Lots to be Thankful For

Dear Family & Friends:

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and had time to reflect on the many things we have to be thankful for!  For the past week or so I have started a gratitude journal and so every night before I go to bed I write down all the things that I can think from that day that I am thankful for, and now several pages are filled and I haven't even began to scratch the surface.   We truly are so blessed, but sometimes we take too many things for granted. 

 

Sister Broome, Santa, Sister Call

This week was pretty good!  Last Monday after emailing and shopping we went and met up with several other sister missionaries at the mall and so we got our picture taken with Santa and just enjoyed spending time with each other.  After our p-day was over Sister Broome and I caught the bus down to the YMCA where we volunteer at.  We were able to serve food for the dinner, and it was fun because Sister Broome now knows most of the people that come and eat! 

 

Well this week we didn't have the car and so we had to figure out the city bus system.  Something that I am not familiar with at all.  Anyways each night during our nightly planning session we would plan out what routes and transfer locations and what not that we would need to take for the following day. .  .  umm . . . you could tell how tired we were the night before, solely based off how our routes turned out that day.  Needless to say we caught some wrong buses and sometimes ended up walking further distances than originally planned.  But hey one of these weeks we might get the bus system down.  In some ways I loved riding the bus this week.  Yes, it is a pain to not have a car, but oh you can meet so many interesting people on the bus, and something that was really neat, was that each time that we discovered we were on a "wrong" bus, we ended up talking with people that the Lord had placed in our path.  So in some ways there is no such thing as a "wrong" bus.  Anyways, Wednesday evening we went to catch the bus home, and we didn't have the schedule  for the bus route that we were going to be taking, so we sat down to try to figure out where we were, and then a bus showed up.  So without thinking we got all excited and jumped on the bus.  Shortly after the bus started moving we discovered we were going outbound instead of inbound. . . making our trip significantly longer than planned.  Well shortly down the road a couple got on the bus and sat in the row behind me.  Peggy (the woman sitting behind me)  commented on the head band I was wearing.  So we started talking.  And we talked.  And we talked.  We talked for at least 30 minutes and then as she and her husband were getting off they said "thank you for the inspiration and hope you gave us today."  Once again, proof that it is almost impossible to be on the "wrong" bus. 

 

Another neat experience that happened because we didn't have the car this week.  We had been at Oakridge (where most of the African refugees live), and it was getting to be time for us to head home. So we called a sister in the ward to come and pick us up.  So Sister Broome and I were waiting for her to come, and it was cold outside.  So we were trying to stay warm.  Like I would jump up and down for a little bit.  Finally we decided to say a prayer for Sister Strayer to be able to find where we were at in a timely manner.  Not even kidding within 30 seconds of finishing the prayer she pulled up, and she mentioned how she had been driving all around the complex trying to find us. 

 

Do you ever stop and ponder how powerful prayer really is?  Or even the power of the Priesthood?  or scriptures? or Prophets and Apostles? Or the Atonement? or anything and everything that Heavenly Father has blessed us with to help us through our journey here in mortality?  If you haven't  take a moment now to ponder how much your Father in Heaven loves you.

 

 Thanksgiving was an interesting day.  I'm not going to lie, Thanksgiving feels really weird away from home and not being able to help cook all the food for it.  But the day was really great!  We had dinner with the Anderson's.  It was Brother and Sister Anderson, their son Aaron who has Down Syndrome, the elders in our ward, Sister Broome and I.  So just the seven of us, which is quite different from the Thanksgivings at home with all the aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Dinner was really good though and between dinner and time for pie we played Pictionary, Andersons vs. Missionaries.  Umm, there is something about being married for 35 years that gave the Anderson's a slight advantage over us.  haha  The Anderson's started and they made it half way around the board before they missed a turn.  But we had a lot of fun. 

 

Another highlight from the week was on Friday.  We went to visit Hawa and Alleyia (Sister Broome's) recent converts.  And Hawa was going on the recent convert temple baptism trip the following morning.  And she was so excited.  Little Alleyia is the cutest little 8 year old and she was so sad that she wasn't able to go to the temple on Saturday.  Anyways as we were finishing our message with them, their next door neighbor, Odell, came over and made the comment that one day she would join our church.  So we taught Odell on Saturday and she is now a new investigator! 

 

Since we were at Odell's on Saturday we dropped by to see how Hawa enjoyed the temple trip.  The spirit was so strong in her home!  She literally glowed and beamed as she talked about the temple experience.  She talked about how beautiful and peaceful it was, and how she cannot wait to go back.

 

 

Anyways, these are just a few of the highlights from this week!

 

I love you all!

Sister Call