I'm waking up to ash and dust...[June 22, 2015]

The Lake Shawnee elders have wifi at their place, so we woke up to them calling us at 6:30 to tell us the transfer doctrine. My companion is training and I will be going to Junction City! Elder Kartchner will be whitewashing and training in Wichita. The Shawnee dream team is being torn apart :(
Topeka as a zone will be having 5 trainees in it! Supa cwazy.
This week has been so awesome.
Well, it started with dinner last Monday, we brought Morgan (a solid investigator in her early 20s) with us to a members house and they were awesome fellowship. Morgan spent p-day with us at the church and she waited with us outside our apartment for the member to pick us up and I think because it was close to our apartment I just got this overwhelming impression that Morgan has the potential to be a part of this work. Later that evening she even mentioned to the members that she is considering missionary work after she gets baptized. so cool. The members were also converts and shared the struggles they dealt with when joining the church.
The elders had a baptism this Saturday. Morgan went and another one of our investigators and they both progressed so much after feeling the strong spirit that is always at baptisms. Morgan is now on date for August 1st. The elders have been giving us flak about how far out it is, but she chose that date and she has a long road ahead of her for the many addictions she has to overcome. I know she can make it! Now I just have to find me a ride from Junk city to Topeka for her splashtism!
The Lake Shawnee elders have realized (probably since the second day of transfers) that Sis. Westwood and I are the two most gullible people ever and they have taken advantage of it since. They may or may not of convinced us of the following: they have a jackrussell terrier puppy named Jack in their apartment, E.Kartchner was zone leader, they are permanently getting their car taken away since they went over miles, the list goes on. Well, we got them back. I did this with a dif set of elders, but it was way funnier this time. E. Kartchner handed me their phone, because they both were about to baptize someone and he didn't want to forget about it in his pocket. Well, I changed their wall paper to a selfie with me and my comp. I changed the zone leaders to dads and district leader to mom and then I of course changed our number to President Bell. Well, we were waiting for the member to finish making dinner after the baptism and I gave them their phone back and I called them and they shreaked like little girls, President Bells calling us!! and they leapt and went into a room. I might've finally stopped laughing about ten minutes later.
For the baptism my comp volunteered us to sing Savior, Redeemer of my soul. Yeah, I've never sung for a performance in my life and we each soloed and then sang harmony. The harmony went great #sightsinging4thewin But the soloing was the scariest thing in my life. When we finally practiced with the piano my brain went like this. This is embarrassing. I'm an idiot, what was I thinking. Where's the closest cello....the camillettis. will they let me borrow it even though its tomorrow! Oh no, its tomorrow....ahhhhhhhh!!!
It ended up being okay, but it will be a mistake that will never be repeated.
On Friday, we got this cool challenge. Visit a member in the morning and have them pray that you will have a miracle that day. After the miracle happens follow up with what happened to the member. Well, our first lesson was with an investigator who is a little mentally handicapped. she sometimes is more there than other times and we feel we are still making a difference with visiting her so we stop by every once and a while.
She was having a bad day so we talked about prayer and I figured it would be awesome to have her pray. She said that she has prayed for a miracle for herself and it hasn't happened yet. I told her about Gods will. We invited her to pray for a miracle or us and she said, so what kind of miracle do you want. We explained that we didn't really know...maybe someone to teach or somehow we can really allow someone to come closer to Christ. She sighed and said, alright, Ill do it. Well, her prayer was super innocent and perfect. Let someone come into these ladies lives that they can help come closer to thee.
Later that evening we were potential hopping (my comp and I coined that. def: when you go from one potential investigators house to another seeing who's home and willing to let you in) We originally didn't have it in our plans, but when we arrived at dinner at a less active house she completely forgot about it and since we weren't anywhere near our house we got subway sandwiches and had time to kill.
Well we had this one potential named Zach. We tracted into him, he said he has been thinking about coming to church and we gave him info for the church, but he said he was pretty busy so he couldn't set up a time for us to come back to visit with his family. Not a lot of potential, but still interested and we wanted to see if he remembered about church. Well, when we stopped by his wife (or gf) and kids were home and they were adorable. She was super nice and interested and accepted a date to be baptized and all that jazz. We called the original investigator and she started, you better have had a miracle! yep!!

This balloon has been in the air since
my birthday 4 MONTHS AGO! yeah,
it finally started sinking last week
so now its eye level and we pretend
 like its our pet when we get home....okay
 I pretend like its my pet when we get home.
Hey, balloon pal! Im going
literally insane....its the water in Kansas...

