July 27, 2015

Sisters Rhodes and Coleman
Sis. Rhodes aunt, uncle and cousins live in our stake.

My new companion is Sister Rhodes! She's super awesome, we get along great and have a lot of fun :) (But not TOO much fun :)) Her birthday was this week and we had a grand party :) At the transfer meeting when we got put together President Cusick called my name and told me to stand up. After I did he said "come on, stand up." Haha. Hilarious.

"Sister Rhodes' birthday!
And yes, those are poptarts. It's all we had :) "

Being with Sister Takaki and Sister Torres was fun too. But we had an interesting/scary experience. We went to an investigators house and heard screaming inside. When we knocked on the door she ran outside holding her half-conscious son and she was screaming and crying hysterically. The ambulance came shortly after and took her and her son, leaving us with her other two children. Missionaries are NOT allowed to babysit. But we couldn't leave them alone. One of the kids is like 10 and he has down syndrome and the other one is two. The two-year-old was a piece of cake but the other one... yikes. He's almost as big as Sister Takaki and I and whenever we tried to get him to stop doing something bad he would get mad and a little violent. And he wears a diaper. Yeah, lets just say it was interesting. Thankfully a member came and helped for a little while. And the mom came back about 4 hours later. And her son was fine, he just had a migraine or something. Everyone survived the traumatic experience :)

Yesterday someone told us they were so sorry that we belong to such a terrible cult. So that was lovely. But thankfully we meet lots of really nice people too.

A little boy got baptized on Saturday and we got to go out to Chili's with everyone afterwards. It was mostly just 2 families, but they're both huge Mormon families, there were like 20 of us. The poor Chili's workers were a little stressed to say the least.  

These are written by our 9-year-old recent convert, J. 
Enjoy :)

Our most progressing investigator right now is named L, and she is AWESOME. She comes to church every Sunday, and to the Bible study class we have on Wednesday, which is already more than almost anyone does. And she loves it, which is an even bigger miracle haha. She is just loving learning about the gospel, it's so awesome. She keeps telling me how grateful she is that we found her and invited her, she's so sweet. 

I hit my 13 month mark this week, which means I only have 5 to go. I know I always say this, but it seriously goes so fast. But I'm lovin it :) And I'm out of email time. Love y'all, have a fantastic week!

July 20, 2015

Whew, where to begin. Sister Rudd went home, that's a good place to start. We dropped her off this morning. It's so weird that she's gone! So right now I'm in a city called Lakeland in a tripanionship with Sister Takaki and Sister Torres. It's been pretty fun so far, I've known both of them for awhile and they're great sisters :) I'll be with them until transfers on Wednesday when I'll get my new companion and go back to Lake Wales. (And yes, there are a lot of lakes in Florida, and they like to name towns after them.) This city is a LOT bigger than Lake Wales, so that's refreshing :) And that's really the only big thing that's happened :)

Church on Sunday was really good though. We've been finding some people who seem more committed (hopefully), and we had 2 investigators come to church for the first time on Sunday. One of them is named L and she is the sweetest. When she found out Sister Rudd was leaving she told me "Sister Coleman, if you ever need anyone to go on a walk with or anything, give me a call!" She doesn't really understand the whole missionary thing yet :)

One of my favorite moments of the week: We were teaching J and his family. We had driven there and left our car in front of their house to go walk somewhere nearby. We were pretty far down the street when we heard J yell "Wait!! You forgot your car!" It was great :)

Sister Rudd leaving has definitely made me realize more than ever how short our time as full-time missionaries is. I only have 4 more transfers until I'll be the one going home... so weird. But I'm so grateful for this short time I have. I have truly seen how much happier I am as I strive to forget myself and help others. I am constantly amazed at how much God loves all His children. I feel so blessed to assist, even in the very smallest way, in His work. It has changed my life. I know that this is the Lord's work, because there is no way I could do this on my own :)

July 13, 2015

Not too much to report since Thursday. Things are still goin well :) This is Sister Rudd's last week! I'll drop her off next Monday, pretty crazy. We're actually in a different city called Winter Haven right now (Legoland is here, so that's pretty exciting) sending her bike home. They have the only Chick-fil-A I've seen in months here, so of course we had to go there :) So yeah, I'm pretty happy :)

We continue to meet lots of really interesting people. We met a Palestinian lady from Jerusalem who told us about a movie she had seen about the Civil War and how weird she thought it was. Her words sum up our conversation with her very well: "What are you talking about mister??"

