Ya’ at eeh Family!
Bah! It’s my last full week as a full time missionary! Umm… what??? That’s crazy, crazy, crazy! For the record, I’m a rollercoaster of emotions. One moment I’ll be laughing and just having a great time, the next moment I’m in tears. Sister Ledford doesn’t know what to do with me. Good thing we know each other super well after being companions for 7 ½ months… She’s seriously my best friend at this point. Love her with all my heart and soul. The only thing is going to be the goodbye…. Bleh!!! We’re going to be a wreck.
This upcoming week can probably be described in one word – Food. And more food. Christmas is a wonderful time of year, and everyone wants to give you goodies and invite the missionaries over for dinner. It’s wonderful, and absolutely delicious, just don’t be shocked if I come home looking like a marshmallow. Last night started our crazy dinner appointments with two Sunday dinners. But they were delicious beyond belief, so we’re not complaining J Workouts in the morning just got a lot more intense.
This past week though, so good! We saw miracle after miracle because of service. One of my favorites was when we were driving to an investigator’s house because we had some open time and we were going to see if we could have a lesson with him, then Sister Ledford saw that we were passing some people chopping wood. She suggested that we help them when we realized that we still had the Elder’s axes in the back of our truck. So we pulled over, and it was just hilarious. Sister Ledford, little biligaana (white girl), jumps out of the truck and excitedly asks this really scary looking guy if we can help him chop his wood. She says “we have axes!” with this giddy voice of hers. She’s basically bouncing up and down because she’s so excited that we found random service. The guy thankfully agreed to let us help him, and it turned out that he and his girlfriend are absolutely fantastic. He taught us a ton about how to chop wood as we were chopping away in our skirts. Haha, it was a pretty great hour. We got to show them the Christmas Initiative afterwards and we found out that the girl is a less active! Yay! More people to teach J We’re hoping to drop by their place again this week.
Other wonderful happenings, we volunteered at the senior center! They needed help with serving lunch, and we came at just the right time. And they agreed to let us come back! YAY for community service opportunities that are actually in our area instead of Window Rock or Fort Defiance!!! :D
Oh! Guess what!!! Arlene, our recent convert, has a temple recommend!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D She was supposed to go to the temple on Saturday, but didn’t make it. Maybe she’ll be able to go with the new year J
We also had Family Home Evening with our Stake President and his wife. They’re just hilarious. They are beyond excited for the recent development of becoming empty nesters. Haha, I laugh so hard when they talk about it. It’s like this incredible new adventure that they never thought could be so good. They simply beam as they talk about how they’re watching all these shows together without kids to interrupt them. You’d think it was the best thing to happen since sliced bread.
We had our Christmas Devotional with President and Sister Adams in Chinle this week. It was so good! And then the senior couples fed us lunch afterwards. Senior couples are just the cutest people on earth. There’s this one senior couple, the Wards from Mississippi, that are our absolute favorite! Their cute little southern accents… ah, we die every time we see them. And they loooooovvveee Sister missionaries! We run into them every Sunday, and without fail there’s a comment said about how Elder Ward can hear our smiles from a mile away. He’s so cute!
One quote I loved from the Christmas devotional – “Loving someone is far more important than having something.” And it’s so true. We need to give to those around us, not worry about the things that we have or don’t have.
Oh! We had a really really fun experience with the serving in 25 ways over 25 days inititative this past week!!!!! Wednesday’s theme was “Jesus clothed the naked and helped the needy and so can you” so Sister Ledford and I went through this bin of clothes we have in our back room (Sister Missionaries leave clothes they don’t want or don’t fit into anymore when they get transferred and usually the Sister that comes in looks through, sees if they want anything, adds to the bin… it’s a constant cycle) and then we created 20 outfits that we could give to the needy. So we spent a good chunk of our day driving around with a member delivering these clothes to people we teach, or even a random person on the side of the road. It was SOOOOO much fun! We don’t miss the clothes whatsoever, but it made a huge difference to those that received them. Ah, it was just so so so heart warming. We heard later on that one of the teenagers we gave an outfit to was just so excited about the outfit when she tried it on that she was skipping around her home with it on. Yay for happiness J
We also put on Window Rock 1st Ward’s Christmas Program. We sang a bunch of Chistmas hymns inbetween verses of the Christmas story in Luke 2. It went pretty well, thank goodness J
Oh! And I got to go on exchanges with the Gallup Sisters this past week! And I got to see Deb!!!! And Mary, our 99 year old investigator! :D Oh it made my heart so happy!!! Deb delayed her trip to Alamagordo just so she could still feed us dinner. Oh how I love her! She’s definitely my mission mom J And she’s getting baptized on Saturday!!!! :D YAY!!!!!!!
This week was amazing. And this coming week is going to be amazing as well. We’re really gonna finish up the mission with a bang. And I’m gonna love it! I hope all of you are doing well!!!! As crazy as it is to say, I’ll see you next week! But not before skyping for Christmas Eve J So excited to hear about Paul’s adventures in Japan!!!! :D
I LOVE YOU!
Love,
Sister Cardon J
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