On our way to Burlingame

E. Kartchner took this photo
without my knowledge last week and thanks to
airdropping everyone in the zone has it
and they air drop it to me whenever
I'm within air dropping range and they all
roll on the floor together laughing afterwards.
Yay for being the most unphotogenic person
on planet earth!

We were in Burlingame, a small city south of Topeka.
 The gps took us to a members house
and it said we had arrived and their was
no sign of civilization in sight...yay....but
we eventually found it.
We found out that the husband isn't
actually a member and is paranoid
so it was a miracle he didn't pull a gun on us
when we first pulled up...yay
for being a sister missionary!
The wife was super nice and sat with us for a bit.

Sisters in the Zone

Where you lead, I will follow...[June 15, 2015]

So the Elders have an investigator that is preparing for baptism as  well as her boyfriend. They originally were going to get married and  we went dress shopping with her last Monday. So a couple days ago the  Elders were figuring out their baptism program and they asked her who  she wants to give her the Holy Ghost and she said Sister  Westwood....they had to explain Priesthood and the fact that men have that responsibility. Then they asked who she wanted to say the prayers  and she said Sister Westwood for the opening and the closing....who's  the one that follows her around?? Uh...Sister Seymour? Yeah her!! :(
 It's okay, because a few weeks ago we were sitting with this little girl that's in the ward and she never can remember my name and she whispered in my companions ear....what's your mommy's name and points  to me...awkward....

We got our iPads at Zone Conference and they are AWESOME. We've done  it a couple times where we talk with someone on the street and show them because of him or something and their whole countenance just  changes. It also has completely changed how we study because we can really focus on a subject for an investigator or stuff like that.

We can also check our emails during the week, but we can only reply back on Monday.

Long story: the most annoying hour is 10am, because that's when studies end, but that's too early to eat lunch and kinda too early to visit anyone. If you're in training that's when you do your training studies and sometimes they have like the Book of Mormon challenge where we use that hour to study it, but most the time we are just lost of what to do. Well, we also don't live in our area so we can't just leave and come back for lunch because we don't have miles for that.

We luckily found out that a lady whose records our in our ward lives in the nursing home across the street from our apartment. So we visited her 3 different days and she was sleeping every time. Then we had dinner with a lady in the Relief Society Presidency and she told us the lady was in the hospital so that week we went to the hospital to see her and she was pretty out of it, but we finally got to talk with her. Her husband is a less active member and he was there as well and was nice. He said that she was doing well and would be back in the nursing home Saturday, but at Ward Council that Sunday we found out she passed away the day after we saw her. We went to her funeral this morning. Going to funerals always helps me bring things into perspective. It's like going to a transfer devotional where you hear the testimonies of missionaries going home. There is an end to all of this, so what are we doing now about it?

Ashlyn shaved half her head
so we also took a selfie

Selfie

Who's up for a selfie
after daily planning!

 FHE playing whiffle ball

You would not believe your eyes/ If ten million fireflies/ Lit up the world as I fell asleep...[June 8, 2015]

 ...This one is for Christina (as requested)...

OWL CITY
Fireflies  Lyrics

You would not believe your eyes
If ten million fireflies
Lit up the world as I fell asleep

'Cause they'd fill the open air
And leave teardrops everywhere
You'd think me rude
But I would just stand and stare

I'd like to make myself believe
That planet Earth turns slowly
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay
Awake when I'm asleep
'Cause everything is never as it seems

'Cause I'd get a thousand hugs
From ten thousand lightning bugs
As they tried to teach me how to dance

A foxtrot above my head
A sock hop beneath my bed
A disco ball is just hanging by a thread

I'd like to make myself believe
That planet Earth turns slowly
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay
Awake when I'm asleep
'Cause everything is never as it seems
When I fall asleep

Leave my door open just a crack
(Please take me away from here)
'Cause I feel like such an insomniac
(Please take me away from here)
Why do I tire of counting sheep
(Please take me away from here)
When I'm far too tired to fall asleep

To ten million fireflies
I'm weird 'cause I hate goodbyes
I got misty eyes as they said farewell

But I'll know where several are
If my dreams get real bizarre
'Cause I saved a few and I keep them in a jar

I'd like to make myself believe
That planet Earth turns slowly
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay
Awake when I'm asleep
'Cause everything is never as it seems
When I fall asleep
 
