Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Kickin' it out in the stix!!! 5/30/16

Hi Family!!

This week has been a little bit of crazy and crazy good! The beginning of the week was we had a hard time saying goodbye but we made some amazing memories in Tulsa! I was able to show one of the new sisters around and help her get situated and I hope everything goes well for them! 
But now I'm in Centerton! Well...we actually live in Gravette. Which is half an hour from Centerton. You blink and it's gone! We live with members too!! They're pretty awesome!! You take a 3 mile long dirt road to get to their house :D It's my kind of place!! We also have...wait for it....a truck!!!!! Super excited!! That was pretty much the goal of my whole mission was to get a truck and now that wish is being fulfilled haha. We actually just went "off-roading" with it to help our members with this camp they are making on their property for girls camp!! They have soooo much property and they have hiking trails and a couple of ponds and a shooting range and rapelling and it's amazing. Pretty much living the dream out here haha! 
My new companion is Sister Ball. She's pretty awesome. She's from a tiny town in Idaho and is a farm girl :) she's been out for about 3 months.
So for our investigators: we have a guy named Chester and he is in his sixties. He's kinda hard to read. We can't tell if he just has us over for the company or not. We'll see next time if he's keeping his commitments. But he came to one of the other ward's baptisms! So that was pretty neat! He also accepted a baptism date for June 25th. So we have quite a few investigators but none of them the solid type. He's probably the most solid one. But we have some pretty awesome members! We went and did some service for a family on Saturday and they had new new newborn baby goats!!! So cute!! And we got to feed the calves and some other goats with a bottle! 
Well I hope you all had a great amazing week!!! Love you all!!

Love
Sister Larmouth

Transfers :((((( 5/23/16

Hola!!

Sooooo....we got transfer calls and....I'm leaving :(((((( Sister Gibson is leaving too!! We're pretty sad about it. I'm going to Centerton Arkansas. My new companion is Sister Ball. I'm sure everything will be great I'm just super sad to leave. So we have to prepare everything for the sisters who are going to be shotgunning in :) But I'll get to be in the same zone as Sister Lunt so that will be fun! 
This week we have been super busy with exchanges and stuffs but it's been great!! So guess what??? The less active I was talking about last week came to church!!!!! That was probably the best thing ever because I felt like I came to Tulsa for him. 
We had a couple transition lessons with an investigator named Abraham with the Jenks elders and he had the tiniest dog ever. But he came to a baptism that they were having and I think that the YSA will do him good!! We're going to see him tomorrow to say goodbye. I can't remember what else happened this week. Sorry about that guys haha. Well I love you!!!

Another one bites the dust! 5/16/16 (week that is...)

What a week!
 
So this week we dropped our last investigator...he wasn't progressing but we're hoping to pick him back up in a couple of weeks. We still have Bobby but he's an eternigator and so we don't count him haha. We also lost some of the less actives we were working with sooooo our teaching pool as of now consists of Bobby and Tyrnan (a less active)...so it has shrunk quite a bit haha. As a consequence of this, we have quite a lot of time to fill and so we re-evaluated our lives. We've come to the conclusion that we need to start focusing on the member. We have a lot of active member lessons but they haven't been yielding that great of results lately. Tracting hasn't been producing results and neither has OTMing, less active hunting, formers, potentials. The only way we really get investigators who are actually interested are through referrals. And our little ysa branch is declining in size and they have baby cliques in it. So we've come to the conclusion that we need to get the ysa pumped up and get more people coming. And so we are going to start working more with activities and such. If we can get people excited to come then more people will bring people and then there's more peeps to teach. So that's our game plan as of right now. It's actually really cool because I got a transfer blessing at the beginning of the transfer from our branch president and he mentioned something in there about planning activities and I didn't know what he was talking about but now I do! Super neat!
We have transfer calls this Saturday! I think I'm staying :) but we'll see!
 
