Letter from Sister White.  She's not dead yet, she says!

  

I have gotten so bad at just fooling around when I email on p-days. I just read an article about the ground breaking of the Cedar City temple. Completely. Irrelevant. To. My. LIFE. I am also going to warn you that I have all of these feelings just mushed all up inside of me! So you may get some of them barfed on you (gross I know, but I didn't want to deceive you as to the nature of the delivery). This whole week seems to be the week of Lets Make Sure Sister White Has A Panic Attack About How Little Time She Has Left On Her Mission week. We had interviews and President Olsen asked me about my plans after the mission, and he gave me the good old "Lets make this last bit of your mission the best it can be!"

     So on Monday we had an unusual p-day....I felt kind of bad because it was Sister Conder's first p-day. But a family in our ward who is selling their house needed help raking up the grass clippings on their yard after they mowed it. We love the Hutsons, so we were willing to take some time out of our p-day to help them. We showed up bright and early and raked and rake and raked and raked and raked and raked. I wish I could give you a measurement but they have a HUGE yard. Usually they hire some one. After we had been there a couple of hours some youth in the ward came to help (they were getting paid) and we were nearing the end of the job. Right as Sister Conder and I got nervous that we would be there all day, the lawn mower blew out. Then the neighbors lawn mower blew out. We had been planning on cutting out at twelve if it wasn't done, but they had a family coming to look at their house that day at three. So yeah anyway we spent all day raking up grass in humid Texas midday heat. They owe us some referrals.

     We went over to the Platts (Stake President and his wife) that night and after our lesson, Sister Platt was Facetiming her granddaughter who is 7 years old. At one point she pointed the phone at us and we made faces at her for a second, then I asked her "So Riley are you going on a mission?" and with as much sass and disgust at my silly question you can imagine she said "I am only seven!" She pointed the phone down a little "I am still in a car-seat!" It was pretty funny!

     Tuesday was our rest day, Sister Conder was afflicted with what they would call the Mississippi crud...I guess it is the Texas crud now! But we took some time to rest and update our area book. Which was super good, I made all the calls I had been putting off.

      I know stuff happened on Wednesday....but I cannot tell you what! Thursday was interviews! We went to Texarkana and met with President Olsen. It was really good to get to know them! I really do miss the McDonoughs, but the Olsen's will be great. It was odd though being the oldest missionary in the room when we met with Sister Olsen.  But THEN!!! DUN DUN DUN!! WE WENT TO GO TEACH A MEMBER REFERRAL! Some of you may be confused by my excitement, but down here that RARELY happens! We have been teaching practice lessons in with active members for the past two weeks, and at the end of the lesson we have been committing them to ask their friends if we could "practice" on them! So Ashlyn (who is about to leave for her mission in Brazil and will be in the MTC the same time as Colin) asked her friend Meghan if we could practice on her! And she said yes! We were freaking out all morning. We studied the restoration for personal study, we did a practice just for that lesson. We were so excited and we wanted everything to go perfectly. After interviews we went over to Ashlyn's house and we taught Meghan the restoration, it was fairly lade back we chatted a bit before we started. We taught the lesson and the spirit was SO strong! Ashlyn and her mom testified of the Book of Mormon and Meghan cried when she shared with us an experience with knowing God loved her. AHH SO COOL! It was a little unusual because at the end we got a critique from the investigator...That usually doesn't happen...She told us to explain the scriptures we read, because she doesn't read the King James version of the Bible. But she said she understood it all! She will be going back to school in Alabama so no more practice lessons, which is sad. BUT! Right afterwards we got a text from Ashlyn (we were in Chipotle, and I started crying) "Y'ALL DID SO GOOD! Thank you so much for pushing me to do this! If anything my testimony has been strengthened!" Yup. I wanna be a missionary forever.

     Friday we went and tried a bunch of people, and then we went to go see some people we had met while tracting a while back. They didn't answer, so we decided to go knock on the neighbors door. I had been reading in the area book the day before that there was a potential investigator couple with a Book of Mormon that lived next door to those people. So when they didn't answer we thought we would go and try them! We walked around the front of the house and saw a for sale sign. We almost turned around, but we decided to knock anyway. No one answered after the second time we knocked, so I was kind of expecting that no one was home. But then we heard footsteps! And Gerhardine answered the door! I said "Hi we are missionaries, we represent Jesus Christ. We are sharing a message about how our families can be together forever, can we share that message with you?" she agreed and then closed the door behind her. Not going to lie, my heart sunk a little bit that she wanted to sit outside. So we started teaching the lesson, and sweating. But we talked to her about how important the family is and then I felt prompted to teach the restoration, I tried to code word it some how to Sister Conder by repeating a name of a principal of the restoration over and over. I wasn't much help haha. But we tied it in with the restoration and it went great. At the end she thanked us, and explained she was engaged to a man who was baptist and that she was catholic. And that she had been waiting for a message like this, because she knew she wanted God in her home but she didn't know how to do that with the different beliefs. She was really touched...BUT SHE WAS FLYING BACK HOME TO COSTA RICA THE NEXT DAY!!! AHH! But we gave her a Book of Mormon and a pass along card with a number to get ahold of missionaries in Costa Rica. She was just an amazing person! She told us that there are these missionaries from a different church that go around in Costa Rica that will try and make you beleive what they teach and will pressure you to say what they want you to say. And she said "But I dont feel that way with you girls, I feel so good and happy inside". As I am trying to tell y'all this story, I am realizing there is just no way to describe the spirit we felt as we taught her. Every time I look back on it I feel strongly impressed that it was a gift from God, that He could of just let the missionaries in Costa Rica be a part of her conversion but that He loves Sister Conder and I so much that He honored us with the opportunity to meet her and be the ones who began her conversion story. I will never see her again until the next life but I know that I will see her in Paradise, and I will have done my part.

      The rest of the weekend was Stake Conference, in Shreveport LA. I am so glad I do not have to drive over two hours to stake conference! Elder Meredith of the seventy spoke and it was wonderful! He was really inspiring, he talked a lot about how we need Sister Missionaries he said "we have those elders who look like they just rolled out of bed and put on a wrinkled shirt....but the Sisters....Now they go to the beauty parlor and when they walk in you KNOW they represent Jesus Christ!" it definitely made me feel special. Then Sunday the Stake President spoke and he told the story about us and his granddaughter. I got nervous because he started the story out with "on Monday night we had the Sisters in our home to teach a lesson...."

    So we are tired from all the travel and excitement. But doing very well! Next week is going to be even better! I am so grateful to be a missionary for the true church of Jesus Christ. I love my job! I am excited to see y'all so soon BUT I AM NOT DEAD YET!!

Sister White