We had pizza 4 times this week for dinner....which I'm fine with. Our air conditioning is broken...along with 13 other apartments in our complex....so we'll see when that gets fixed. One morning I was doing situps and I was taking a break, and I felt something on my thigh. So I sit up and quickly brush whatever it was off and I look and see that it was a ginormo cockroach...bleg!
On a happy note I saw for the first time this year some fireflies. We were leaving coordination around 9:20 at the church and I saw them blink and my companion couldn't see them so she thought I was going crazy. We're going to have to go catch fireflies sometime so I can prove that I really was seeing them.
Yesterday and the day before were super hard. We were knocking doors when this cute old lady answered one. We introduce ourselves as representatives of Christ and she glares at us and in the most ugliest of ways says, "Get off my porch." We were just both taken aback that she was so bluntly rude and then yells at us to get off her property. We also had a return appt with a lady we met. She said she was looking for a church and she really needs this in her life right now. Well, when we came back to sit down with her. She told us her current troubles she was going through and really opened up. We started talking about revelation and prophets and I take out the Book of Mormon and she just shuts off. We try to explain what our purpose is and how we can help her gain a greater relationship with God, which she just explained she needs and she just didn't care.
Yesterday we were talking with a girl who seemed somewhat interested, but in the midst of talking with her, her dad came home. He just went on and on about the last days and all this stuff and it was like yeah...we believe that too...look we are the LATTER day saints. He then went on how we focus too much on Joseph Smith and by that time we hadn't even mentioned him or the Book of Mormon. We show our name tags and that Christ is the center of everything and the Book of Mormon is awesome for that fact that we can learn more about Him through it. He then was like, I know you don't want to hear this, but the Bible was not to be added on. It was like yeah...cuz we haven't heard that before...and it just was terrible. Mainly, because it was 99 degrees outside and it went on for about an hour and because like everyone else who wants to Bible bash with you, they are completely cut off from the Spirit and just want to prove their point.
We had a fairly average week. We were a little low with some things and we did pretty good with others. As we were accounting to our District Leader he literally said, "So what are you sisters going to do so you never have a week like this again?" If I wasn't driving I probably would have said like, "Sorry, we didn't hear that, do you want to rephrase it?" But I just was like uh....and then he was like that was a little harsh and I was like yeah...maybe, what are you sisters going to do to improve this week? Sometimes Elders are arrogant imbeciles, but they hold the priesthood, so...we can't really baptize people without them...the two that are in our ward (E. Karchtner and Bradshaw) are possibly the best Elders that I have worked with in the same ward thus far. Honestly what makes it work is good communication.
The young women had girls camp this week, so of course all the testimonies were about that. One girl mentioned about an activity they did where they had blindfolds on and they did a walk with Christ and they shouldered a heavy board and all this stuff and I honestly feel like that pretty much every day of my mission. I know that Christ is walking with me and even He was rejected, so we are just getting a little bit of what He went through.
Love you all! Thanks for the prayers!!

Forget all your worries; Forget all your cares and go downtown...[June 1, 2015]

