Some guy who spoke in church the other week was like "Why is the Book of Mormon important? I'm glad I asked." It was super funny.
We had zone training meeting this week and pretty much every training was on Sister Atchley and her missionaries. It wasn't intended to be that way, but somehow it kept coming back to that. Someone would teach a principle and then they would be like, "Sister Atchley how was this important to your conversion story?" and I would be like "One really good lesson I learned from my missionaries was______."
The Assistants gave a training on following up and they based it on the talk in the April 2014 Sunday morning session of general conference. Coincidentally, we were at the very next session of general conference. I just talked about how much the Elders followed up with me. They would just text and be like "do you remember the three parts of the atonement? Great! Have you read the Book of Mormon?" It was a pretty huge part of my conversion story.
A really weird thing to realize is that I got baptized like 25 something days after the date of initial contact. That's not actually normal fun fact. So I always try to look for things that I can apply to the other side of missionary work. I've learned so many lessons. Sometimes I think I got trained by Sister Shober, but really it was probably Elder Whatcott and Elder Severson. Then I think about how I never know who's going to go on a mission one day and look back and be like "wow Sister Atchley was a really ______ example." I hope the word good would fit in that blank.
"I already know the answer to this question because I had the privilege of being in Sister Atchley's district, but how much do you love your missionaries, and how much do they love you?" -Elder Fuell
I just cried the whole time. I was overwhelmed with all the love for the zone and the work and my missionaries. I hope they read this that would be awkward. Love y'all. :]
"I had the privilege of going on an hour and a half exchange with Sister Atchley and all I heard about was her missionaries. She loves them so much and I know that we are going to be that way for our converts." -Sister Wolterman (Really all this exchange was was me ugly crying about how much I couldn't handle life right at that moment and I guess I talk about the Elders too.)
"All the Utah missionaries that go home are going to be like hey are you Elder Whatcott!? YOU'RE SISTER ATCHLEY'S MISSIONARY!" -Elder Robinson
That awkward moment when you served in Texas, but you're famous in the Irvine California mission.
I made some bread this week and now Elder Center is trying to hire me to make him bread every week. Most of the things that happened this week were funny. We did go on exchanges and Sister Lee kicked my butt and reminded me that I have no Idea how to be a missionary. It was amazing. She is so good. She's just a hardworking, loving, dedicated sister. She taught me a lot, because I think all my companion problems are bad, but she's one of only two Chinese sisters, so if her companion problems are bad she has to deal with them for like 17 months. Sister Lee and Sister Kwok also have like 8 or something investigators. She said she's been a little stressed about having to handle all of them at once. So she got to my area and was like "ok lets plan on seeing all your investigators tomorrow Sister Atchley!" and I was like "All zero of them!" So I was able to gain a greater appreciation of working with members and she was able to have a greater appreciation of her investigators. It was a really good lesson about how nobody's missionary work is more or less important than anyone else's. As long as you're doing the best you can do and relying on the Lord you are so important to the work.
Speaking of! I'm going to the baptism of a girl that I contacted, committed to baptism, and then passed to the ysa missionaries this week. She said a bunch of stuff to me one thing was "I wouldn't be where I am today if you girls didn't approach me on that rainy afternoon." The finding is just as important as the teaching. If that doesn't make me want to talk to everyone I don't know what does.
So some funny stuff:
"I don't care if it's nerd stuff, I just want to go LARPing!" -Elder Burk
"Two guys walk into a bar... lol you'd think the second guy would be smarter." -Elder Burk
"Can we be zombies?" -Everyone
"Can we be penguins?" -me
"SO we're all in Antarctica!" -Elder King
"You all wake up in the morning only to find whale tracks." -Elder King
"The seals didn't even eat him they stabbed him with a narwhale, those punks." -Elder Burk
"She's from Texas so of course she knows how to do this stuff." -Elder Center
"I'll replace your ingredients with money." -Elder Center
"You have a phone voice. All Texas people do." -Sister Lee
So every time I'm near Sister Fullmer we just giggle uncontrollably.
"Sister Fullmer is too funny. I can't even right now. If I was in daddy's class right now what would he do to handle this situation? Probably move us to the opposite sides of the room..." -internal dialogue
*moves away from sister Fullmer*
"YOU'RE 21!?!" -Sister Suchanski
"How old did you think I was?" -me
"14, but that's mainly because of the height...." -Elder King
"This is the stupidest conversation I've ever had. They're just telling me they won't respect me unless I eat a big piece of chicken. Elders are so stupid!!!" -Sister Suchanski
"I'm being super quiet *makes a bunch of noise* now I'm being Sister Atchley" -Elder Davis
"You're a beautiful and majestic tuna." -Elder Ball
"What's it like to serve in the other areas?" -Sister Oldham
"We'll just direct this question to Elder Davis." -me
So Elder Davis is the only missionary in the ward whose greenie area isn't Oak Creek. We added up the combined time for Elder Center, Sister Peterson, and myself and it's barely over half Elder Davis's time. Also he was trained by Elder Despain, from Utah, with 10 siblings.
So the reading assignment is this:
Go to discover.mormon.org and read all the little things and watch the cute videos. They're really good simple explanations of our beliefs. They helped me know how to explain things simply.
Love Y'all!
Sister Atchley
P.S. They called our Bishop to a stake presidency calling. So now I'm wondering who the new bishop is gonna be.
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