The Marvelous Work in the Four Corners: Transfer 8 Week 1

At the end of this transfer, I'll have been out a year. Don't talk to me. And oh yeah, this transfer is a 7 week transfer, last transfer was a 5 week transfer. Everything is confusing and it doesn't matter anyways. I'm staying in Kirtland with Sister Panoussi, but sadly Sister Heck is leaving our house to be out on the reservation! I'm so excited for her. She's wanted that since day one.

My googleable question this week is:

Were Fanny Packs supposed to be worn on our fannys?

Because otherwise they should be called Pooch Packs.

The cutest thing this week was the 101 year old sister in our ward watching Sister Panoussi use a digital camera.

"You mean it holds all those photographs in that tick-tock box?!"

We laughed at her while we tried to explain it all, then a few minutes later she was laughing at us when she found out we've never canned jam, or picked corn, or eating fresh grapes. She then sent her 80 year old son to pick us some fresh grapes from their front yard. They smell like Welches but they have so many seeds!

Things I have come to appreciate on my mission:

- Homemade jam

- Freshly picked corn

- Fresh eggs

- Warm banana bread

We've been meeting with a lot more active members lately, since our stake president asked us to start teaching the active members all of the missionary lessons. An interesting thing I've noticed is that you can distinguish how old someone is if they call it the "missionary discussions". Woops, you just dated yourself, Harry!

Our investigator is quitting smoking and she's on day 8! We've been challenging her and challenging her to quit because she wants to be baptized, she wants to go to the temple, and get her patriarchal blessing! But she kept telling herself she'd quit next year. Finally she just told us "I've decided, I'm quitting Sunday." and since then she hasn't had a smoke.

On the other side of addictions, we have a less active who the missionaries have been meeting with for ages. She was baptized a year or two ago and is a very bad alcoholic. She goes on binges and drinks for days and days and ends up in the hospital. Meeting with her was hard because some days we would come and she's be completely drunk and start getting upset and yelling at us or trying to argue. She was doing really well since she got in legal trouble for it all. She had to start going to counseling and addiction recovery and all that. But then I went over to her house on exchanges for our usual lesson. She was asleep on the couch drunk, and my sister training leader didn't realize, so she banged on the window and woke her up. We went in and I can't tell you how hard I was praying throughout that lesson. Especially for peace inside of me, so I could think clearly and figure out an exit strategy. The funny thing is that I managed myself really well, I treated her like I would if Eduardo was upset, throwing a fit. She kept trying to get me to argue with her, and I knew that would take away the spirit. So I spoke very calmly until she finally agreed to let us share a scripture, pray, and leave. She sobbed on our shoulders and I decided it was time for her to be dropped.

I am learning the value of leave-and-believe. There comes a point when spending time with someone is no longer productive for you, or for the other person, and you need to leave in faith that the Lord will take care of them. On the way to our drop-lesson Sister Panoussi was so nervous I thought the car would crash. We prayed and role played and prayed again.

Amazingly enough, the lesson went extremely well. She was sober and she was very understanding. I know it was only through the spirit that we were able to have the words to explain to her how we felt. It's hard to explain "because we love you, we have to let you go". Trust me, I'm the worst at breaking things off. But we did it. And she did cry during the prayer. But she didn't throw a fit. We saw her at church yesterday. And it's amazing thinking that sometimes we are freaking out about things we're afraid of and God's up there saying "C'MON, it's all gonna work out! JUST GO FOR IT!"

The funniest thing that happened this week was a drunk guy interrupted our lesson that we were teaching in the bed of a truck. He came and handed us watermelon slices. During our closing prayer, he came back and handed me a peach, and Sister Panoussi an apple with a bite out of it.

Also Sister Panoussi let me pluck her eyebrows so my life is complete.

- Sister Panoussi laughing while I made fun of her

- I rescued a cat while we were tracting, it climbed too high and I got a chair and took it down. PS I love cats now for some reason. I'd call it a mighty change of heart.