This week has just been one giant bowl of awesome.
We got our "digital technology training" really it was a 4 hour training turned 6 hours and ipads took up about an hour. It was with a 70- Elder Clark and he was hilarious! It was fantastic and I learned how to be a better missionary/person. I would be more specific, but I have the memory of a goldfish (my comp can testify) and I forgot my notes.
We are working with investigators that our actually progressing...only took about 3 1/2 months. One girl we went to visit and she committed that she would quit smoking within a week. We were calling her every night to see how it was going (when we have fb we can just stalk them on that.) Yeah, it's about 10x a day that I have to point out ways that having an ipad will make our lives incredibly easier. They obviously talked about ways missionaries misuse ipads in the training and obviously porn was brought up and people that are addicted to it and then they talked about how we will use facebook. I realized that I am/was completely addicted to that. Hopefully by the end of this, I will have more self-control. Wow side tangent, anyways, back to the girl who "quit" smoking. Well we visited her on Friday, and she needed to stop that day. We were sitting down and she's like, "guys, yeah, I don't know about that smoking thing, I don't think I can do it."  I was like....what?....and then broke out the BOM and slayed her with the sword of the Spirit and got all pumped, like I literally was out of my seat jumping up and down saying she can do it. She jumped up and was like you're right and got her last two packs of cigarettes and we ripped them all up. She's getting baptized on the 13th.
We were walking the other day and ran into a teenager and talked a bit with her. We asked if we could talk with her again...and surprisingly she said yes and gave us her address and we went back...and surprisingly it was the right address...and surprisingly she was expecting us...and surprisingly she accepted everything we said...and surprisingly she said she'll come to church...and surprisingly she has transportation to get there...and surprisingly she also accepted a date to get baptized. Meeruhcuhls.
Here's the ironic statement of the day. My companion is Asian and detests eating fish. Well, it was quite entertaining when a member fed us fish fry this week (which by the way is delicious) and she covered the fish in potatoes and tartar sauce. She looked close to hurling at times. I love my companion.
Sister Westwood has pointed out that at about 3:00 every day I remember who is feeding us that night and every time I say, oh yeah they are the best family to eat with. I say that about literally everyone though, because I'm a garbage disposal and all the members are over the top nice here.
We were in charge of the lesson for 5th Sunday and it went so well! We set it up all nice and Bro. Scerbo (wml) printed off these posters and fliers that we put on all the seats. We talked about family mission plans and members shared these awesome missionary experiences and it was the bomb.com. Bro. Scerbo texted saying he has been getting some good feedback and people are now excited for family mission plans! Yay!
So much to write, so little time!
At the beginning of my mission I came out because I was being obedient to a prompting Heavenly Father gave me. I didn't really care what happened on my mission, where I was going or anything, I just knew this is what He wanted me to do and I'll go get it done and come back. Well, now that I've been here a bit I'm realizing He wants me here because I'm a prideful piece of work and only through a mission would He be able to help me recognize several of my many weaknesses. I've recently been realizing so many that I've been making a list since last week and it's ever growing and maybe at the end of about 10 lifetimes will I be able to make a dent. Now it's just a matter of creating spiritual steps for myself and realizing the dents that I am making. Small drops of awesome.
I love this work! Keep missionaries in your prayers, cuz we need them!

5th Sunday Presentation



Capitol



Lake Shawnee Crew

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right...[May 25, 2015]

I sent my mom last week to find a title for me and she ended up just putting up my message to find it as the title...awkward.
Remember last week when I mentioned we met that guy that recognized me from before and he came to stake conference, well he called us on Tuesday and asked when the elders were planning on seeing him. We told him we didn't know and then he was like okay, and then we ended it and were like bye...and he was like bye and then an awkward moment and then said sweet dreams and we didn't' know what to do, so we just hung up. He was progressing well, but the elders haven't been able to contact them recently, so hopefully he's still okay...
Well, now I have a really sad story. Once upon a time there was this girl that was investigating the church. Her mom is a member but has been less active since she was a teenager. We got her from the elders when I got here over 3 months ago and have been teaching her when we can see her. She doesn't answer her phone (we think her parents blocked us) but we would text her mom and she would tell us if she was available for us to stop by. Well, Allisa wanted to get baptized, but her mom thought she needed to learn more, so we decided, we just needed to sit down with her and her mom and figure some things out and see what we could compromise. Well, her mom kept saying she was busy with school and we could do it after her finals. Well, during this we went to Allisa's orchestra concert and it was awesome. She pretty much was like a little sister we were trying to help out.
