Hi family! How are we doing? That story about Bunny is so scary ... I'm so glad she's doing well. It's so weird to think that she could have died and I wouldn't have even known until I read this email. I'm so glad Didn and Scott were able to be there for her though. This was a fantastic week in Layton, are you ready to hear about it?
Well this week Elder Bednar came and spoke to our mission. It was without a doubt the coolest experience I've had in my life so far. Our mission president has been strongly encouraging us to spiritually prepare for this for the last 2 weeks and go into it with specific questions we want answered in our lives. He did a question/answer session with us but really it was us asking him questions, him answering with questions until we found the answer ourselves. It was so cool and a great model to how we should work with our investigators to help them learn by the spirit. He used to be the stake president in Arkansas for my trainer, Sister H, so he called her out in the middle of the meeting and asked her how her family is and what not. It was crazy! He left right after our 3 hour or so meeting so I didn't personally get the chance to meet him, but it was still so fantastic. I've never got so much out of a meeting in my life. I learned the importance of being spiritually prepared for church meetings and the difference that can make.
The temple square sisters put on a musical fireside earlier this week for missionaries to bring investigators to. My companions and I really wanted to go so we brought a couple we've been working with, Ken and Alex. Ken has been excommunicated for 15 years or so and Alex has been inactive since she graduated high school. Side note, he's like 45 and she's 28. But they're cute so it's okay, haha. Anyways they've decided to come back to the church and work towards being sealed in the temple so they can have kids under the covenant. They've made so much progress while we've worked with them but haven't been able to come to church more than once because of their jobs (they're the respitory therapists who took care of Sister Monson, I think I told you guys about that) and we thought this fireside could be a good experience for them because it was on a night they had off work. It was a wonderful fireside and I got to see Amanda May! My comps always make fun of the stuff I wear... I thought I've been toning it down a significant amount for the mission but I guess I still pattern mix a lot. Anyways I ran up to Amanda and hugged her, then after we left Sister H says to me, "Is that Amanda from high school? I could tell because she was wearing stripes and polka dots together just like you..." hahah. Anyways it was a cool experience. Ken should be able to get rebaptized soon hopefully.
We're continuing to work with Amanda and her daughter Nevaeh. I absolutely love them .... This week Amanda's been really stressed out because her boyfriend/baby daddy is continuing to be a loser ... In reality, we just need someone to be straight up with her and tell her the boyfriend's holding her back from eternal salvation so she just needs to dump him. We've tried to subtly say that ... But as missionaries, it's not really our place to tell her what we think she should do. She found out this week that since she's been trying to live the law of chastity, he's been cheating on her ... it was really rough. So we had a spa day for her and I gave her a facial and did her nails. Please pray that Amanda will have the strength to do whatever she needs to with this current situation. She's also in need of a job so praying for that would be good too. We took her daughter Nevaeh to a baptism this weekend that Neil A. Anderson showed up at randomly. So that was pretty cool, haha.
Ready for the awkward story of the week? I was on splits with the Relief Society presidency in one of our wards, just visiting a bunch of moms in the ward. One house we were at, the teenage son walks downstairs in basketball shorts with no shirt on and comes and sits down talking to us ... I was so uncomfortable I seriously was about to lose it and his mom didn't even realize it, she just kept talking and introduced us and was basically trying to set me up with him when I get home ... then the Relief Society president was like, "um I don't know if sister missionaries should be in homes with shirtless teenage boys..." and his mom freaked out and kicked him out and laughed for like 20 minutes while my face was bright red .... then on Sunday she comes up to me and goes, "did you recognize your boyfriend with his shirt on today?" in front of the bishop. Like, thank you .... anyways, it was awkward haha.
So Sister P sleep talks ... the other night we convinced her to say our bedtime prayer 5 times in a row. She would get in bed, we'd say, "oh, we need to pray .... P, your turn!" She'd grunt and get out of bed, say the slowest, funniest prayer you've ever heard (always ending in, "I love you so much, thank you for this bed") and then rolling back in bed ... then we'd repeat. Hahah, she seriously said 5 prayers in a row, it was so funny!
Transfers are December 3rd. I probably won't get another P-day until Thanksgiving day. There is a possibility I might be training a brand new missionary next transfer, we'll see! It's cold and snowy.... I'm miserable! Hope all is well, love you all!
Sister Shields
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