ITS BEEN A WHOLE YEAR!

I am a 1 year old missionary now. Pioneer Day (July 24th) marked a whole year since I reported to the MTC in Provo. It is so weird to start seeing over laps and to think about what emotions I was feeling and what experiences I was having a year ago this time. Time flies. 

Yesterday I saw a really cool Miracle:

I was going through the area book and found a girl on our church records named Sierra Carter that I have never met. So I made it my mission to meet this person who has the same name as my sister. We went and knocked on her door, and introduced ourselves. She turned out to be the cutest 25 year old girl, and her and her boyfriend are expecting a baby in January. It was fun getting to know her! When conversation started to get short and awkward we finally asked if we could share a message with her. We talked about how God is her Loving Heavenly Father and how he is watching over her. We shared a scripture with her and finally she perked up and said, "it's really ironic that you Sisters are here right now. A couple days ago I had the thought all of a sudden that I wanted to go back to church. I looked up on LDS.org where the building was but couldn't figure out what time church started at." She concluded that she was going to try going at 10 and see if she would be able to catch sacrament meeting. Well yesterday she decided at last minute to go to the bead fair instead of church and then we showed up that night to share with her a message about how God is watching over her and loves her. She said she hasn't been active since she was in the 9th grade, and has lived in Eureka for 2 years without meeting the members of the ward or the missionaries.
It is so humbling to be able to be an instrument in Gods hands to be in the right place at the right time for his children to know that he loves them and hasn't forgotten them.

Another miracle:

Last Sunday at the very end of the day we had a little bit of extra time so we decided to go tracting. We knocked on 16 different doors all bringing different results. Mostly they told us they weren't interested, were rude, and slammed doors in our faces. Finally we needed to get going but we decided to knock on one more door. The lady who opened the door was adorable! We didn't have much time so we asked if we could pray with her. She accepted and welcomed us into her home. We knelt with her on the ground and asked, "If you were to ask God for anything right now, what would it be?" She gave us a small sincere list of things and then we prayed. A very sweet feeling filled the room. When we finished we asked if we could come back another time to share a message about Christ with her and she said she would like that. As we left I felt an ever so small but distinct peaceful feeling stay behind in her home to linger. The feeling was very tender and peaceful.

One of our 70 year old investigators has a crush on me. It's kind of funny. Sister Buckner mocks me about it all the time.

Moment of the week:

Actually this was last week.
We were tracting again... We knocked on one door and I heard on the other end, "COME IN" so I started to open the door. Sister Buckner looked at me with a mortified what are you doing look on her face and said no, he said "coming!!" So I quickly slammed the door shut. A man then opened the door and there was no mistaking that we had just opened and shut his door loud enough for him to hear. We awkwardly didn't say anything about it...
He said he wasn't interested. I can't decide if it's because he doesn't want salvation, or didn't realize we were offering salvation, or because we creepily opened and shut his door.

Moment of THIS week:

Sister Whiteley burst through open the apartment door two nights ago with Hermana Underwood laughing behind her. Hna Whiteley exclaimed, "the most embarrassing thing happened tonight at dinner with our investigator." After dinner the Hermanas shared a dinner message from the Book of Mormon that was supposed to be about how God loves us. She talked about it a little bit and then opened the scriptures to expound more on it. She asked her investigator to read Jacob 2:22-23 which reads: 

"And now I make an end of speaking unto you concerning this pride. And were it not that I must speak unto you concerning a grosser crime, my heart would rejoice exceedingly because of you.

But the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes. For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son."

She tried to cover it up by saying, "God is sad when we break the commandments."
We laughed so hard!

Love Sister Carter

PS. the 4 feet of fun record still stands at 35 seconds. Way to go Sister Ika.

Sometimes I like choosing the sketchiest sounding or looking streets to go tracting down.

Oh and you'll probably never let me live it down, but I bought a cheep pair of mary-janes that I thought were super cute..

A future sister missionary. This little precious girl and her mom are dear to me!