This week has been so fun! I really liked this week and all the things we were able to do. Sister Jack and I are trying our best to go out and find some people. We don't get much immediate results when we are going tracting, but we know that we will be blessed for our efforts. We have some people who we may be potentially teaching and we are so excited! We have gotten a few referrals and hopefully I will be able to tell you more about them next week. There was also a lot of planning stuff happening this week. For the upcoming Christmas season, we are trying to come up with some new and creative ways to spread the gospel and Light the World and we have gotten a couple of ideas on what to do. I will tell you about them another time when the wheels are being put into motion with them.
For those of you who don't know, our mission is given a special assignment of doing 10 hours of community, nonmember service each week. This means that we find service throughout our community in our areas and contribute our efforts in helping in different areas. In my past area, we did a lot with the Humane Society and that took up most of our service. Here in Prairie Grove, we have a lot more variety and it is pretty fun. On Tuesdays, we either go to the Senior Center where we mingle with the older people there and we help serve their food. or, depending on the day of the month, we help with a mobile food pantry and help with putting stuff together and giving people their food orders. Both are pretty fun and a great way to mingle with people. On Wednesdays, we go to a farm after district council and help out there with some manual labor. What it is varies each time, depending on what they need us to do. So far, we have dragged a wet tarp of chicken poop out of the chicken coup, moved fertilizer, and planted lettuce. It's always a toss up on what they need and I'm curious to see how things go with the weather turning colder now. Fridays, we play cards at the nursing home, mainly UNO. It's pretty interesting each time we go and can normally get a couple laughs there. And then, Saturdays, we help out at a thrift store by helping with sorting through clothes and hanging things up in the shop. It's always so great to get a chance to do all these different services, as you can see the help it does for the people around and you are able to make some good friends and relationships.
On Friday was when we had the most exciting stuff. So, for Light the World, we wanted to do something as a missionary district, so we were able to team up with a bishop who works at a library. He was able to coordinate something for us missionaries to participate in and we spent basically all day doing it. The original plan was to do a hot chocolate stand, popcorn, and hand out little tea lights with Light the World service prompts on it. However, we ended up changing the tea lights to light wands, as we weren't able to officially put out Light the World. So, for most of the day, we were putting stickers on the light wands, letting people know about something the library is doing this Christmas season. We also helped prep the hot chocolate and popcorn. Then, that night, we went out and were handing stuff to people, offering free hot chocolate, popcorn, and light sticks! It was pretty cool! We were able to hand out a lot of stuff. There was actually a parade so we were able to give a lot of stuff to the people there, mainly the people in the parade! They seemed to really like it! I think the most fun part for me was that we had Christmas music playing, and the entire time I was handing out light sticks, I was dancing my little heart out! It was just a party! We didn't talk to as many people as we would have liked to, but it was still fun. Each little effort helps. I also got to sword fight a couple kids, which was fun too.
There is so much learning that happens on a mission, and sometimes there is more than I want. I'm still sorting through a lot of things and trying to figure out what is everything I have learned. I just want to say that we can always find happiness in the gospel and as we have patience, endurance, hope, and love, we can get through anything. I want so badly to be the best that I can be and sometimes I fall short. Actually, a lot, I fall short. But thankfully, I have the gospel and the Atonement of Jesus Christ which allows me to move forward and repent of my mistakes. What I can be perfect at is living the gospel of Jesus Christ. I also am not doing it on my own. It is all with the help of my Heavenly Father.
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