Well I love you bunches!! Have a great week!!!

5/9/16

Hey!

This week has been a bit crazy! It was nice to talk to my familia on Saturday! I don't remember a lot of the things that happened this week but it has definitely been a learning experience. Our teaching pool has shrunk a bit and finding has been pretty awful as of late. But we had an amazing lesson with one of our less actives this week. He was giving us the same old excuses and we were a bit blunt with him that those were pretty lame excuses so he opened up and told us what was really going on. We then were even more blunt with him and he kind of broke in front of us. It was so sad! But he gave us the most solid commitment that I've seen and hopefully he will change his life around. But he didn't come to church either so :(. I went to Bartlesville on an exchange on Friday and it was cool to see some of the people that I've worked with. A family that we were working with now has a baptismal date that they are working toward! Well I love you lots and hope you have a great week!

Love
Sister Larmouth

More Naders! 5/2/16

So this week has been awesome!!! There was a tornado!!! I guess I prayed it here hahaha jk. But it was super fun!! (Don't kill me mom) but I loved it!! Most exciting thing that's happened!! And I got to drive in it!!! Well not the twister portion but while it was happening!!! So here's what happened. We do missionary work until we hear the sirens and there was a watch all day but it didn't happen until 9:30 at night and our Mission President's wife texted us and told us to get in our bathrooms with our bike helmets and tennis shoes so we put our bean bags in the tub and brought our blankies and pillows and water and flashlights and snacks and our portable dvd player with Meet the Mormons in it! It was great. Then we got a call around 10:30 from our zone leader that all of our district needed to head to the stake center!!!! So we drove in the tornado!! Greatest experience of my life. It was raining like crazy! And I might have disregarded TIWI a bit (he's the terrible device in our car that monitors our speed and driving (love him so much)). So we got to the stake center and the elders started playing basketball. It was a good time! My next wish is to see the tornado. It'll be great. They had another tornado watch on Friday but it didn't come.
Other than the tornado not much happened this week...or at least I can't remember it. Hmm...we had some good lessons with some of our investigators. Eli we had a lesson on the baptismal interview questions and we're moving forward with his baptism date!!! We finally met with Bobby after the Pentecostal experience and this experience has helped him realize why he has a hard time with religion. We talked to him about the Spirit and how it really feels and about prayer! So that was pretty cool. Well I love you all and I hope your week is amazing!!!

Love
Sister Larmouth

Pentacostals: Gotta Love 'em!

Hey Family!!!

So this week has been great!! So we had a lot of progress with our Russian investigator this week but she left yesterday back to Russia :( Tears were shed. But we are going to send the Russian missionaries to her and definitely keep in contact! We biked this week! In the rain...it was actually pretty fun. I didn't realize why it was so hard until a member told me I had a flat tire haha. Sooo...great.
On Wednesday we had a lesson with Bobby and his friend was there. His friend wore one of those Chinese rice field hats the whole time...and he is a devout Pentecostal. Well he wasn't very nice during the lesson and near the end he started praying to himself and started having a "spiritual experience" (we have a member there mind you). Then he asks us this question, "Do you shout? Do you fight? Do you participate in spiritual warfare?" uhhhhhh....we fight Satan's temptations?? That's not what he meant. But he started speaking in tongues and we got out of there real fast. Not good feelings there. Well our investigator grew up Pentecostal and some of their doctrines are why he hates religion so he decided to stay away from all religions for a while :( hopefully that will change soon.
We asked his other friend, Eli (at a different lesson), to be baptized and he answered, "I was planning on it" and we were really confused and kind of excited and then he said, "in the Baptist church." Yeah. But we're still meeting with him.
So we're a bit low on investigators right now but we have a couple of really solid potentials! One we met while biking downtown and his friend gave him a book of Mormon a while ago and he really wants to meet with us. Although he hasn't returned any of our calls...

Well I love you all and have a great week!!

