I don't remember if I told this story before, but I don't think I have and it is fairly pertinent. Well, about 3 months ago when I was in Goodland, we were emailing and a man came up to us and asked if we were the missionaries for Goodland. We were like, uhh yeah....
We were in Goodland, we knew all the members in Goodland, we were super confused who this guy was. He was like, "Well I'm from California and I took a trip up here by bus to tour the colleges in Kansas and see if I want to go here, but this trip has been the worst and I never want to step foot in Kansas again."
He was yelling this in the middle of the library which was in Kansas, it was super awkward. We were like, "Oh no, why has Kansas been so bad?" He said, "I was late to my bus so I was stranded in Goodland (super sad day for him) and I have been calling your Branch President (he was on vacation at the time) and the Branch President in Colby (branch 30 minutes away that is not our branch) and no one has helped me, what, is this the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka?!" At the time Sis. Fosselman and I had no idea what the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka was. Well, we helped him out as much as we could and he finally made it to his bus and left. Later that week at District Meeting the Elders were like, "Did he keep comparing us to the Westboro Baptist Church to you like he did for us?" We were like, "Yeah! What is that?" The Elder said it's a church in Topeka that hates gays very openly. Well later down the road Elder Osorio explained to us that there is a rainbow house right across the street, where gays live and they painted the house rainbow and the mailbox. They just sit there and look at this Westboro Baptist Church that constantly protests against gays.
When I found out I was going to Topeka I decided I needed to find this house. One day we were coming back from an appt., and we passed right by it! It's even in our area! So naturally we got some pics. They are at the bottom.
This week has been full of ups and downs. One day we had 4 appts. and by around 4:00pm all appointments got canceled, so we were sitting in our car. On top of that my companion (whoops, forgot to mention she has diabetes) had a low blood sugar, like way low, so she was checking that and eating chocolate (having a companion with diabetes has been great for my diet regime (dang it we're trying to be less sarcastic as a zone...not gonna happen...I take pride in seeing how many times I can get my zone leaders to be sarcastic on the phone!) Like always, I was thinking about what I was going to eat for dinner and finally we decided to go to Texas Roadhouse--buy something cheap like a salad and just eat amrap (as many rolls as possible...I just made that up on the spot--I'm in a weird mood!)
Well, we forgot it was Friday night, so it was super busy....It was awesome! While waiting for a table with everyone else stuck there, we just passed out pass along cards. Then some girl comes up to us and goes, I" just got off my mission yesterday!" This might not seem like such a miracle if you are in Utah right now, but here in Kansas members are few and far between, or at least I thought. She just has Elders in her ward so she gave us her number to call her whenever we need someone! They also ended up paying for our meal. I LOVE MEMBERS!!
Yesterday this 12 year old gave a talk and he had a whole stack of printer paper. In big typed out letters on each page he had about a sentence or half a sentence of his talk. Totes doing that for my homecoming. One page got stuck and he was halfway through a sentence....
Also, yesterday there was this lady that was randomly at church, I asked the Elders, "Are you teaching her?" "No"....so we went up and talked with her. A less active just invited her to come. Needless to say, we have an appt. on Tuesday. Oh she's also African American. I've been praying for a blacktism....[I have to intervene...she is in a weird mood...either she has been in Kansas too long or someone slipped something in her Wheaties!! I don't make this stuff up fyi!!...it is cut and paste!]
We had an investigator come to church, and she is just so awesome. She is the one that had dinner with us the first night we were here, with the members. She said last Thursday that she has just been looking forward to meeting with us all week and she just feels peace and light when she is with us. She cried all through church and she texted us that she talked with her daughter about the church and it was a really good discussion. She has 3 teenage kids and she really wants them to be on board with it as well, so we will see what happens. I'm so excited, she has been prepared and she is ready. She has just been eating up whatever we give her. We send her scriptures every day and yesterday she said she just spent all morning on mormon.org and watching Mormon messages. They suck you in, just like we do.~~ Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but here's a Book of Mormon, wanna get baptized maybe?~~ ...Yeah, I'm in a weird mood.
I've been studying humility lately and more specifically how I can rely on the atonement more. It's been crazy, I feel like my mind has been blown every day. I've been reading a lot of Jesus the Christ, which either hurts your brain or makes it want to explode and lots of conference talks. I never realized how really profound the atonement is. It's been great.
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