Laurel's Missionary Journey

Howdy Everyone! This week has been completely, as Sister Burton would say, wack-a-doo! So much has changed in just a short amount of time. I met my new companion- her name is Sister Kitchen. She is from Utah and she is very excited for the work and to be a missionary.She is also a fan of Dear Evan Hansen so we are pretty good friends already. Being a trainer is a very different challenge than I was expecting. There are lots of positives to it, like remembering a lot of the basic training I got when I was in the MTC, and revisiting a lot of fundamentals of missionary work. It's almost like in English class, when you feel like you know English and you speak it really well and then they start talking about grammar rules and you realize maybe you didn't understand English as well as you thought. BOOM that is what training is like. Sister Kitchen is doing really well though. In her very first lesson she set a Baptismal date with Shelia. Shelia is going to be baptized on March ...

Hello all of you lovely people! This week has been full of so many good things and so many hard things! But life is like that, so it is all good. :) Haley Burton had her baby! We got to go see little baby Christopher Mason this Wednesday, and he was absolutely adorable. He had fire-truck red hair, which was unexpected because his mom is African-American and his dad is a blond Caucasian. I wish I had my camera because I would have taken pictures! He was so cute though. We also started teaching an amazing lady named Shelia this week. She is from Brazil and speaks Portuguese, so if you are keeping track that means that I have now taught in English, Gaelic, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, and Portuguese. Who says going state-side means you are going to only teach Americans?! She is amazing though. She got interested in the church because her father recently was baptized, and when he was his entire life changed. He became much happier and loving, and Shelia wanted that positive change for her ...

Everyone- It Snowed. In Florida.   Waking up and seeing snow on the palm trees is not something I ever expected! It was the equivalent of pigs flying. The members in the ward said they can only remember that happening three other times in their lives. I would have taken a picture of it, but I somehow misplaced my camera? I am going to find it though. Along with the weather having something impossible happen, we have seen a lot of impossible miracles this week! We has seven of our investigators come to church with us on Sunday, which is more than I have ever had on my mission so far. God truly is blessing us here in Fox Run! The Burton girls are doing amazing and getting ready for their baptism in just a little over a month. Their older sister Haley should be having a baby any moment now, so I am really excited to get to go over to their house and meet little Mason! As I missionary I am not allowed to hold any children, but I am so excited to see his little face. It is ama...

Friends, Family, Loved Ones <3, Happy December! This week has been an answer to many prayers. I wish I could write whole novels about this week, but right now I don't have the time for that. Maybe one day. ;) My entire mission, in fact, my entire life, I have struggled to feel like the Lord needs me for any specific reason. Since coming into the mission field, I have often felt like it wouldn't really matter if I was the missionary serving in this area or if someone else was here, because it is God who is doing all the work anyway. It wouldn't matter if I had never served a mission at all, because there would still have been missionaries in this area, and missionary work still would have been done. This week, I realized how wrong I was. A few weeks ago our recent convert, Sister Sadler, was telling us that one of her friends in her tailor park, Candice, was about to have a birthday. Sister Sadler wanted to make Candice a cherry cobbler, because that is her favori...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This week has been hard but good! We had zone conference on Tuesday, which is always the best. I saw Sister Burnham again! (She is my favorite!) and I got to be part of a special musical number with Elders Argyle, Hirz, Morgan, and Thomas. Elder Hirz was playing the piano, Elder Thomas was on the violin, and Elder Morgan, Elder Argyle and I were singing. The piece was "Savior, Redeemer of my Soul" and I loved it. The Spirit was there so strongly. Like my Mom says, the Spirit really speaks though music! We saw Sister Burton and her girls again and they are so cute! We changed their baptismal date to January 13th (my sister Jessica's birthday!) because the girls are struggling to remember all the commandments, like the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chasity. That is wonderful though, because we want them to be fully prepared for a lifetime of discipleship after they are baptized, so a few weeks later to help them be ready is not a sacrifice at al...

Hey All! This week has been pretty unexciting, except for two investigators we are really happy for! One of them, Keith, is the man I talked about in my last email that we met on the side of the highway. We had another lesson with him and he has decided to be baptized in December! He even attended the baptism of a little 8 year old girl in the ward here, Autumn Finnell. He actually met Brother Finnell the day before at target, so you never know how the Lord is preparing his children. Another lady we are so excited for is a woman named Diane, who just started coming to church a few weeks ago. She even asked us for a Book of Mormon and scheduled an appointment to meet with us! I cannot stress how little this happens. Her best friend is a member of one of the neighboring wards, but has been coming to church with us because Diane lives in this ward's boundaries. Besides that, things are going well. The Burton girls are excited for their baptism and zone conference is tomorrow, which we...

Hello Everyone!! This past week was so crazy! It was my 6 month mark, which means I am officially 1/3 of the way through my mission. It is so insane how quickly time has flown. We did nothing for my 6 month mark except missionary work, which was exactly how it should be. Bad news, unfortunately we had to stop teaching Austin. He told his family that he was going to be baptized into the church, and they got very upset and told him that as long as they were paying for his school, he would be the religion they picked for him. He told us that he is still going to read the Book of Mormon, and in 2 years when he can start paying for his own school he will be baptized. He still comes up and says hi to us whenever we see him on campus too. On Saturday we did some service for a lady in our ward named Sister Gray. She is incredibly faith-filled, and she converted to the church in the 70s. She was raised very southern baptist, and while we were doing service for her in her lawn she told us about ...