Monday, October 28, 2013

Llama Herders and Burritos

This week has been not as great as last week, but there will still a few exciting points. 

We got a great service opportunity this week. We were prompted to go to the Salvation Army here and so we decided to go on Tuesday. When we got there, we set up 4 hours a week that we would come and volunteer. They were so grateful. But then Sister Jensen was inspired to ask if they needed help now. The lady in charge was almost brought to tears as she explained everything that still needed to be done. We were more than happy to come help and so for the next 2 hours we made bags of food for their pantry customers and also Thanksgiving bags for those who don't have much money.  It was an amazing experience. We knew that we had been prompted there. And even though we didn't get a chance to share the gospel or anything, we still were able to share our testimonies through service. I love serving there.

The week didn't really get exciting until Friday. We were finally able to meet Momoh (Jartu's boyfriend) and make an appointment to meet him the next day. We got to meet with an active member and her non-member mother and it was awesome. I don't think much will come out of it regarding the non-member mother, but it was still an awesome opportunity to get to visit with her and get to know her a bit more. We were also able to meet with a less-active family, the father of which received the Medal of Honor this February (you can see a spotlight of him if you look up Game 1 of the World Series. His name is Clint. It's an amazing story.), and they're super unified together. But unfortunately, they haven't been to church in a long time and don't really have any desire to. We're going to continue working with them, and hopefully some good will come out of it. They're a little hard on the outside, but we'll help them to the best of our abilities. 

But Saturday. That was a crazy day. In the morning, we went up to Newburg with some members. Now Newburg really is a po-dunk little town in the middle of nowhere. There are maybe 100 people that live there, the gas station has one pump (that looks like it's from the 20s) and it would take all of about 30 minutes to tract the whole thing. We went there because we had some appointments with some less active members, but both ended up getting cancelled, so we got to go to the Newburg Mall. We thought this was weird, too: A mall for 100 people? But indeed, they have one! In it, they had the Pastor's office (there was a Lutheran Church there that is HUGE. Don't know why they need one that big), the barbershop, the coffee shop, the insurance agency, and "Paula's Pretty Things" all surrounding a table covered in a plastic tablecloth with chairs surrounding it. It was great. We have a picture in front of the "mall". (Oh, and Newburg is an hour away from Minot). When we got back to Minot, we got to go meet with Momoh, and the lesson went really well. After the lesson, we were just getting up to leave when Moijama (Let me explain the living situation: Eastman and Moijama are married and have 2 kids, Zayzay and Ifa. They are less active. Jartu and Momoh, girlfriend and boyfriend, live with them. They are investigators) asked us if we would like some African food (asking it like if we were to say no it would break her heart), so we said yes, even though we were still full from eating only an hour before. We asked for a little bit. When she brought us the food, she brought us full plates full of this..food. It was this brown and green sludge looking stuff over rice. I put my man pants on and started to eat. It was actually pretty good, considering everything. But after the 3rd bite, I couldn't taste anything because my mouth was on fire. It was so spicy!!! They said it was very mild compared to what they usually eat, and I was mortified. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a fan of spicy food. At all. But what could I do? I just put my face down and ate it, sweaty and crying all the way. My mouth burned for the next 3 hours, no lie. Goodness gracious. So I survived it. I can now proudly say that I survived Nigerian good. Bam. 

This Saturday, we're (All 4 missionaries in this ward) doing a Family Mission Day. This is when we assigned 8 families to come to the Church and to create a Family Mission Plan on how to do member missionary work and what are some ways we can share our testimonies. Then we're going to do service with them. It should be a way cool opportunity to get to know the members more and to jump start the members in getting more involved in missionary work. I made a sweet powerpoint for it. I'll let you know next week how it ends up going.

My aha of the week: Christ is the meridian of time. AM and PM are symbolic of the world before and after Christ's birth. How? AM stands for 'Ante-Meridian" and PM for "Post-Meridian". (Thank you, Jesus the Christ.) I don't know if that's cool for anyone else, but it was a lightbulb! moment for me. 

Sister Jensen and I decided to dress up today, so here are pictures of our glorious costumes. Thoughts? She's a burrito and I'm a rock. And then in the next one I'm a Llama Herder and she's the Llama. Baha. Never a boring moment here. 

I am thinking of all of you! I love you all so much! Remember, the Lord never gives us anything we can't handle!

Sister Leslie

Getting dressed to go outside (it was 19 this morning!)

Me and Sister Jensen

Nice, new (and warm!) boots and coat


The Human Burrito

The Rock

The Llama and Llama Herder

Newburg, ND



1 comment:

  1. i like the burrito story. maybe by the time you get home, you'll not only be able to tolerate spicy food, but you'll like it!

    great pictures too. it looks like you and your comp get along well.

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