kingdom and Temple Marriage and stuff...

Then about a week later... we get a phone call from Tom saying he wants his membership number so he can get back onto LDS.org and start getting his life back in order. He loved coming to church! We called the clerk and was shocked when we looked up his membership number we found out that he had been married and sealed in the temple like 30 years ago. He told us that his wife died in 2001 and the only thing that kept her moving forward before she died was the fact that they would be together again. He said that he had never met someone with so much faith. It was such a sweet conversation. He told us that he had dug out his patriarchal blessing and was starting to read the Book of Mormon again. I was so excited! It was a miracle! A Panda miracle. He had gone to that class and had been reminded of the importance of his temple marriage. I like seriously felt his wife's spirit in the room while I was on the phone with him. It was SO neat. 

PROPHETIC POWER

We taught Angelica about prophets and she loved the concept she said, "So you have seen him!? You've been in the same room with him?! What is that like to see him?!" It made me realize how amazing it is that we are able to be in the same ROOM as the prophet. I mean when you think about Moses and the power he had as a prophet, that is just crazy! I forget that Thomas S Monson has those exact same priesthood keys and its so cool to think about that. We take it for granted living in Salt Lake for sure.

LOVE IS PATIENT, LOVE IS KIND.

We were at a members birthday party and the two couples that were there both had a spouse with a severe disability. Remember the Fry's? They were there and the other couple is amazing also... then there was the Senior Couple Missionaries that are in our ward and they were all so cute and then it was us and the Elders. They were all telling their love stories and how they met and everything and the love was just pulsating through the room. Sister M leans over to me and says, "Okay... there is WAYYYYY too much love in this room right now for me to be a missionary." SO true. Somedays I just want to come home and find that amazing guy and have an adorable family. These members are so cute. I just love them and the love they have for eachother is unreal. It is ETERNAL. 

WATER WALKER

I was reading in Matthew 14 the other day about Peter walking on water and man it hit me like a brick wall! I started crying during personal study and sister m was like ARE YOU OKAY? and I was like, "yeah I have just never realized the power in this event before!" I just love faith it is my favorite concept! Sister Montierth's had her brother in-law email this to her today and I LOVED it.

 It is a quote from Bro. Brent L. Top who teaches at BYU and is a past mission president. He said this at BYU education week (in 2008 I believe) regarding Peter walking on water:

“We all too often emphasize Peter’s failure and the Master’s rebuke, ‘Oh thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’ To me this story is not one of failure or lack of faith, but one of extraordinary triumph. The focus should not be on Peter’s sinking, but rather on Christ’s lifting. I believe that Jesus caught hold of Peter by the hand and lifted him back to the surface of the lake like a father would lift a child who has fallen down. To me the miracle is not so much that Peter took a step or two on the water, but rather after he took hold of the Savior’s outstretched rescuing hand, he walked back to the boat with the Savior. Not only did Christ walk on water, but He also enabled Peter to do the same. Now do you see the message in this miracle? When you try to walk on water yourself, you will always sink, but when you take hold of the Savior’s outstretched hand of grace, and walk with Him, you cannot fail. Christ’s grace not only rescues us and lifts us, it empowers us.”

AMAZING.

Hope you're doing well. 

-sister king

                                    Being a grandma sewing is my new trade.

   

I was having a really rough morning the other day and I took like a WAYYY long shower, since that is the only alone time you have a missionary. (And that is saying something because ya'll know how much a hate showering!) Anyway, I get out of the shower and Sister M had gone through all my pictures and stuff and made this collage on my wall! I started crying. It was SO sweet. She seriously is the best. We were at a members house and they said, "we can't believe you two have only known each other for 6 weeks!" I put my arm around her and said, "Its crazy, right? But you know when I picture my wedding, I just KNOW Sister M is going to have to be there!"