"We need some rat poison please"

December 31, 2018

"We need some rat poison please"

Hello and happy new year!🎉

I hope y'all had a very Merry Christmas and really felt the love of the Savior! I had a great Christmas here in Virginia! Talking to my family was definitely the highlight! I may have balled my eyes out but it was so good to talk to them for a few minutes!❤ Sister Benson is just a hoot and a half so we had a blast! We set out cookies for Santa and left him a note and a pass along card;) We listened to David Archuleta Christmas music as we opened all of our presents! And we made a pretty great 12 days of CHRISTmas song! (Check on Facebook if you would like to see it!) We also got spoiled by the members of the ward out here! It was a great Christmas with memories I will always treasure!

MICE....

So this week we discovered we have mice in our apartment....fantastic! In one of the cupboards in the kitchen there is a nice hole that hasn't ever got fixed. A couple nights ago we were sitting in the kitchen and heard little creatures in there. Turns out we have mice! So we took a trip to home depot and a nice lady asked us what we needed. We said we needed some rat poison and she looked at us like we were crazy and said "good thing y'all have Jesus with you" Haha she was awesome and helped us get some stuff to kill these mice!

MARVIN

We are currently teaching a guy named Marvin. He's an interesting fella to say the least Haha! We met him at the library a couple days ago for a lesson. The Lesson went pretty well for the most part. He says he's too busy to pray or read the scriptures so that's not a good sign but we are trying our best to help him. During our lesson there was a man sitting across the room listening. At the end of the lesson he came over and asked what church we were from and what we believed. We told him, and he went on to tell us about his church and wanted us to look up his Pope on Google. He told us his name was rumplestiltskin. It was a strange conversation Haha! After we left we got a text from Marvin saying: "Sorry for that man's behavior, his name is Ted" Haha I guess Ted and Marvin are friends now! It was pretty funny!

This week we went to visit Dorothy Jo (She goes by DJ). She is a recent convert and one of my favorite people I've ever met. She's so sweet and has the most pure testimony! She had a stroke a little while back so she's a little slow and has a hard time remembering things but she's so sweet! She lives in the straight Ghetto and told us to make sure next time we visit her we park in her driveway instead of around the corner because she hears gun shots quite often where she lives....(Yikes)! Anyway, we talked to her for a few minutes and she bore her testimony of the Savior and how the adversary works harder on us the closer we get to the Savior. It was the most pure and heartfelt testimony I've ever heard! She is amazing!

BOOK OF MORMON

This week I finished the Book of Mormon again! I took on the Prophets challenge to finish it by the end of the year and mark every reference to Christ. My testimony of the Savior grew so much as I did this! The Book of Mormon is SO TRUE! Every time I read it I feel so much peace and so much comfort knowing that this is the only true gospel! I'm so grateful for the Book of Mormon and all the peace it has brought into my life!

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT

This is a poem that Sister Benson shared with me this week and I just loved it! It really made me ponder the role of Jesus Christ and the significance of Him being a carpenter. Carpenters fix thing, Christ fixes things! However broken your life may seem it can always be fixed through the Atonemnt of Jesus Christ. He is the master carpenter and He wants to mend the things that are broken in our lives!❤

In Nazareth, the narrow road,
That tires the feet and steals the breath, Passes the place where once abode
The Carpenter of Nazareth.
And up and down the dusty way
The village folk would often wend;
And on the bench, beside Him, lay
Their broken things for Him to mend.
The maiden with the doll she broke,
The woman with the broken chair,
The man with broken plough, or yoke,
Said, “Can you mend it, Carpenter?”
And each received the thing he sought,
In yoke, or plough, or chair, or doll;
The broken thing which each had brought
Returned again a perfect whole.
So, up the hill the long years through,
With heavy step and wistful eye,
The burdened souls their way pursue,
Uttering each the plaintive cry:
“O Carpenter of Nazareth,
This heart, that’s broken past repair,
This life, that’s shattered nigh to death,
Oh, can You mend them, Carpenter?”
And by His kind and ready hand,
His own sweet life is woven through
Our broken lives, until they stand
A New Creation—“all things new.”
“The shattered [substance] of [the] heart,
Desire, ambition, hope, and faith,
Mould Thou into the perfect part,
O, Carpenter of Nazareth!"