Week 6 - July 13

Here's what's been going down in T-TOWN

Hello my wonderful family and friends! If I haven't reached out to any of you yet, just know I am thinking you! Yes, every single one of you on my email list. I love and miss you all so much!! Shoot me an email if you get the chance!

Sister Henry's and my fav park to go walking and studying 

Family dinner! Shoutout Elder Cress for the food

Brother Foote took us and Chioma to lunch, and ofc Keith tagged along, too. Brother Foote helped teach Keith with the missionaries like 20 years ago and now they're basically family.

- Lots of lessons with our friend Chioma who is getting baptized this Sunday--woot woot! She is actually so amazing and has such a desire to follow God and learn about his plan for her.

On Thursday, Brother Foote took us all out to lunch and then we had a lesson in his home the next day. He's been awesome to be involved with missionary work and, he was a convert himself. Seriously, such an amazing guy and sets the best example for all of us. Also kinda cool...he is friends with Peter M. Johnson who is now an area 70! Brother Johnson used to serve as Ward mission leader here in Northport! And it turns out Chioma lived right by his family but didn't know they were members! But how cool they all knew of each other, and now she is joining the church and can listen to her old neighbor speak in conference!

- It seems like everyone and their dog already has a church to go to, and most of them don't want anything to do with our church. I thankfully haven't gotten bashed, yet but it's pretty discouraging some days! Thank goodness there's also a good balance of amazing people here in the South that are so fun and kind to us. But for real, if you have any tips for approaching people of other faiths, send 'em my way!

- Going along with that, I actually had a dream the other night where I got rejected by Michael Jackson after offering him the Book of Mormon. He said "nahhh, I read from my bible." Tell me I've been getting rejected a lot recently without telling me. 

- One exciting moment for me this week was getting to use my Chinese! We were knocking doors and found an older Aisan lady that couldn't speak English very well. I started speaking with her in Chinese and definitely butchered all my words, but I invited her to church. She said no...either because she already has a church or because she didn't understand me lol. Either way, it was fun to use the language and motivated me to freshen up on my Chinese.

Okay, before I sign off I just wanted to leave ya'll with a little invite...go read 'Best days and worst days' by Emily Belle Freeman. I'll give you a little glimpse into her talk: 

"Because of Him, no matter how bad things are right now, your best days are ahead." 

How cool is it to know that some of your best days are ahead! Even though it's not fun having those bad days, those bad days are the reason we know what joy feels like! Look forward to those brighter days, and remember that if the savior can rise above it, so can you!️

- Sister Ekins  (or Sister Kiki, apparently that's my mission nickname lol)