Last Week in Mount Vernon

Dear Family & Friends:

Transfers are this week and this morning President Jensen called to let us know that Sister Porter will be training a new sister here in Mount Vernon and that I will be going to another area!  

 

Anamosa District:  Sisters Call, Porter, Bingham, White.  Elders Jentzen, Smith, Brown, Hoskins

We had a good week this past week!  On Monday we had a zone p-day at Palisades Kepler State Park, which is a few miles outside of Mount Vernon!  It was so much fun to be with our entire zone and we played football, and hiked and ran the trails!  We then joined the Cardon and Eskelsen families for a Labor Day BBQ!  Funny story from the zone p-day is that the Cedar Rapids 1st Sisters White and Bingham locked their keys in their truck at the park.  Since we had left before everyone else and lived the closest to the park, the Elders called us to see if we had a hanger they could use to try and unlock the truck.  After an unsuccessful hour of trying to unlock the truck, they called Elder Shelley who is the vehicle coordinator.  Elder Shelley has the spare keys to all of the vehicles, so he said that he and Sister Shelley would drive from Des  Moines (2-2 1/2 hours)  to unlock the truck for them.  The sisters waited patiently for the Shelley's to arrive. . . When the Shelley's got there they started looking for the key in the box of spare keys . . . and the only key that was missing was the key to the sisters’ truck. . . Elder Shelley had pulled it out when they first called, but had left it on his desk in Des Moines.  Whoops!  So the truck remained at the park overnight and the Shelley's came back the following morning with the right key!

Some highlights from this past week include

Sisters Call & Porter

- Karin, Anthony, and Angela:  We met with them twice this week, and Karin and Angela came to the Relief Society activity on Wednesday, and then asked if we could reschedule our appointment that was supposed to be on Friday.  On Thursday we went to their home and another crisis had happened within their family, but they still wanted us to have a lesson!  Karin mentioned how whenever a crisis happens we tend to just "pop up."  They then were excited to let us know that they had completed the assignment to read Alma 32 as a family!  When we had assigned the chapter for them to read we were hoping that they would notice how it talks about faith, but one thing we learned was that the Spirit talks to each person individually and will help a person recognize truth in a way that he or she will understand.  So Karin talked about how, as they were reading she noticed about prophets and how she knows that our church is true!  By the time we left she talked about how at peace she felt despite the crisis that had taken place an hour earlier!

- Beverly who the Elders have been working with was baptized on Saturday and Karin, Anthony, and Angela came for the baptism!  What a wonderful event that was because Beverly just glows and was so excited for her baptism!  When she came up out of the water she had a huge smile on her face and said "I did it!  I finally did it!"  

- We were able to drop by Brooke's, a less active young woman we have been working with, we are really trying to help her to come to young women's and back to church, so we had a lesson on our Divine Nature where at the beginning we each drew a picture of a wall in her room, and then mixed them up and had to identify who drew what picture.  We each could identify our picture even if all of them had a TV, and a book shelf, because we had drawn them.  Just like Heavenly Father knows each of His children because He created each and every one of us!

 

Frogs #9 & #10 caught the same night

- Thursday evening we had dinner with the Hunt family, who are an active family and Sister Hunt helps with running club as well.  They have 3 sons and a daughter under the age of 12 and last time we were at their house we tried an object lesson that was a disaster, quite entertaining, but a disaster.  So this time we taught the message of the Restoration.  The following morning I was running with their son Ethan (6 yr) at running club and he said "I really liked the lesson last night.  I'm going to read the pamphlet for gospel study tonight."

- This week we have been doing some sidewalk chalk finding which has been fun.  The day we went to Stanwood it was a beautiful day and right as we finished we looked up at the sky and this wall of black clouds was coming our way . . .  :(  So, that one didn't last very long.

 

Chalk Finding

I love this Gospel and the joy and happiness that it brings to all who live it!

I love you all!

Love, Sister Call