People still ask me if I speak Spanish, same old. A few weeks ago a creepy older fellow told me that I remind him of his ex-wife. And yesterday a man told me I look like his next wife... Yeah. Thankfully Sister Rudd stood up for me and said "Uhh I don't think so" :) So yeah, there are definitely all sorts of people here haha.

And to close, an awesome scripture I found this week: Doctrine and Covenants 67:10 - And again, verily I say unto you that it is your privilege, and a promise‍ I give unto you that have been ordained unto this ministry, that inasmuch as you strip‍ yourselves from jealousies‍ and fears, and humble‍ yourselves before me, for ye are not sufficiently humble, the veil‍ shall be rent and you shall see‍ me and know that I am—not with the carnal neither natural mind, but with the spiritual.

I have definitely seen that if we don't humble ourselves, God will help us be humble, and that's not too pleasant :) And I love how it says that if we strip ourselves of jealousy and fear and humble ourselves, that we will see Him and know He is there.

July 9, 2015

Orlando, FL Temple

So, as you can see, this week we're emailing on Thursday. Today was our p-day because we went to the temple this morning! Ahh! It was amazing. I haven't been in over a year and it was just the best. So beautiful. I'm so grateful for the Lord's house.

We also drove right by Disney World, so that was fun :)

Other than that, I don't know what really matters haha. But we also had a great 4th of July. Everyone gathers at the lake to watch the fireworks so we went down there and handed out glow sticks and mormon.org cards. It was fun! We met a couple who actually live in our apartment complex. The wife is a member and the husband is not. She's from the Philippines and he's from Barbados. She hasn't been to church since she moved here 5 months ago because she was scared to go alone. But she came with us the next day, and she is so cool! We feel so bad for her because we can't understand her English too well haha. She's about my height, and she served a mission in Hong Kong.

Our ward also had a party, complete with a pie eating contest. Only the little kids participated and they got pie EVERYWHERE, it was really funny. It was pretty impressive though, they all ate the whole pie with no hands :) We had an investigator show up, which we were not expecting haha. It seems like we invited all of Lake Wales though, so we were glad someone came :) But we had just knocked on his door and talked to him for about 5 seconds and invited him. We didn't even recognize him at first when we showed up haha. But now we're teaching him! It was really neat, at first he told us he probably wouldn't be able to ever come to church because he works at the flea market on Sundays. The second time we met with him he said he really wanted to come and felt bad that he couldn't. And then that night he texted us saying he'd have someone watch his booth so he could come to church. We're so excited! He was worried about having enough money if he didn't work on Sundays, but I guess he has faith that it will all work out.

We also met a lady who told us she was about to get "saved" (hopefully she means baptized...) in another state, but then she couldn't because she moved here. She said she had looked up the church but couldn't find it, and then we just showed up at her door. I wish I had time to even tell about all the miracles that happen to us. God is so good.

Some funny moments: We had a girl point to Sister Rudd's water bottle and say "Is that baptizing water? Can you baptize me right now?"

We showed a guy the Because of Him video and it says that Because of Christ, death has no sting. When we asked him what he liked about it he said "the part about death not being a string." Haha, what? :)

Oh, I keep forgetting to tell you! We met a lady named Tiffany Smith, I wanted to teach her so bad :)  Yeah, it was crazy! She seemed really cool too, but we haven't been able to get in contact with her again.

Sisters Coleman and Rud
Sister Rudd goes home in 2 weeks.

Thank you, as always, for putting up with my very scattered emails :) I hope all of you have an absolutely amazing week full of missionary experiences :)