The Ultimate Thursday at Institute

Doctors' office life: thankfully I didn't
have to put on a gown or anything

Skipping formalities, changing my intro up a bit: this was a crazy week! Tons of successes and lots of probably abnormal things to normal people, but I'm a missionary so it's not as ridiculous to me at this point.

Tyson!

REPTILES. For example, I may or may not have said a prayer holding a bearded dragon at an investigator's house on Tuesday :) Just with timing and not thinking ahead, I asked to hold the lizard (she'd been holding him the whole time we'd been teaching) and then since it was the end of the lesson and my turn to pray, I just said it while holding Tyson. Also, I've now met a person, dog, and lizard named Tyson, so I'm not quite sure what to think about the name.

FOR THE BOOKS. So lemme tell you about Thursday:

*we picked up not one, but TWO investigators before 1 p.m.!

After our lesson, Quinn usually likes to make
life difficult and park us in. YSA is definitely
an entertaining experience!

*it slushed on us (mostly rain with a bit of frozen snow wannabe pieces)

*we found a porta potty in someone's driveway with no sign of construction going on so maybe they just want it there

The facebook skype call at Institute
because we're missionaries
and we don't just facetime

*I met the Ward Mission Leader (congregation member whose assignment is to help out the missionaries in the ward) for Citrus Heights YSA, who just happens to be where Sister Swenson and Storms serve. So of course when he texted them saying he met me at the Institute building, they facebook skype called us since they were on their lunch break. It was stellar I love them so much!

*My eye freaked out and got really bloodshot for about an hour

*One of my fillings got chipped, so we called 1 of our 50 dentist connections in Rocklin and I'll be getting that fixed hopefully sometime soon

Never a dull moment with
Lauren and Pele

*Sister Whitesell got a minor infection and had to go to Urgent Care at 7:30 p.m. after ignoring the pain all day because missionaries have too much work to do rather than go around to doctors! Honestly I don't know how they survived without antibiotics in olden times. Update: I'm back to healthy again, no worries

beautiful

STARS ALIGN. If that wasn't a roller coaster of a day, I really don't know what else I can do to impress you :) Regarding the important things of Thursday: The Lord's timing is perfect. We went to the Institute Building. It's a place where the church holds religious classes you can take, so the building is usually close to a college campus of some sort. We walk in and decide to sit and talk with a group that's already there.

didn't believe me did ya?

 When we finally get around to learning names and introductions, Kelly says his name and I make the connection that he was the one who finally responded to our text from about two months ago, that very morning! We had asked him about his nonmember girlfriend, and yes you guessed it, she was also there, sitting right next to me.

It was really cool to have a setting where we could just get to know people and become friends before immediately jumping to religious things. After we all ate, and were about to head out we asked Lexie if she wanted to be taught again, since we knew she had taken lessons before but felt pressured, so she'd backed off. She said yes, and we were able to meet with her on Saturday.

kinda shows you how organized YSA is
with feeding the missionaries

She said that last time (in September or so) she just wasn't really in a spot where she wanted to focus on God much, but now she wanted to figure out how to make him more of a central part of her life. She asked if we could help her do that! As missionaries, there's almost nothing we love hearing more than someone who asks to strengthen their relationship with our Heavenly Father. We are super excited to keep working with her!

I love California winter clouds!

LEARN SOMETHING NEW. But yeah, that was the craziness of Thursday. I mean, we also got some impromptu gardening in to help out a member's neighbor, and we helped clean out someone's house and are excited to go back and help more. We met more members in the Rocklin 5th Ward--holy smokes so many new names is hard!

when you have a photographer companion,
it leads to some cool shots occasionally

I learned how missions do actually help with learning how to study in the future because we have to know so many people and backgrounds it's ridiculous. We talked to a stranger who says there's a potential that we're in a dome and the world is flat. Just the usual funny mission things :)

SMALL BUT MIGHTY. I'll end with a little poem that I read in my studies this week; it is short but powerful.

All the water in the world
How ever hard it tried,
Could never sink the smallest ship

only in CA...can you find so many expensive
and often ridiculous-looking cars. The
majority of the expensive cars
in Rocklin are Escalades

Unless it [gets] inside.

And all the evil in the world,
The blackest kind of sin,
Can never hurt you the least bit
Unless you let it in.

I'll let you interpret that as it applies to you. Life is hard but it's so worth it!

Sister Whtitesell
teresa.whitesell@myldsmail.net

751 Central Park Dr. #321
Roseville, CA 95678