Hey everyone! Hope y'all had as fantastic a week as I did!
So, on Monday, we went on exchanges, and I went with the fabulous Sister Henderson!
She served in Story City a year ago, so she was excited to be back and see all the members from the branch!
Not too much happened while on exchanges... mainly a lot of knocking. Sister Dalton and Sister Newman found a new person to teach for us! Her name is Adrianna, and she and her family have been looking for a church! And, well, we have a church :)
On Wednesday, Sister Dalton still had not been feeling better, just a lot of coughing and sneezing and headaches. So the mission nurse sent us back to our favorite place ever... The Urgent Care! But this time, she told us not to leave until they came up for a real solution as to why she is sick... And they did. She is allergic to Iowa. That is the simplest way to say it LOL! So they gave her some allergy pills and an inhaler and sent us on our way!
So we decided to go knock a small town about half an hour from Story City called Radcliffe. On our way there though, we passed probably the smallest town in existence...
It is called 'Christytown', and has a population of 46. Literally just one street. Blink and it is gone. We thought it was pretty funny...
Anyway, in Radcliffe we did a little knocking. And one door that we knocked on, a lady named Sabrina came out. She was immediately like 'hey, I was going to call you guys! I've just been so busy!' and went on to talk about her problems. So, we asked if she met with missionaries before, and she said yes! Then, she called out her 10 year old son, Malachi. She said that she was reading the Book of Mormon one day, and he had a lot of questions about it! And so we answered them, of course. We were about to leave, and we set up a return appointment for Thursday, but then her husband stuck his head out the door and was like 'How about Saturday? I have work on Thursday.' So we decided to come back on Saturday.
Then Thursday hit! We went to district council (We aren't allowed to call them meetings anymore. Kinda weird, but okay) While there, we got a text from an unsaved number. we asked who it was, and his reply was 'a friend of the church of latter-day Saints. Who are you?' We thought that was a weird way to introduce yourself, and he must not be a member, since he said the name of the church wrong, so we replied that we were the missionaries. A few texts later and a phone call, we had found ourselves another person to teach! Then we asked where he lived... And he lives in Ft. Dodge. So, now the Elders are teaching him, but they say that he is awesome! Then we went home around 4:00 to grab some things. Not long after we walked into the apartment, the sky went pretty dark... And a couple seconds later the tornado alarms started going off. So, we were instructed to stay inside (we live in a basement, so we were safe)There was a tornado in Story City, but it didn't touch down. It went more towards the east of us, and hit Roland, and then continued on to Marshalltown, which got pretty demolished. Photo Cred goes to Sister Manning, an amazing member of the branch who was keeping us updated, and to a news station LOL
Then Friday! We spent most of the day inside weekly planning, and then we went to an appointment with Tonya. She has been flaky lately, but we were finally able to talk with her. Not sure what we are going to do about her...
And Saturday! We spent the morning in Ames for a carnival!! We were asked to help out. And then we went back and tried to see Sabrina, but turns out there was a rodeo going on in Radcliffe, so we had to reschedule that! Then we headed back to Story City to knock around a little bit, when we got a text from one of the people we are teaching... He asked us if we could come over to visit him. We were like, yeah, of course! We knew that this person was going through a rough time and hadn't been able to come to church recently because of it, so we were hoping that he would tell us the story behind it. We show up, and he was SO HIGH!! We felt like maybe we should go, but he started talking. Told us that the real reason that he has been so depressed is because he is 45, and doesn't have a wife or a girlfriend. He kept asking us if we were married, and we kept telling him no, we are focusing on Jesus right now! But he wasn't catching on. Anyway, super awkward conversation of him talking about girlfriends and such for an hour and a half, and we were trying to tell him that we would come back later (when he wasn't on drugs) when he said, "Melanie, you are great with God. I always wanted to be with a Spiritual person." and then to Sister Dalton, "Sydney, you and the sunset is the most beautiful picture in my mind" Yes, he used our first names. Thank you Facebook. Then, he turned on some super romantic music and we were like "Okay, bye!" And turned and ran away. Then, we called our Zone Leaders to tell them, and they told us not to go back. So, yeah. We are fairly certain if we had stayed another second a marriage proposal would have been the next thing out of his mouth. So, how was your Saturday? LOL
And then Sunday. We were low-key dreading that this person would come to church, because that would be uber awkward, but he didn't. And Mike is still sick with a stomach virus, so he wasn't able to come either. Not too much else happened on Sunday... But it was a great day because of the Sacrament!
