On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Chelsea Williams <chelseaw@myldsmail.net> wrote:

What a week! (this is week 5...I forgot to hit send last week, so you got week 6 before this one)

 

My oh my oh my oh my. It is so darned hot here! It's actually pretty funny. Even though we have been given a car, we are only allotted a certain number of miles each week to drive. So a lot of the time, to save miles, we will park the car and walk to our appointments. Sometimes it will be so hot (like 95-105 day and night plus humidity) that we will be walking, drenched in sweat, and we will just start laughing because it is so unbelievably hot. At least we can laugh about it, even if we do look crazy. Speaking of the weather though, I would like to share what I beleive to be a miracle. This morning we leave our apartment at 6:35 to go exercise and we feel this strange sensation in the air. "What was it?", you're probably wondering to yourself. IT WAS A SLIGHT CHILL IN THE AIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not sure ya'll understand what this felt like. We were slightly cold. Outside. In Houston. In the summer. Seriously it was a complete and total miracle. 75 degrees! And, it's 1:52 in the afternoon right now and it's only raised up to 89 degrees. God is so good! If this is the work of global warming then I'm not exactly sure why people think it's a bad thing haha.Seems pretty awesome to me. 

 

Anyways, enough about the weather. So this past week was super slow, and at first it was pretty frusturating. As a missionary when you go out all you want to do is share your message, and when you can't do that you feel pretty darn useless. But, all is well. I was able to learn a lot about myself. Number 1) the book "Jesus The Christ" is freaking awesome and everyone should read it and love it and learn a bunch of cool stuff. Seriously, I go to bed excited to wake up so I can read "Jesus The Christ" and eat Raisin Bran. I LOVE RAISIN BRAN!  Number 2) Patience is a virtue. For those of you who are unaware, I am the least patient person in the history of the world and being on a mission is teaching me patience real fast. Why? Because if I didn"t practice learning patience I would probably have lost it by now waiting on the bazillion and one things I have to wait for. Number 3) Being a good listener is also a virtue. I used to think I was a good listener until I got here. The thing about good 'ol Texas is that everyone is religious. Everyone has their ideas and opinions about the ways things are, and everyone's ideas and opinions are important whether you agree or not. The key to teaching in Texas, and anywhere really, is to shut your mouth, listen to what others are saying, without thinking about what you are going to say next, pause even after they are done speaking, listen to the spirit and it's promptings, and then, only when absolutely necessary, use words. As you all know I'm a talker. I talk a lot. Not jumping in when someone else is talking is super hard for me and it's something I'm really trying hard to work on. There is a list of of qualities that we are encouraged to develop in Alma 7:23 in The Book of Mormon. Some of these include: humble (I'm working on it), Submissive (working on it), easy to be entreated (when one of my comps asks me if I want the other half of their cookie I always say yes so I think I'm ok on this one ;), full of patience (ya right), long-suffering (working on it), and temperate in all things (I don't think I've ever been described as temperate... ever). So as you can see, in all of this lovely down time I've been given, due to the slow nature of the work, I have tons and tons of things to work on. Haha missions are seriously the best. It's a time when you get to take a good look at yourself and realize that you are in fact not as awesome as you thought you were. Suprise suprise!

 

So a little on the missionary work I did actually get to do. Last Monday our bishop had us over for family home evening and one of his sons invited a friend, named Kristen, to join us  that was not a member of the church. We were able to teach her the first lesson about the restoration of the gospel and it was super awesome. I seriously love talking about this stuff. Afterwards you could tell that she had a lot on her mind, and that she was going to think about the things we had talked about. We hadn't heard from her all week and then on Friday we ran into her at the library and she was super happy to see us and talk to us. We didn't talk about the gospel or anything, but I have such a good feeling about her. She has such good questions and she sincerely wants anwers and I know that we, as missionaries, and The Book of Mormon can give her those answers. The difference when you Teach with the spirit and when you don't are night and day. For example, that Wednesday we were out tracting and we talked to this guy named David. He had looked into the Mormon church a little a few years back and had some member friends, but he didn't really know that much. We asked if we could come back and he said no thank you. So we gave him an lds.org card with our phone number in case he changed his mind and left. That night he called twice asking if we could come by the next day and talk about our religion with him. We were soooo stoked! So we went over the next day prepared to teach the about the restoration... It did not go so well. We, me in particular, were not teaching with the spirit. I wasn't listening to any of the promptings I was receiving, and frankly I wasn't pausing long enough between speaking to even receive any. By the time we left I felt sick to my stomach and like I had failed big time. I know it was because I didn't take the time to listen and address and follow the promptings of the spirit. After that experience I'm pretty sure I'll never let that happen again. So tomorrow we have an appointment with a woman named Marci who we talked with for like 2 hours a couple weeks ago on her doorstep. It was sorta kinda like Bible bashing (which is no bueno btw) but by the end of it we were all laughing and having a good time. So now I have the opportunity to try again with her and I will not make the same mistakes I made with David. Listen to the Holy Spirit! He is waaaayyyy smarter than we are :)

 

Anyways I am still super goofy. I cannot for the life of me remember to refer to myself as Sister Williams. My immaturity levels have reached new highs, like when I secretly played with the silly putty in the car so as to make the people we were giving a ride to to the temple feel super uncomfortable, or when tracting gets boring, and I act out on the doorstep, before the people answer, how the conversation will go using a plethora of different accents and accidently have them open the door mid Indian accent. Super cool. Anyways, this is long and I must go. I love you all more than a fat kid loves cake. See ya soon!

 

-Sister Williams