Tuesday, February 17, 2015

What a Week!

What a week.... I'm still living the d r e a m.

Ok I'll start with a cool story. 
Church was canceled yesterday -__- church canceled as a missionary is the worst! We had 4 peeps planning on coming for their first time! So Saturday night we got a text from Bishop saying "church canceled tomorrow due to bad weather." There was supposed to be a bad storm Saturday night. I thought "yeah whatever, it's not even going to snow." Well, I woke up Sunday morning and not to my surprise there was absolutely no snow on the roads or sidewalks. I said to Sister Ewell "why would Bishop feel prompted to cancel church if God knew it wasn't even going to snow....." It didn't make sense to me
Let's flash back to a few days before. 
J, our BFF, has been struggling with faith. It was all very sad because we love her to the moon and back. you could literally see she was on the verge of giving up. She didn't want to go to church the next day. I must explain that when Jessica prays she doesn't ask for blessings. We've been trying to change that. She believes in prayers of thanks and thinks she shouldn't ask God for blessings. She doesn't like to ask because "he's already given her so much and why should she ask for more?" We keep telling her to ask for specific blessings to strengthen her faith.
Anywayssssss. Sunday evening we were driving to a lesson with J. I had a silly thought pop into my head and said sarcastically "J, Bishop didn't feel prompted to cancel church because of the weather, did he? He felt prompted to cancel church because for the first time ever you prayed and asked God for a blessing......... You asked God to cancel church! You're the reason church was canceled, aren't you?" It was a joke when it came out, but then she turned to me and said "well, yeah.......... I did. How did you know I didn't even tell you!" 
Moral of the story, God answers prayers. And he loves J. Btw she gave me permission to tell that story and wants you all to know she feels like an idiot because she asked for church to be canceled of all things. Hahahahaha.

Oh, we had sisters conference this week! Strange, seems like that was years ago. I drove us and the Hermanas for like 3 hours to The mission office in Rego. Yup, I drove in the city, it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Sisters conference was SO COOL. it's so nice to see all my favorite sisters together in one place :) especially sisters Peterson and Barkerrrrr! I missed my ASL homegirls.

For PDAY we went to A and L's house. They live in a huuuuge mansion that was built in the 1800's. ITS SO CUTE. The people who built it were loaaaded. They gave us a house tour and it has everything from a photo-developing room to a maids attic, to a carriage house, to a SECRET TUNNEL THAT GOES TO A SECRET ROOM THAT WE JUST DISCOVERED WHEN THEY TOOK US ON A TOUR. We were all flipping out! oh man it was so legit and so creepy. We found on old dusty mirror and old furniture in that secret room! There's tons of ancient books, pictures, letters, and random things from the original owner in the house! And the wallpaper is to die for! I love old houses hahah. L and A showed us how to do pyrography. It's wood burning art. I made a hummingbird :) best pday EVER. 

On Tuesday... Oh my gosh it was the worst experience of my life! We went to see a former investigator. She had died, so that was sad. We were walking out and a guy yells "hey!" We walked to himself and introduced ourselves.... I tried to get a referral from him.. He had snot coming out of his nose lol. He told us about some mental disability he has. We were about to part ways, so I held out my hand to shake his hand and say goodbye. Hahahaha he grabs me, gives me a hug aaaand kisses my face! And the snot on his face got all over my cheek! I was like ohhhhhh myyyyyy, and I gagged the whole rest of the day.

I'm happy, warm, and safe. My testimony is growing every day. And through real-time repentance, I'm changing everyday. I'm grateful I have a firm foundation of the Prophet Joseph Smith and the restoration of the church. The truth that Joseph was a prophet seems to be EVERYONE'S stumbling block! Ah well, they'll get over it as they read the Book of Mormon.
I love Bayshore. We are soooo busy with our investigators. I feel like I'm starting to connect with them! We've been freakin out cuz so much to do and so little time to do it! I love that our day is fillllled with teaching appointments. I LOVE teaching in English. I love the loft.
I have no idea how to find new investigators here, but somehow we found 2 this week! #prayerworks. I had a cool experience on Saturday night. I wanted to know if there were, in fact, people in Bayshore prepared to accept the gospel. I prayed for a good 20 minutes while scrolling through my area book to know who, if anyone, in the area book was ready. Well, I received an answer as clear as day that there ARE people ready. A few people stuck out to me and I'm stoked to look them up this week!

Pray for us to be able to set more baptismal dates this week! 
Love you all!
-the real Sister Layton IV




This weeks pics:
Sistah petersonnnnnn! My girl.
Jessica and the hummingbird I made today with the wood burner.
My cute companion sister Ewell!