Well, then it was 2 weeks and her mom never texted us back and Allisa hadn't been to church. So naturally we went to her house to figure out what was up. Well, when we knock on the door some lady answers it and says oh I don't live here, I'll get them, like awkward. Well, her step dad (who is a buddhist of a couple years) answers the door with Allisa and he was like, I thought we made it clear that you can't stop by unless you text us. Which, Allisa mentioned offhandedly one day, but her parents never told us themselves that we couldn't stop by, unless we made an appointment. Plus, we just quickly wanted to see what was up with them not texting us back and her not being at church. Well, we mentioned her mom hasn't been texting us back and Allisa was like to her dad, yeah, she hasn't been texting them back and he was like well doesn't that tell you something that we are too busy and for you to not come by? What don't you understand.
I was not going to put up with his crap. We love Allisa and we know that her parents are uber controlling and I was just sick of them not communicating to us, if they want to drop us, fine, but if not we are going to try to do what we can to help Allisa. I was just so unprepared with all of this that I just said, our purpose is to help people, but we have to be able to see the people to help them. That is literally all I said and he was like how dare you come to my house and be disrespectful to me. Don't give me all this purpose stuff, you need to get a new purpose. You better leave right now. He then just slammed the door.
Yeah, I have never been so close to tears on my mission before. I was doing everything I could to help this girl and then her parents had the guile to call us disrespectful and treat us so poorly when all we wanted to do was help their daughter.
Well, we texted her mom later and said that we were super confused with the hostility her husband showed and all we wanted to do was support her daughter and we are sorry for any miscommunication. Well, she texted us back saying she feels we were disrespectful and crossed the line and said that we were never welcome by their house again and to tell the church they don't want any other visitors and all this stuff.
I'm sure her husband told her a very exaggerated story, because it all doesn't make sense, but in the end there is nothing you can do. I believe there is a very special place for parents like that that hold their kids back and it's probs not a super happy one. This is the second part member family that has dropped us with kids that we were teaching since I've been here.
I need to stop getting attached to kids.
Well, what this really is is Heavenly Father teaching me meekness and it's not fun. Ever since I read this talk on Meekness by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, I have been getting experiences like this and it's definitely a growing experience.
On the flip side we had spare ribs this week and then the next night we had steak. I love the members here! Now they just need to give us their friends to teach! lol.
We also got a pleasant surprise at church where a 12 year old that we met just visiting random less actives on the roster just showed up. We were sitting there and she comes bounding in and she knew the member behind us from school and was like Hi, Miss Wendy! and the member was like oh my goodness, what are you doing here? Who brought you? She explained her aunt dropped her off and I explained how we met her. I went to Young Womens with her and no one knew who she was, because she had never been to church while in Topeka. It was really cool, but it's too bad she didn't come to church a couple weeks earlier, because she could've gone to girls camp...they are still going to work on it though and see if she could make it.
Our ward mission leader (bro. scerbo) is literally the best ward mission leader in the world! When we told him our Allisa sob story at coordination he was like WHY DIDNT YOU CALL ME? We just hadn't thought about it and he was like I could've brought you ice cream or something. haha. but really sometimes I forget about the angels God sends us on this side of the veil as well. He also, came to our lesson after that and he gave this analogy about your favorite ice cream. He said that you can love it and describe it to people all you want, but really in the end all you can say is, you just have to try it for yourself. He said that was like God in the Pre-Earth Life where he described what it was like to have a body, but we just had to figure it out for ourselves. I thought of my favorite things to do with the senses I have: floating in a lake, listening to Mahler 5 in a pitch black room, running down a warm beach playing with dogs, eating my moms homemade chicken pie, etc. All things that I can't do while on my mission. Why would He deny me these things if we came to earth to have these experiences? I think He denies us these things, because when we do we are more spiritually in tune than we can ever be. We need to be able to have the Spirit with us so much that if we walk into a room, people can feel it's presence and know what our purpose is, just by being there.

