Tuesday, February 16, 2016

2/15/16

Dad: We have had a bit of a disaster. She sent an SD card home with all of her pictures on it and it arrived blank. She is more than a little upset about this, and starts this letter off with a concern about the missing pictures. At first she said no letter this week because she was so upset, then she wrote a letter anyway.

NO THAT SD CARD HAD LIKE 300 PICTURES ON IT PLEASE TELL ME IT'S NOT EMPTY. Send it back and I will put it in the camera and see if it works. The pictures can't get erased from being in the heat or anything they do when processing mail can they? I'm going to be so depressed if all my pictures are gone. This is going to ruin my whole week. I'm 100% sure I sent the right card. ): I should have just kept it here.
I don't even want to write anything because I'm so upset about those pictures. Just try the card again I know the pictures are on there. Did the little lock switch thing get shifted or something? 
The pictures have to be on that card I only printed like 15 of them. 
Madeleine
I've been gaining a really strong testimony of fasting and prayer this week. Also of listening to the Spirit. 

Remember how I talked about how people have these crazy spiritual experiences with the missionaries but for the missionaries it's just listing to the still small voice during nightly planning? 
Well the other day during nightly planning I just decided that I was just so done trying to visit and not getting in with all our less actives. So we planned a solid 5 hours of tracting and contacting between lunch and dinner. We were walking on one of the trails in Irvine and we contacted this guy named David. Initially he just kind of walked past us, but then he turned and asked us if we wanted to talk to him. He said he was going to be waiting for the bus and that we could talk to him while he waited. He then proceeded to tell us all about how he goes to this Christian school but he's trying to find more truth and he's thinking about dropping out. He told us that he was on a mission trip for a weekend passing out bibles somewhere and someone steered him away from some Elders. He asked us what was different about our church and why we got so much persecution. Then he said he just wanted to know his purpose on earth. We basically spent a long time listening to him and taught him like pretty much every point from the 1st 3 lessons of preach my gospel. We also gave him the Book of Mormon, the first 3 pamphlets, and told him we would send the Long Beach missionaries to him. I don't know if he will get baptized but I know that the spirit led us to be in that park at that time and we did our parts in his conversion story. We invited him to be baptized and he didn't say no, and he offered a prayer about whether or not we were telling him the truth.  

I prayed that the pictures would be on that SD card so I know that they'll be on there unless Heavenly Father doesn't want me to have them in which case I trust him and those memories will be perfectly restored to me after this life. 

I've been kind of sick all week and I've been on a lot of exchanges and I've just learned some things that are difficult to handle.  

I prayed for mountains the other day. Heavenly Father gave me a mountain. So I'm a "temple service sister" or whatever we are technically called. That basically means that I get to sit in front of the temple for several hours once a week and wave at everyone who drives by. Then if anyone comes and talks to us we give them a tour of the meetinghouse and let them walk around the temple grounds on their own. We aren't allowed to walk around the temple grounds with them because they don't want anyone to think we're proselyting on the temple grounds. Our shift used to be on Thursday mornings, but they moved us since we meet with an investigator on Thursday mornings. Now our shift is Sunday from 11:00 to 1:00. the problem with this is that our church is from 9:00 to 12:00. That means that from now on I will have to miss the last hour and a half of church. This was extremely upsetting for me to learn because I think I've probably only missed like 4 hours of church since I've been a member. It's just really ironic to me that I will miss more church as a missionary than I will at any other time in my life. I read in 1Nephi4 and it kind of calmed me down about it. I know the Lord is not going to take away the blessings of church attendance if I'm not going because of something I'm called to do. I'm not sure yet how I will be able to keep having a good relationship with the members though. 

We met the missionary mom, Dawn, from Meet the Mormons yesterday. I haven't even seen Meet the Mormons, but she is so humble and full of the spirit. She has such an easy time relating to people and she's very inspiring. She told us converts to treat the church like the best class we've ever had and to be the star pupils. I think every single one of us was uplifted after we left. It was just a really cool experience. She said 18 of her missionaries were there when her son opened his mission call. My missionaries better be there when my children open their mission calls. 

I have had a lot of funny things happen to me this week though. 

I experienced the most embarrassing thing to happen to me on my mission this week. So Elder Ashton is one of the assistants to the president and sometimes other missionaries say things about him that aren't necessarily mean, but that are based on opinions that are founded on absolutely nothing. I always try to defend Elder Ashton's character because he's a good missionary and he's been nothing but kind and caring towards me the entire time I've been here. Usually the only thing happens is other missionaries say something to the effect of "whatever Sister Atchley that's just because you LIIIIIIIKE him." because we're all in middle school here apparently. 

So the other day we were at our dinner appointment and it was someone I'd never met before. So I introduced myself and then awhile later she was asking everyone to talk about themselves. So she looks at me and says "So it's Sister Ashton right?" and I just got really embarrassed and forgot my own name for a second. "No Sister Ashley, nope still wrong it's Atchley." 

Now some quotes: 

"So I've decided that ball is life." -Elder Center 

Mountain goats are white
As is Elder Dayton's skin 
He's a mountain goat
Snow is also white; 
Therefore it's a mountain goat
Just like Elder Dayton
Not all geese are white 
But some are mountain goats 
Just like falling snow
-a poem by Elder Dayton 

We hung out with the Chinese sisters a lot this week: 
"Sister Atchley do you love cat?" -Sister Lee 
"yeah" 
"WHY EVERYBODY WHO LOVE CATS LOOKS LIKE CAT?" -Sister Kwok 
"What is your issue Sister Atchley? Your problem is you are so cute. You are too too cute Sister Atchley. It not good. You need to repent. You break too many boy hearts!" -Sister Lee
"I look like a child" - me
"No you look like a cat" -sister Kwok 
Your reading assignment is a talk by president Hinkley called The Women in our Lives

Love you! 
<3 Sister Atchley

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