Family! so much to write about. so many miracles have taken place this week and I am so, so blessed to be serving a mission right now.
First off, that broadcast--wow! I am excited but nervous to use technology. It's nice not to have Facebook or any of those distractions. We'll see how it goes.. if it's what the Lord wants then I'll do it. It felt soooo cool to sit there as a part of the team. what a blessing to know that every time they said "full time missionaries" they meant ME! I am a missionary. sometimes it just hits me and I'm like "whoa. I can't believe I'm here, doing this." I remember all the times the missionaries came to our home, ate dinner with us, left us a message, etc. And now that's me!! I'm the missionary in someone's home, teaching them, helping people, etc. It's just insanely amazing. What a blessing. I love, love, love being a missionary. I almost never want it to end, haha.
This Bessemer ward is amazing. They have shown us so much love and taken such good care of us. Sister Wilson and I have visited pretty much every member individually in their home and gotten to know them all. We leave cards and cookies and make sure we can help them however we can. Everyone is so excited to have sisters and I love being in this ward. We greet every member every Sunday at the doors and it's nice to know everyone's faces already. I love our ward mission leader and his family. Their little girls are the cutest and always give us the biggest hugs and hold our hands wherever we go. They're so happy to have girls so they can hug us! haha. Sister Wilson and I are singing in Sacrament meeting next week. We'll sing in our apartment and record it so you can hear the song. I have been trying to take lots of good videos to send! Sometimes I wish you could just see me being a missionary, Mom. I wish I could video tape everything I do so you can see I'm actually doing this!! It's so cool. I'm so glad to be here.
One of the members in our ward is this amazing 86 year old and she is just the classiest lady! She is always dressed to the nines and wears makeup, nice clothes, earrings, jewelry, etc. Her house is decorated so fancy too. She has the biggest personality though and makes me laugh so much. She was in commercials and did film all throughout her life. Apparently she won an award for being in the most commercials at one time or something? We visited her last week and had the best time. She's the funniest and loves to squish everyone's faces and kiss us on the cheek. We are now her "precious angel baby missionaries" and she's Grandma. ha ha. She can't let us leave her house without giving us food, so we left with a bag full of Vienna sausages, graham crackers, saltine crackers, soup, peanut butter and homemade fudge/almond joy chocolates! ha ha. Her and her husband banter back and forth and are just really funny. He had one of those long claw-like grabby things for things on the top shelf, and well... he may or may not have used it to grab her bottom. Lol. Sister Wilson and I just looked at each other in shock and died laughing. He said "She can't go anywhere when I've got one of these!" lol. Funniest people. We just didn't know how to respond to that.
The culture in Alabama is really fun. Everyone likes to talk for a very long time. There's no such thing as a "stop by" visit. You sit down, talk, talk and talk and they like to give you all the details about their life and their uncle's life, and their grandma's life, and their best friend's nephew's life, etc. It took some adjusting at first but now I'm a little more used to it and am loving it.
One of the cities in our ward is McCalla and we LOVE it!! It's more like what I thought Alabama would be. A lot of people are farmers there and have gardens like you wouldn't believe. We ate dinner with a family this last week that has chickens, cows, emus, ducks, and goats. Our dinner was fresh green beans, squash and carrots from their garden, along with homemade rolls and fried chicken from their own chicken. lol. They also had butter made from their own cow's milk! He said we can come over in the morning sometime and help him milk the cow. We'll probably do that next week or the week after. Not eating meat has worked out just fine here. Everyone is very understanding and always has something else besides meat available! it's been a huge blessing. You should let Nick Van Why know that, because he promised it would work out, and he was right. :) It's nice that so many members have gardens and farms, because we've been given some fresh produce! We got zucchini and peaches last week, and there will probably be more as the season goes on. It's a huge blessing to me!
Sister Wilson and I are still doing so well together. This companionship was inspired for sure. She understands my need for a clear, distinct answer and a pattern or method to doing something. She thinks just like me and has been able to help me a lot. The hardest part about missionary work for me, as a type 4, is that there is no right/wrong answer! There's no set method or procedure that needs to be done in order to teach the lesson and there's no perfect, step-by-step process to teaching a lesson. It's all very guided by the spirit, and you can't really pin it down. so that's been a hard adjustment for me to just feel and be okay with not having all the answers. I'm working and praying for confidence in trusting myself and trusting the spirit to guide me. I'm getting better. But yeah, we have so much in common. We like all the same things and don't like all the same things, We're going to be friends forever and I can't wait. We've been really blessed with each other and it will be hard to say goodbye.
Has anyone received mission calls lately? I know Elise Carambela's papers were in.. she worked at Jamba with me. What about Kayla? Or anyone else? Has anyone gotten engaged/married?
