The Right Place

3-23-15

I love Mondays and hearing what the week was like at home and reflecting a little on my own week. Things sound so good at home, and they are so good here.  I met Elder Christofferson! The meeting he had with the missionaries was SO good.

We also spent a lot of the day with J------ and J----- doing some service then making dinner over a fire at their house! So fun!

 E------ and B------ came to church! They are this awesome older couple, and Sister Reed and I adore them.  They are coming along so well and they are amazing. They gave us some fish they caught for us to cook and it was SO yummy! Last week E----- went to their usual church and she told us she just felt like she wasn't in the right place, so this week they came to ours!   

Sorry my emails are getting so short, we have an appointment and have to run.  We are using part of our d-days to cram in more teaching while we can!

Elder Trujillo

Creating a Life

"The Dream Team" as the Elders like to call us.  Photo bombing by Sister Shumway.

9-2-14

It's been a hard week. The beautiful kind of hard. It reminds me a lot of high school cross country races. They were hard, but I loved them more than almost anything. The sense of accomplishment, the sense of self-worth, and the exhilaration of taking your body and your soul and making them work together to create a race.  Creating a race,  or a creating a life, really is a work of art. The things we do and say are creations, really. We are creating our lives, just as we create a race as we run it, they are creations! We are creative beings inherently. There is something in us that needs to create, and people find so many ways of creating. We are children of God, so of course there is a deep inner desire to create within each of us. He created the world. We create our little lives here upon it. We're not always very good at creating, but we sure do try. The trick is learning to let the Master Creator take the lead, to let him guide our creation.

This week in my creation of my mission, the little 18-month story I'm currently writing, I had a little case of writer's block. I didn't know where to go, what to say, what the next chapter of my story needed to be. So I took it to God and asked for some help. As always, the help came. And, as per usual, it came when I wasn't quite looking for it, in a way I didn't expect, and in timing I didn't quite understand. Sometimes I forget that God speaks to ME. He speaks to me in my own language. I tend to hear how he speaks to others and expect him to speak like that to me.

That's something I've definitely learned this transfer. The second you say "I can't" and you give up even in the slightest, that's when Satan can get you. And he will. Because he is EXCELLENT at what he does. NEVER GIVE UP. Never give up. Satan gave up. He didn't believe that he, or we, could deal with agency. He didn't think we were strong enough to succeed. But Christ, He believed in us. He didn't KNOW that we would be able to access the atonement and overcome and become all that we can be. He didn't know that. But he believed in us to the point that he was willing to give his life, he was willing to give MORE than his life--for us.  He performed the atonement to give us the OPPORTUNITY for salvation. His performance of the atonement guarantees nothing. He only believed that you would use it and guarantee for yourself a place at the right hand of God. He believes in you that deeply. And along with that belief there is love. Love like we cannot imagine, and faith in us that we cannot comprehend. Know that. Believe that. Act on that. I can promise you that if you go forth with that belief, you will move mountains. You ARE moving mountains. I bet you didn't know that. I bet you don't realize the mountains you have already moved. We are infinite beings with infinite potential. Believe in that. And NEVER GIVE UP.

Sisters of the Clarksburg West Virginia Stake

Elder Ostler is back!  I love my mission family from Lexington.

Putting up Hay

This is how much we LOVE putting up hay!

Mission accomplished

We randomly ran into this YSA group from Washington, D.C. while eating at Black Bear.
It was so fun to eat with them and hear all their missionary stories.

The Beauty of People

I'm not going to lie... I probably missed home the most this week since Ashland, knowing that you were going to rendezvous. That is the best thing we have ever decided to do. Luckily, pretty much everyone in Kentucky could be a rendezvous person, and that made me feel a little better. I missed being there so much though. I missed being with you guys, missed our rendezvous family, and missed watching Meg freak out every time a gun went off.

I wanted to cry when I heard about  Elder Ostler going home for knee surgery.  It's like hearing that my own brother tore his ACL!  You have no idea how amazing he was as a missionary and as a zone leader! He was doing such amazing things for the Buena Vista zone! I wonder who replaced him? We don't hear any mission news out here in the boonies of Pikeville. 

This week has been pretty cool. When I was working with M----- and B-----, it was so great to watch her stop smoking, but it was also cool because the H---- family was so crucial in that process and they were really a bigger means of support and learning than the missionaries were. That's really the way it should be. But this week, I got to start helping T---- stop smoking. And guess what?  He's doing it!  He hasn't touched a cigarette since Monday!!! And he's been smoking 37 years! I'm so proud of him! Funny story though, the other day we were at his house just doing a quick lesson and checking on how stopping smoking was coming, and I was kinda squinting at my scriptures I guess, and T----'s mom is in the room and she says, "baby, let me get you some glasses." So she goes into the other room, grabs me some reading glasses, and makes me keep them.  People out here are just like that---seriously the nicest people you'll ever meet.

Here's just a list of a few things that have happened lately:

We sang Amazing Grace with the Pikeville Elders at a funeral last Sunday. 

We picked up a muslim as an investigator.

We had a district meeting in Paintsville where we shared testimonies around a camp fire. (It was on Friday. I think that was God's little tender mercy for me because I didn't get to be around a campfire with y'all at rendezvous.)

We played a prank on the elders and gave me a black eye with make-up, and they all thought Sister Tobler punched me. The funny thing was, they literally believed it. 

Helped M----- with S------r's birthday party at a park in Open Fork.

Had an Easter egg hunt at the C------'s

Met a guy who made his own Tarahumara running shoes like the Indians in Born to Run.  He usually runs in New Balance minumus like me! 

Learned to make fried apple pies with the B----'s (they are my new grandparents! B----- L--- is on instagram and facebook and has a baking company! They are so cute! They look like Mrs. And Mr. Claus!!) 

Got to visit the W------- family (who were oringinally taught by President and Sister Pitt! Now all that's left to do is get V------- divorced so she and her new husband can get married and he can be baptized!) They are so good to us and being with them feels like being with our family. V------- picked us some tulips from her yard for Easter before we left their house! They also have a killer pit bull, so we can't get out of our car when we get to their house until they lock him up. They live at the very end of a crazy holler and they don't even have a phone.

Doing service this week I also had an interesting experience. We were at a different church helping pass out food and I had to man the station where the people signed their name and everything to get the food. The second man I helped looked at me as I passed him the pen and paper and told him what to do. He said, "Could you do it for me ma'am? I don't write." I was caught a little off guard. I looked back into his eyes, and I fell in love with him. It just hit me so hard in that moment---the beauty of people. Of being human. I don't really know why, but something about this humble man, his sweet question in his gorgeous southern accent, I just fell in love with everyone in that instant. People are so amazing, and so beautiful. It doesn't matter where you are, what you do, what you CAN'T do, or who your family is. I can't even explain all the emotions I felt in that brief moment, or why I even felt them. But all I know, is God loves that man. And so do I.

I love being here in Pikeville. This place has given me such beautiful experiences and I'm learning so much. I'm so glad I'm on a mission. So glad.  I hope y'all enjoyed Easter. I love you so much and pray for you constantly!