Last week I know I told you about the service project that took all. day. long. but we got a call from President Stevens on Tuesday morning telling us that we could have our pday then since we didn't have time to get anything done on Monday. Unfortunately, on Wednesday Sister Mekonnen got feeling REALLY sick. She has been sick practically her entire mission, but this last week it was getting very bad. I must add, she is the most positive person even though she has been facing this trial for 7+ months. She has definitely been an example to me of fighting through the pain. Since she was progressively beginning to feel worse and worse, we had to set up a doctor's appointment, which so happened to be in the heart of London. It was quite the experience trying to figure out how to get to this place, but we eventually found it (thank goodness) and lemme tell ya, this doctor's office was soooooooo nice. Generally I'm super antsy to get out of those places, but I honestly could have sat in there all day long haha. So posh.
The Watford Zone wooooohoooooo!
On Friday night we had a lesson with two of our investigators and decided to invite the senior Sister Missionaries to come along with us. I cannot even express in words how fun these ladies are. That whole lesson was just so much fun, and they have a little more (OK... a LOT more) experience and insight than Sister Mekonnen and I, so it was just all around great. The investigators loved having them there, and even on Sunday at church our investigators were like "will those older women be here?!" Sister Mekonnen and I always laugh because when we are with them it just feels like we are all best pals even though they are more than 50 years older than us. At the end of the lesson, Sister Reeder was like, "Wait, I wanna keep hanging out with you guys. Let's go party." Unfortunately we couldn't ACTUALLY go party, but since we had so much fun with them we invited them to help work on THE HOUSE with us the next morning (I know, such a fun invitation, right?).
Saturday was just a crazy day altogether. First thing in the morning we went to work in THE HOUSE, but we didn't have a ton of time and the journey there is quite long, so we had to head out a bit early. We met up with the senior Sisters and made our way there and it was pouring rain and windy. I also must add that it rained every. single. day. this week. AND we had a mission-wide conference call that morning. SO, we get to THE HOUSE and the people with the keys weren't there yet, so we huddled outside in the rain listening to this call. By the time the call was over, the people with THE HOUSE keys finally showed up and we were all soaking wet. It was quite disheartening to walk in and see that everything was a complete and total mess, so we were pretty much just straightening things up and trying to find somewhere - ANYWHERE - to put all this stuff. In the end I don't know how much of a help we were, but hey, we tried haha. Then we had to rush home, get changed back into our regular missionary gear, and head straight back out the door to do consecrated finding. The whole mission was doing finding together so that we could find miracles. Sister Mekonnen and I were trying to talk to anyone and everyone for 1.5 hours and no. luck. It was kind of sad, but we know that we planted a lot of seeds that just need a little time.
Saturday evening the Elders had a baptism! It was kind of sad because literally like no one showed up, but it was still so wonderful. The spirit was so strong, and the man that was baptised just had a light about him and it was so so wonderful to see :) Then we had to rush as fast as we could back to Uxbridge to make a dinner appointment with one of our less active members. She is very sweet and LOVES the sister missionaries. She has a slight {social/learning/mental} disability, and something that she has a BIG problem with is if you are not on time. It literally makes her so so sooooooo mad , so we made it just in time (thank goodness) and had a great dinner. So Saturday was a busy busy day, but it was also wonderful because just having the opportunity to share the gospel is WONDERFUL!
This picture just makes me laugh because we were at dinner at a 70-year-old single woman's home and she had this face cut out of Harry Styles hahaha
Then we jumped right into Sunday, which was once again a jam-packed day. We went to church in the morning and had some special self-reliance presentation from some Stake Leaders. After church we had ward council, which once again was talking about the self-reliance program, which is way cool, but they didn't really focus on the ways it could help out with missionary work too much, so we didn't have a huge role in the meeting... BUT we got some Brazilian food out of it, which is so so good. Oh, and one of the families in our ward came back from visiting Ghana and brought back all this stuff for Elder Sowah, so he gave us a big container of plantain chips and they were SO GOOD. Essentially they just tasted like potato chips, but I think any food after church on a Sunday is especially great haha. After church we went from appointment, to appointment, to appointment. But is is just so so GREAT to be busy. I love it.
And now we are going to the three-hour-long choir practice... Wooohoooooo... And then afterwards it's MISSION-WIDE FLAT CLEANING DAY WOOOOOHOOOOOO! Did I get your hopes up that it was going to be something super duper exciting?! I cannot even believe that we only have two weeks left of this transfer. I didn't really believe other missionaries that each transfer seems faster, but DANG this one is flying by! We have the sweetest American lady in our ward who invited us over for Thanksgiving, so I am seriously hoping I get to stay here!! And of course I just love this place and I really don't ever want to leave... Only time will tell I suppose.
I just want to end with a sweet little miracle that was very profound to me. We went to visit a family who is somewhat inactive, but the dad is completely inactive. They invited us in and I just felt prompted to share my favourite scripture - the one that is on my missionary plaque at home - 2 Nephi 31:20: "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life." As I read this scripture and shared my feelings, I focused on that in the footnotes the term steadfastness says Walking with God. Tears came to the dad's eyes and he said that it reminded him of his favourite story called "Footprints" (maybe? It's the story about the man who only sees one set of footprints and asks Christ why he wasn't there walking with him, and then he comes to discover that He was carrying him) and that he knew, even through this rough time, Christ was always with him and Heavenly Father is always listening. I loved this sweet little experience.
Well, I love you all! Have a fabulous week!
Love,
Sister Syddall
P.S. I have some fun pictures on my camera to share, but unfortunately haven't had the opportunity to use a computer to download them. Sorry for the lack of pictures!! I promise I'll send more in the future.
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