We have been SOO busy here in Bessemer. This field is white (or green in my case) already to harvest. We haven't even been here for two weeks and have been so so busy. We always have people to visit, teach, and help. We haven't had to go knocking once. I told you last week about a woman who could progress if she would actually be home for our appointments. It's hard to see someone recognize truth, and then not care enough to do anything about it. We'll see how that goes. Now we also have one whose fiance is the less-active brother of our ward mission leader. She's had several lessons and already knows she wants to be baptized and sealed to her future husband. They are both very promising and like I said,she knows it's true. We've met with her once and I already adore her. she's the sweetest southern woman! she has a farm too, and owns a stable and works with horses. Her property is like 60 acres and it's just the most beautiful, green, lush sights. I'm sending some pictures. We have two appointments with her this week, Wednesday and Sunday. On Sunday we're making homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh home-grown peaches!! haha. She told us she does that and we got so excited. So yeah, that will be awesome. :D I love her and am really excited. I hope we get to see her baptized.
We're teaching a girl next Sunday. Remember how our ward has a lot of people from Utah here for the summer to sell security systems? She is with that group with her boyfriend. She lives in Bountiful, has had discussions in Utah but never got baptized. She really prefers sister missionaries and hasn't been taught since getting here, so hopefully that'll work out.
Some sisters are also giving us their investigator who has a baptismal date because they didn't realize he's actually in our area. We're meeting him tomorrow and he's getting baptized in July. So cool!! I'm way excited. Our elders also had a baptism this week, which was cool.
We have 8 referrals we received from some people and some missionaries, so we're going to contact them all this week. The work is moving forward. Lastly, a few stories about a few more investigators.Yesterday we taught a guy named xxxxx and his cute family yesterday. These security sales guys are awesome, because they go door-to-door selling security systems, but they also share the gospel! So one of them called us up with a referral for xxxxx and his family who are Catholic, but very interested in the gospel. Only thing is that they all speak Spanish and very little English. Luckily the sales guy served his mission in Peru and he brought a couple where the husband served in Mexico. So yesterday we taught the first lesson and they translated for us as we went. So so cool. The spirit was so strong and I was so grateful to them for helping us. There are no Spanish missionaries in our area, but we're going to see about having some from another area come teach them. They were very touched and accepted the Book of Mormon and will pray about it. We have another appointment next week... I can see real intent in them. It was cool because afterwards, their friend said "Wow. That was so powerful. I asked him how he felt when you sisters were teaching, even though he can't understand English. He said 'It feels good. It feels powerful, I feel peace."" That was such a testament to me that the spirit can reach across all language and cultural barriers and touch the hearts of any person. So cool.
We taught a girl on Saturday and have another appointment tonight. She has had all the lessons and was almost baptized a year ago, but was living with someone so she didn't get baptized. Now she's single and I think she'll be baptized. She remembers how good the church felt and how it brought her peace and joy. We taught her the first lesson again, since she'd forgotten most of it. She really felt the spirit and is going to read and pray about the Book of Mormon again, since she wasn't sure how she felt about it anymore. I have high hopes for her and hope we can see her baptized. She's a sweet girl who lives in The Projects, so Sister Wilson and I were a bit nervous to go over there for a 7 o'clock appointment, knowing that by the time we left it would be dark. We prayed for safety and walked with a purpose as we walked to our car. Sure enough, a large group of large men were standing at their house across the street from our car. They called out to us and at first we were really nervous, but then we realized they had 5 or 6 little children with them, running around and playing games together. They asked us what church we're from, so.. we talked to them. The one guy has two children and the other kids were his nieces and nephews. They are really important to him. We bore a quick testimony about how families can be together forever, and asked if that's something he would want. He had a sincere look in his eye when he said "I would want that more than anything else." We took down his number and will most likely give him over to the elders, but what a cool experience it was. I could feel protection and safety as we talked to them. There was no fear or concern, and I just felt angels protecting us. And then, turns out, he was interested in the gospel. Pretty cool.Last but not least, last night was awesome! Sister Wilson, the elders, a couple in our ward and myself were invited to the mission home for Family Home Evening with Pres. and Sister Holzapfel on their LAST Sunday in Alabama. What a blessing that was! And what a privilege. President asked us to come up with a lesson, so we planned and taught a lesson on the Atonement and how it can apply in our family. We took the attribute of humility and applied it to family relationships and really broke it down. At some point I'd like to share it with you, because it went really well I think. The spirit was there and we left several commitments to bring them closer to the Savior. I think they all liked it and it was again, such an honor to be asked to come teach. We planned a musical number as well, but a sister in another area got injured during our lesson, so President needed to leave earlier and go make sure everything was okay. Still, what a blessing! I love them and am grateful for them. I can't wait for you to meet them!! Sister Holzapfel is a doll. President is so powerful and so good at connecting to people. You will love his talk.I'm gonna send my pictures now!Love you all!
Sister Edwards
