May 19, 2014

Enjoy this week's email from Sister Huss!

 

Hey!

This week I really got a new appreciation of having a car on the mission. Ours was taken in from Tuesday to Friday this week and we walked all over town. I never thought I could be so sore or so tired! But I bet that that's how it was like for Hayd on his mission. Like I said never been so appreciative for a car!  But it was cool because we got to meet some really cool people! One guy even stopped us on the street and talked to us. He grew up in Red Oak but moved to St. George! So we talked about SUU and 2 of his daughters got degrees in teaching from there and one is going to Dixie. He said he wasn't a Mormon but knows a ton of them that are great people and wants to have us over for dinner with him and his family!

It has been a week of miracles!

We were able to contact a referral from Church headquarters. She asked for missionaries to come. Her name is Lisa and she is the most prepared person that I have ever met on my mission! She went to the Church for about 3 years when she was young, never got baptized, but said she feels the most comfortable at the LDS church. She just moved and was super disappointed that she lost her Bible. We offered her one but had to get it from the car. She came out with us and we gave her a Bible, a Book of Mormon, and a pamphlet for the 1st lesson. She was just eating it up! She told us she was going to start reading the Book of Mormon and would read the pamphlet as well. She just kept telling us she wanted to go to church and be involved, so we also invited her to the Relief Society BBQ this week and wants to come! Such a miracle!

The members in Red Oak also had a BBQ for some birthdays last week and we took Becky and the investigator and she loved it. She ended up spending all the time with the members and not with us. It was so cool. She really loved it and everyone was super friendly!

I have to admit that I also have been a little bit of a slacker. Kolby told me that he got his first copy of Preach My Gospel for his 12th birthday and it reminded me. Elder Ballard, in conference, talked about missionaries and their families studying Preach My Gospel together, and it seems like every time we email I just forget about it! So I wanted to challenge you and the rest of the family to start studying it! Each month President Weston gives us a new chapter to study every day and this month we started over and are studying "Chapter 1: My Purpose".

Love you!

May 12, 2014

Hey!

Well, even though I talked to you yesterday, we did have a really crazy night last night. Ironically, right after we had all just talked about how the tornadoes here aren't really a big deal and don't need to worry about one, there was one about 5 miles away last night!!

About 8:15 pm we were getting texts from our leaders to make sure we were safe and they told us to stay in and not go out and to stay where it was safe. We did and didn't really think anything of it. We did the usual routine and went to bed early, but about 10:20 pm, we started to hear thunder like cannons and all you could see outside was the constant flash of lightning. We talked to Sis. Nix and she just laughed and said not to worry about it and we went back to bed. We literally were in our room for like 5 minutes when the sirens went off then all we heard was Sis Nix. yelling "Sisters! Get shoes and get in the basement NOW NOW!!" So we spent a half hour listening to the storm radio telling us minute by minute where the storm was. The tornado touched down in Stanton about 5 miles away. No damage to us at all. Our car was fine, the house was fine. The storm moved straight east of us after that and all we saw was the lightning and thunder and golf ball sized hail again. It was quite a night!   

Love you guys!

May 5, 2014

Enjoy this week's email!

Hey!

I found out about Grandma [Sydnie's grandmother passed away this past week] right before we got to go to the trail center with a less-active. But honestly, it was so cool to feel the Spirit as we went there and talked about the importance of temples and to drive around the temple grounds and to feel the spirit there and to know that that is what Grandma is feeling now and that we will get to be together forever. It was perfect because we also got to go around the temple grounds and to feel the Spirit there was so comforting! The trail center was great! We went with Michelle, a less-active. Some members came with us and drove us all up. It was so awesome. Michelle loved it and the Spirit there was amazing. We took a pretty long tour and just got to mosey through all the exhibits and really just soak everything in. We didn't really have a time limit, so we just went as slow or as fast as we wanted and she (and us) learned a lot. She came home from it and told the entire family how much she loved it. So hopefully they will all be able to come back to it soon. It is such a blessing to have the trail center and to be in an area where there is so much family history!

