Sister Alex Solomon:
This one is kind of long but it was a good week . We had a small New Year's Eve party with tons of food and I got to go on an exchange up in Flagstaff for the first time. I haven't seen so much snow in a long time!
This one is kind of long but it was a good week . We had a small New Year's Eve party with tons of food and I got to go on an exchange up in Flagstaff for the first time. I haven't seen so much snow in a long time!
We tracted into this insane lady last night. She was trying to open her door and kept swearing at her dog the whole time. When she finally got it open, we saw this very skinny older lady with missing teeth and a thin button up shirt on that was only closed with one button. Yeah, there was nothing underneath so we had to watch out because that thing kept flapping open. She told us she had wanted to come to church that day but she couldn't because her sister (who lives with her) got arrested and the cops were "pushing them down and into walls". She didn't want to listen to our message but she asked us to say a prayer. In the middle of my prayer, she interrupts me and says, "oh yeah, I'm totally independent. I take my medications and I am NOT an opiate." Ummmm oooookay. So I finished my prayer and we got out of there but not before she threatened to kill herself if her sister didn't get out of jail soon. Tracting......it's just great.
On a brighter note, Louise is making some progress! I just love her so much. Anyway, we taught her that often when someone is struggling with an addiction, there are underlying reasons usually due to emotional trauma of some sort. We all started our own personal inventory where we have to go back through our lives and think of memories and write how they affected us then and how they affect us now. She struggles with anger toward Heavenly Father and her son because 9 years ago her son got in a car accident and none of his kids were buckled in so his 8 year old son died and the other kids almost got taken away from him. We helped her see that if that hadn't happened, her son wouldn't have been open to the missionaries and found the gospel. If he hadn't found it, then both Louise and Aunt Jane wouldn't have found it either. There was a cool quote that I shared with her too:
"Every challenge you face, every hard thing you confront, every bad thing that happens to you, every unfairness, every conflict, every sadness, tragedy, every disappointment and heartache, every temptation and every opposition happens for one purpose only: to give you opportunity to respond by applying in your life the teachings of Jesus. As you do so you are changed to become more like Him."
Lawrence E. Corbridge
We also shared scriptures from when Joseph Smith was in Liberty Jail and the Lord told him those things would give him experience and be for his good. Basically, it was an awesome lesson and she cried everywhere and kept telling us not to look at her crying so we would look at the ceiling and smile.
Our dessert and candy fast is over. We did it successfully but then something awful happened. Because we didn't have any sweets for the whole month, we had Ward members bringing us things ALL day on the first. People invited us over for appointments so when we would show up, we would share our short new year message and then they would feed us dessert. We got SO sick and I came home and threw away all the goodies we had saved for this month. I'm just gonna keep the streak going.
Anyway, it was good and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. One of our wards had me give a "farewell" talk yesterday so me going home is all anyone can talk about to us now. I'm trying not to get too trunky.
This one is kind of long but it was a good week . We had a small New Year's Eve party with tons of food and I got to go on an exchange up in Flagstaff for the first time. I haven't seen so much snow in a long time!
We tracted into this insane lady last night. She was trying to open her door and kept swearing at her dog the whole time. When she finally got it open, we saw this very skinny older lady with missing teeth and a thin button up shirt on that was only closed with one button. Yeah, there was nothing underneath so we had to watch out because that thing kept flapping open. She told us she had wanted to come to church that day but she couldn't because her sister (who lives with her) got arrested and the cops were "pushing them down and into walls". She didn't want to listen to our message but she asked us to say a prayer. In the middle of my prayer, she interrupts me and says, "oh yeah, I'm totally independent. I take my medications and I am NOT an opiate." Ummmm oooookay. So I finished my prayer and we got out of there but not before she threatened to kill herself if her sister didn't get out of jail soon. Tracting......it's just great.
On a brighter note, Louise is making some progress! I just love her so much. Anyway, we taught her that often when someone is struggling with an addiction, there are underlying reasons usually due to emotional trauma of some sort. We all started our own personal inventory where we have to go back through our lives and think of memories and write how they affected us then and how they affect us now. She struggles with anger toward Heavenly Father and her son because 9 years ago her son got in a car accident and none of his kids were buckled in so his 8 year old son died and the other kids almost got taken away from him. We helped her see that if that hadn't happened, her son wouldn't have been open to the missionaries and found the gospel. If he hadn't found it, then both Louise and Aunt Jane wouldn't have found it either. There was a cool quote that I shared with her too:
"Every challenge you face, every hard thing you confront, every bad thing that happens to you, every unfairness, every conflict, every sadness, tragedy, every disappointment and heartache, every temptation and every opposition happens for one purpose only: to give you opportunity to respond by applying in your life the teachings of Jesus. As you do so you are changed to become more like Him."
Lawrence E. Corbridge
We also shared scriptures from when Joseph Smith was in Liberty Jail and the Lord told him those things would give him experience and be for his good. Basically, it was an awesome lesson and she cried everywhere and kept telling us not to look at her crying so we would look at the ceiling and smile.
Our dessert and candy fast is over. We did it successfully but then something awful happened. Because we didn't have any sweets for the whole month, we had Ward members bringing us things ALL day on the first. People invited us over for appointments so when we would show up, we would share our short new year message and then they would feed us dessert. We got SO sick and I came home and threw away all the goodies we had saved for this month. I'm just gonna keep the streak going.
Anyway, it was good and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. One of our wards had me give a "farewell" talk yesterday so me going home is all anyone can talk about to us now. I'm trying not to get too trunky.
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