October 13, 2014

We had an awesome zone conference this week, and we got to watch Meet the Mormons before it came out in theaters, it was pretty exciting :) And it was so good, I loved it! If you haven't seen it yet, I would definitely recommend it :) And it works! We have a lady in our ward who brought her non-member friend and her friend was so touched that she came to church with her yesterday. It's weird to watch movies as a missionary though, it's like, is this even allowed? :) It's so great though, you should definitely go, and tell/and or take all your friends :)

POLKA DOT SISTERS

At the zone conference we also found out that we get to go to the temple!!! You should've seen how excited we all were when President announced it, it was awesome :) We thought we were never going to get to go. He's been trying for like 14 months to get permission for us to go and he kept getting denied. But I guess they finally approved it! We'll only get to go once or possibly twice on our whole mission, but it's still exciting! Everything becomes so much more meaningful when you can't do it anymore haha :) Ahh I'm so excited!!

For those of you who have friended me on Facebook, I wish I could be your friend! But we can only be friends with people here and immediate family. Sorry :(

(Note - Jordan's parents have edited out any names mentioned for privacy sake.)

DDDDDD''s boyfriend moved out!!! I'm so happy! :) Hopefully it's for good this time. It was so exciting, we were really worried that we were going to have to drop her. She's just so awesome, she tells us all the time about how much she loves church and the Book of Mormon, and how the things she's learning are changing her. It's really neat because apparently the day the sisters showed up (it was like the week before I got here) she prayed because she was wanting to make some major changes in her life and wanted to know how. She's doing so great at quitting smoking, she's cut down from like a pack a day, to one or none. We just gotta keep it at none :) We know she can do it, she's quit WAY worse things than cigarettes. And as soon as she does that she can be baptized, it's so exciting! :)

MMMMMM's working on quitting smoking too. We went over like a week ago and he was outside smoking and drinking. I was like okay, we need to do the Word of Wisdom :) He told us that he felt really bad about doing that in front of us haha. But he was SO excited to quit, so hopefully that'll go well :) He STILL hasn't come to church though, he keeps getting sick! Gah! A brother in our ward gave him a priesthood blessing though, and he loved it; he said he's felt a lot better since then. He's still so excited to be baptized, so hopefully he'll feel well enough to come to church.

On a sadder note, a member of our ward that we were really closed to passed away this week. He wasn't very old, only in his 50's, and nobody knows what happened. But a member of our ward who was one of his best friends found him, and it's been really hard for him. RRRRRR was so wonderful (and of course, still is), he's this really funny gay guy, and he joined the church under a year ago. He left his partner of like 20 years to join the church, and he's probably the smartest, funniest, friendliest, most honest man I've ever met. He told it like it is :) He knew like a ton of languages and got his masters like 5 times.  He would always hug us, even though he knew it's not allowed :) He'll really be missed.  We went to his funeral in Dunedin yesterday and there almost wasn't enough room in the funeral home for everyone, people had to stand. It seemed like our whole ward was there. It was a really good service, as far as funerals go, people just told funny stories about him, and I'm sure that's what he'd want. He was at a really good place in his life, he was ready to go to the temple, and he was so excited :) I really miss him, but I know that he's in a better place and I'll see him again someday. I'm really grateful for the knowledge I have of the Plan of Salvation and that I get to share that hope with others. The gospel is such a beautiful thing :)