The most adventurous part of last week: we were coming home from an appointment in the country, about 5 miles out of town, Saturday night. We saw 2 deer and literally barely missed them. They were going across the road, then saw us, and booked it the other way. We were talking about it the whole way home, how it was a miracle that we didn't hit them and then we got rear ended by a dear old man. Everyone was fine. There was an ambulance, so we stopped and pulled over and apparently he didn't see us or the ambulance and ran into us. He was coming back from a farming convention and was tired (don't know why you would tell anyone that but whatever). He was super apologetic and told us and the police that it was all his fault (which it was). The police thought we were a little sketchy, but try explaining that we do live in Red Oak but we are missionaries. We don't know how long we will be here so that's why I have a Utah drivers license, driving a car that's not actually mine with Nebraska plates in Iowa. It was pretty interesting that's for sure. And the poor guy that ran into us kept asking "who is telling you to do all these things?" because we had to call the guy in charge of cars and tell him everything that is going on and to fill out all the reports etc. Quite an interesting night. We are still trying to figure out all the details with getting the car fixed.

However, the "cool" thing about small towns is that for any car accident, arrest, etc, they put all the details in the paper and on the radio. So we will be the first missionaries in the paper and on the radio in Red Oak. Awesome! Sister Nix is apparently getting numerous copies of the newspaper this week and recording the radio :)

Have a great week! 

April 28, 2014

Enjoy last week's email!

Hey!

This week was again super busy!

The coolest day was on Friday, we literally went from miracle to miracle all day! We have been trying to get in touch with this lady, Maybelle. She is from Columbia. She will always let us come talk to her but usually just says that she is super busy and to come another time. On Friday, we got to talk to her for like 45 minutes. It was a doorstep lesson and she did keep saying she was super busy, but she also kept asking us questions. And she had some super random ones like do we believe in pants and makeup for women. She and her family had taken the discussions when she was still living in Columbia. Apparently they were super close with the elders because she told us her whole family had been invited to their weddings later on. But it was such a miracle that we FINALLY got to talk to her and she was more open. I think that we got through a little more to her.

After that we went to try to contact a former investigator. Sister Harris knew him and had had a lesson with him before but he was put in jail for breaking parole and we hadn't gotten to meet with him (we didn't know where he was) since he got out. We had prayed right before we went to try him and we felt prompted to ask his aunt, who is a less-active member, if she had had any contact with him since he got out and she told us super vaguely where he may be. We went to the area she said and the first house we knocked a guy answered and we asked if Josh lived there. He said he didn't live there but Josh just happened to be there now. We talked to Josh and he is so prepared. He said he really wanted to come to church but he worked Sundays now. We asked if he had been praying since the last lesson. They had he said he prayed every day since the lesson. We asked if he wanted to take the lessons again and he just said "would every Thursday work that's my only day off". So amazing. He is so prepared, it's amazing.

Then we went to help Sister Thornberg. She is a less-active and they were taking part in the city wide garage sale that happened last weekend. We were going to help her get stuff to take out side for the sale. When we got there, her daughter (that we never met) was the only one outside and she was helping put a couch they just sold into a trailer. We told her that we were there to help and her daughter told us that they were done but the ladies with the couch might need help when they unloaded it. So we went to help the ladies with the trailer. We ended up making immediate friends with Jenny and Kari and it was such a miracle. Jenny runs the local Latino community center. We were looking for more ways to serve in the community and to learn some basic Spanish to communicate with the many Hispanic people we have been meeting. Jenny asked if we could start helping at the center and we asked if she could help teach us Spanish! We had to go back to Sister Thornberg's and when we got there, she was a little upset that we were over an hour late. Her daughter thought that we were there to help Jenny and Kari not to help them, so we helped Sister Thornberg. And her daughter just happened to be getting rid of a ton of clothes, so they made us take some of their clothes too. It was such and amazing day! One of the best on my mission!

One thing that we had really been trying to focus on this week was finding new investigators and we found Josh on Friday. We had exchanges on Saturday and we got 2 referrals on Sunday! The miracle of prayer and goal setting!

I hope that this week goes well.

Love you guys!