Can't think of anything, just pick something...[May 18, 2015]

 

We found out the day that my brother is coming home from his mission (Mexico Puebla North Mission) and my mom said it was Jan. 20th, just a few days after me, then I contacted my brother and he said really he's coming home Jan. 21st which is the same exact day I'm going home! Crazy stuff. We get to be awkward RM's together...yay....
Well, I was counting down the days until we get ipads which would be 9 days today, but just found out that we aren't getting them when they are having the Mission wide training, but weeks later. I'm shedding tears right now, okay not really, but it's a sad day.
Oh, I also found out that I'm staying for another transfer. Since last transfer was 7 weeks, this transfer is only 5 weeks. This is the longest I have ever been in an area. Being somewhere one transfer, the members won't even acknowledge your presence a couple weeks later, because they don't remember you at all. The second transfer they would atleast say hey to you in the hallway or something. Third transfer is perfect. Anything after that you have a hard time keeping faith up for the area and need to get. out.
So I have an alarm set for 6:10 every morning which I snooze for 5 minutes and contemplate the meaning of life and then I get up and do this awesome dance work out. It's with Tracey Anderson and she is the bomb. I feel like I'm cheating on Sister Michaels (Jillian Michaels) but Tracey says things like I hope you're having as much fun as I am and she just keeps you moving the whole time, rather than Jillian who is constantly having you do exercises on the ground which is way to tempting to "rest" for a bit and she yells things like you better be dripping sweat right now. Things like that are normally what motivate me, but when my brain realized that Jillian won't be coming out of the DVD player to pummel me if I don't do her exercises it's now a moment of rebellion when I don't follow her.
Well, Wednesday I accidentally turned the alarm off instead of putting it on snooze. So we slept in til 6:45, which I felt bad about and then I felt weird not exercising, so I decided to throw some squats in. Well, I did 15 and then it was like, hey those aren't bad I can do some more, well about 40 more and I went to take a shower and then 24 hours later my legs felt like something with giant claws shredded my thighs.
We had dinner with the elders quorum president and he was telling us this story that Elder Holland told them during the Leadership Meeting. There was this man who found a marvelous pearl in his field that just was amazing and he wanted to be able to show everyone. Well, he decided if he wanted to put it on display he needed to create this awesome box to put it in. He went abroad to find the best wood to put it together and then he spent tons of time handcrafting it and then putting gold trim on it. Well, when it finally was on display thousands of people came to view it and when they left what they mentioned about was the box and didn't even notice the pearl. He was comparing this to what we do for the church. Our we too focused on the box or the activities or just extra stuff we do or do we focus on the pearl and the original foundation of the gospel of Christ.
Well, on Thursday, as we were eating these awesome homemade crunchwraps with the Jackson's. We were getting ready to go to this Relief Society activity and we texted this investigator last minute to see if she could make it. We told her there was an activity that night and we could give her a ride. (we were going with a member) Unfortunately I accidentally sent it to the Zone Leaders instead. They were super confused why we were inviting them to an activity and then inviting to drive them.....
How to make homemade crunchwraps. big flour tortilla, taco meat, nacho cheese, tostada shell, sourcream, lettuce, onion, tomato, cheese and small tortilla then wrap it up crunchwrap style and put it on the stove. yum.
We found this whole Micronesian family that is super nice and interested. It's just unfortunate, because they don't speak a whole lot of english...this should be interesting. We also found another guy we talked with on the street. He said he remembered talking with me before, it must've been with Sister Blood, totes don't remember him...awkward! Well, he was interested as well and came to Stake Conference and he said he felt really comfortable there, which is a miracle because the adult session he came to was all on Ward Council and there was even a speaker who just read from the handbook...God works in Mysterious ways. He really wants to change and he seems motivated so that should be good. Yeah, he's definitely passed off to the Elders.

Some bullet holes in a house we knocked....
good news no one  lives there!
It's the same apartment complex
we found both the guy I just talked about
and the Micronesian family.
   

No one else can feel it for you; only you can let it in...[May 11, 2015]

This last past week has either been pouring buckets of rain or just being warm and muggy and one such day we were walking down the street and after being rejected from a lady that was just sitting on her porch, we walked, shoulders hunched, trying to find the next house to knock when we hear someone yell, hey you wanna drink!? We look around and I see Vince, this guy that we talked with a couple weeks ago, who wasn't interested, but super friendly. We walked over and he said, I would offer you a beer, but I know better. He went in to get us some water as we played with the cutest little dog ever.
We now have walked about every street in Montara, so we have a lot of such guardian angels. One is named Jason and honks his horn whenever he sees us and another is Lucy who is a retired divorcee and spends probably every second of her day in her front and back yard which has no grass and is filled with all sorts of plants. She gave me some sort of flower that I named Fred. It sat in our car all day, so it got a little weepy, but I took it home and put it in a tupperware container and filled it with dirt. It'll take a miracle to keep it alive.
Now we just need to get these people interested in the gospel! We have been getting a lot of new investigators lately, so that is great. It's always people that you don't think would be interested. One such lady we knocked into and she seemed very iffy at first, but we started asking about her family and she opened up. We taught the plan of salvation and she invited us again for next week. As we walked away, we were about a block away when her 5 year old daughter comes up and tells us we have to come help her pick up her blocks and she grabs my wrist with a firm grip and would not let go. She drags us back to her house to help her pick up her blocks she spilled out. Her mom was super embarrassed she did that, but it was hilarious.
Tuesday, an investigator had a school orchestra concert and we got permission to go, so that was lots of fun, they were pretty good, it was super weird seeing an orchestra, though, but delightful.
In Topeka people are very possessive of the street in front of their house, we've had people come out of their house and ask us why we just parked in front of it. Also, we've learned that it's no bueno parking across from someone's driveway, because we also had some guy yell at us about that, because what if he had to leave his house, then he would have to turn when he backed out!
On Saturday, we had a zone training and part of it, they gave us small paper swords and we wrote our "weapons of rebellion" (Alma 24:15-19) or things that we feel we should leave behind to make us more consecrated for the work. Then we went out back and put them in a hole the zone leaders made in the back of the church and we all took a turn putting dirt back in the hole.
I got to skype my family on Sunday, so that was awesome! It was great seeing all their faces.

My District

District breakfast at Denney's
for Elder Bradshaw's birthday