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Tuesday, February 10, 2015

BayShore and The Loft

Well, it's that time again.
Pday yayyyyy.
Guess what we did for pday? I think it's so funny. For pdays here we gather at the church as missionaries for "institute," and Elder Bushmann teaches us. He was an institute teacher for 40 years and he knows...... Uhhh everything. ITS SO COOL. we go deep. We ask questions about literally anything and he gives answers with scriptures to back it up off the top of his head. 

Anyways.
My family, I kid you not, this has been the best week of my LIFE.
Here's what happened:

-BAYSHORE.
I've been transferred to the promised land. For reals living the dream here. I'm in love. This is what I always imagined my mission to be like. Bayshore is sweeeet, full of old adorable houses. If you know anything about me, you know I love houses :) I've seen more cute houses in my past 5 days here than I have in my whole life haaa. Do I miss the city? Nope!!!! I thought I would miss it so much but NOPE. The Long Island missionary life is my kind of life :))) Our area is pretty big, for those who are interested in Google mapping my life, we cover...Wheatley Heights to Babylon and Copiague to Islandia. 

-The loft.
We live at the loft. It's one of the only apartment buildings in town. I like it a lot. WE HAVE A SPIRAL STAIRCASE, dream come true. We also have a brick wall! Google it- the loft of Bayshore. One weird thing about living in the Loft is that the District and Zone leaders live right next door. Weird, but convenient I guess. It's no surprise that our district has ZION. Our recent convert, Jessica, lives in the loft too! She's our BFF and comes out teaching with us everyday, not even kidding. The loft is fullll of investigators... It's fun, sometimes I feel like it's a dorm. The loft is less than a mile away from the ocean so sometimes if it's above 19 degrees outside we go running and watch the sunrise from the pier for a little bit :)))

-I'm the older AND taller companion.
Never thought the day would come that I'd be the taller companion. Miracles happen. My new companion is Sister Ewell from Vernal. She's the cutest little gymnast. Oh my she's so cool! We work great together! We're a lot alike, really. She is a hard worker and super obedient :) that's all I wish for in a companion. And she's the happiest little thing, always smiling. She wakes up smiling and goes to sleep smiling! I feel so so so so lucky to be with her! It's gonna be the best transfer of our lives.

-You guys, the members here are so GOOD. Great missionaries.
We get fed all the time! That's a first for my mission :) hahah Sister Ewell and I hardly ever eat food in the loft because we know at some point in the day members are going to make us eat food. On Tuesday the C's made us something amazing. Meatloaf cupcakes! With bacon wrapped around them. Mmmmm yum! Also, the C's learned that we can't reach our kitchen cabinets. So what did they do? They went ahead and built a stool! This isn't just any stool, Brother C wood burned it and made it pretty! It took two whole days. I think there's a pic on my facebook wall if you wanna see it. COOL RIGHT? No one in the city ever made me an artistic stool!

-2013 Subaru Legacy,
We have a carrrrr :))) bout time! No more subway for me! Hallelujiah! I, Sister Layton am driver because I'm senior companion. Remember how before my mission I dreaded driving? I love it now! Not even afraid of the highway anymore. #anythingforthekingdom. LIFE IS SO GOOD. except when it snows. Ugh.

Wellllll there's so many other things I could tell you, but that's it for today.
Now for my spiritual thought of the week for those who aren't bored yet:
President talked about what we call our "spiritual recovery rate" in transfer meeting. He and Sister Calderwood talked about aligning our will to our Heavenly Father's and Jesus Christ's will. It's like the the the last line in Ill Go Where a You Want Me To Go when we sing "I'll be what you want me to be." At times in our life we are going to feel sad, we are going to feel offended, we will feel anger, temptation, etc. it's part of life, we WILL feel these feelings. That's where our spiritual recovery rate comes in. It's fine to have those bad feelings for a little bit, it's completely fine to feel upset or discouraged for a little bit, but then we have to act appropriately and move forward. Because if we don't we will just be stuck and unable to progress. Our goal is to get our spiritual recovery rate as high as we can. It's similar to our heart rate when working, the higher the better. We can make our spiritual recovery pay rate higher by... Real-time repentance! As we repent, or simply ask for help and show God our desire to become better and align our will to HIS will, that is how we progress and become "forever changed," or rather, become what HE wants us to be. So that's one of my transfer goals- real-time repentance :)
SORRY THAT MADE NO SENSE.

KKKK peace and blessings.
If you pray for me, please pray for our investigator F, that she will have a desire to know for herself that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Thank you :))

Xoxo
Sister Layton



Pics:
Sister Ewell and Brother Cwith our stool!
Me, Sister Board, and Sister Robertson! We took a "mission heritage" photo.




































































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