Friday, February 19, 2016

Surviving the Compton of Minnesota

This week has been great! We found a lot of awesome people and had
some inspired finding experiences that prove how much the Spirit truly
guides us. One of those people was Carissa, a super cool college
student majoring in anthropology. She was just doing research on our
religion for a paper, but became genuinely interested. Her dad is a
preacher and she's incredibly spiritual...she's just awesome! And too
hipster to function. It's so weird to be back around college kids- I
have no idea how to act! "Back in the day when I was a hoodlum in
college, just like you....three very long months ago..."

Our cars got grounded on Wednesday because of all the snow, so we had
to entertain ourselves by watching whatever church DVDs we could find
in our apartment. I'm starting to have withdrawals from not being able
to watch rom-coms, but we found the Joseph Smith Papers, and the
letters Joseph and Emma wrote to each other were pretty romantic, so
it was a nice fix!
I drove in my first blizzard! They hadn't grounded our cars yet, so we
inched back home going 5 MPH trying not to die. I don't think I'll
ever get used to driving on ice and snow. Especially when they don't
plow the roads in the ghetto and we're trekking over actual Mount
Everest. Sometimes Sister Peterson and I blast the heat, crack the
windows and pretend we're back on the west coast...until it gets too
cold and we have to roll the windows up. (And the fact rolling around
in G-town with MoTab blaring attracts too much attention). But we can
pretend for a little bit! There's this Satan box called Tiwi stuck to
our dash that monitors how we drive. It yells at you for speeding and
aggressive driving...Tiwi and I aren't friends. Driving in LA didn't
prepare me for the missionary standard of driving. Don't worry mom, we
only drag race on P-Days :)

We went to see a referral this week and she answered the door
naked...we asked if Clorey was home and she just stood there staring
at us in the nude. It was pretty uncomfortable. Afterwards we saw
someone trying to break into our car, probably because our Tiwi looks
like a GPS. But he saw us coming back and got in his car and drove
away. In that same neighborhood later on we saw a drug deal- the car
had bullet holes in the back window- that was pretty sweet. The zone
leaders found out how shady it is, so sisters might not be going back
into that area anymore. I wouldn't be too devastated, except for the
fact our best investigators come from there. Our teaching pool would
become a shallow kitty pond!

Leaning on the Lord more has made all the difference this week! Being
in the refiner's fire is never easy, but it's always worth it in the
long run. Just like early morning workouts- in the moment, do we enjoy
Jillian Michaels yelling at us and forcing us to plank till our core
literally rips in half? In the words of Sister Peterson: "I don't
enjoy scary buff women yelling at me at 6:30 in the morning, nor at
any point in the day." But when you step on the scale and see the
results, you're grateful she kicked your butt for those 30 minutes. I remember at the MTC
Dallin H. Oaks talked about being grateful for your trials. I'm
finally understanding that more out here. They make you who you're
supposed to be. Love you all! -Sister Brett

No comments:

Post a Comment