Love
Sister Larmouth

Naysayers 4/18/16

Hola Familia!!!
So this week was pretty great! Yesterday we had two investigators at church and that was pretty neat! Our Russian investigator didn't come though :( She has social anxiety. But she has come a long way this week!!! She actually likes us for starters. Well she likes me. She doesn't really like Sister Gibson for some reason. But we've been over to see lots this week and she prayed 3 times!!! In Russian but she prayed!! She was really adamant at first that she wasn't going to pray but then Sister Gibson and I just bowed our heads and waited for her to start haha. She gave in to the peer pressure. We were going to do some fun things with her today before she leaves on Friday but she bailed...hopefully we'll be able to keep in contact with her.
We had quite the week with negative nancies. First we had a lesson with an investigator (Fatima) on Tuesday and she had another girl there who our investigator picked up off the streets. Her name is Alex and she's super sweet. She asked us if we had any pamphlets so we gave her one and a Book of Mormon. She was already half way through the pamphlet when we started the lesson. Fatima was not very responsive but Alex loved the lesson. Well after our lesson Fatima (who is black) texted us and she found a site that listed every racist thing about our church. And then she went into deeper doctrine as well. We kept on referring her to LDS.org but soon we just had to stop replying. Her fellowshipper is still trying to help her out but the sad thing is is that the only way we get to see Alex again is through Fatima because we have no other way of contacting her.
Then on Wednesday, we had a district lunch after district council at Chickfila and this guy named Caleb asks if he can sit with us...he brought his "well-read" Book of Mormon and his Bible with him. Then he starts questioning us and quoting Bible scriptures and trying to tell us why we're so wrong. Our district has never  been more unified haha. I don't know why he thought he could try to convince us of our "error" when we literally do this whole mission thing 24/7 for 18 mos.- 2 years. Craziness.
We had a YSA Cookout on Friday and Eli and Bobby (our investigators) showed up and so did our Russian investigator but she didn't get out of the car. So we talked to her by her car and introduced her to someone in the ward who served their mission in Russia. I think she struggles a lot with depression :(
Welp I love you all sooooo much!!! Have the bestest week!!!

Love
Sister Larmouth

Transfer Calls! 4/4/16

Hola!!!!!!!

Sooooooo.....I'm staying in the YSA!!!! That's right!!!! I was pretty glad to hear that. A lot of missionaries are staying the same which is unusual...usually one leaves. Sister Lunt is leaving Bartlesville and going to Bella Vista so I won't be able to see her anymore :( But I'm super excited about this transfer!! It's going to be amazing!!

Last week I got to go on a zone outing with not my zone but the Bartlesville zone and they all went fishing. We only went for an hour but it was super fun!!!! I didn't fish because...there were worms and you have to touch the worm...but I skipped rocks and improved my technique :D

Oh guess what!! We got a Russian investigator!! We're kind of scared of her haha. A less active in the branch came up to us after institute and said she keeps asking questions that he can't remember the answers to and that we need to teach her. He told us to do it when she wasn't home so we did!! Turns out she was very angry that he wasn't there haha. But we had another lesson with him there and it was incredible! He bore his testimony and it was perfect! She leaves for Russia in a couple weeks so we have limited time heh heh. But we were going to go hiking today but it was a bit rainy and cold.

We also met with another less active who's name has been sticking out to me for a while but he always bails on lessons. But he finally met with us!!! It was sssuuuchhhh a good lesson. We talked about the Holy Ghost and his mission and he told us that the thing he misses the most is the temple. He has been less active for 6 years and he told us why he went less active (he was offended). We set a goal for him to go back to the temple in a year!!

We also had a lesson with Bobby who we were going to drop. But every time we go to drop him something tells us not to. Soooo we didn't. He has been struggling financially because of his grandfather's funeral so we promised him that if he paid tithing all of his bills would work out!

Well I love you!!!! Have the best week ever!!