number 1. we found the most awesomest bookcase that led to us finding a piano and the coolest couch ever to bring to our apartment. we lugged all three back to our apartment and we physically fatigued for the rest of the week. but it was so worth it. now we have a piano in our apartment!! and the coolest couch ever.
number 2. Sister Choi is the best!! She went to Japan this weekend to take her nurse examination but we taught her a couple times before she left. I have just been thinking about the experience of teaching her and I am really in awe. Looking at her now, she is a completely different person than i was teaching in march when i came here. (side note i came here in march what the what??? it's august!! can you believe it's august?? yeah neither can i. i'm convinced that i'm staying here for the rest of my mission. every transfer call time freaks me out. but i don't have to worry about that for a couple of weeks) she still has little things that she struggles with but she has humbled herself in so many ways it has been amazing to see the whole journey and to experience really what the gospel does for people's lives. we got on the subject of baptism and went over the spiritual qualifications (in D&C 20:37) and talked about how she felt about it. she said serve Him until the end? until the end is a long time! and we said yes yes it is. but it is so worth it!! she said I can't promise 100% but I really want to try. and isn't that how we all feel. we can't promise the Lord 100% because we aren't perfect that's just a fact. but we can promise to try 100% of the time. we can promise to try and we can make mistakes and we can learn and then we can repromise to try again! we can come to know the tender mercies of the Lord. We talked to her about her baptismal date and we moved it up to August 24!! it's the last Sunday of the transfer. Please please pray for her!!
number 3. Sister Park is getting baptized on the 17th! and we got permission to attend it. WE ARE SO STOKED.
number 4. we went to visit one of our less actives randomly to drop off some bread that we made. this less active is very special. she is a return missionary and has had a goal to get back to church for years but just hasn't made it back yet. really nice to the missionaries but doesn't want us to visit or call too often and never lets us set appointments with her. it's just kind of a get lucky and we can meet sort of deal. well let me tell you Heavenly Father helped us be really lucky this week. we made some bread and planned to visit a different less active (sister yang) and if she wasn't there we would go visit sister moon. well sister yang didn't answer her door so we decided to go visit sister moon. we got there and her door was cracked open so we knew she was home! awesome. we knocked on the door and she came out and we were there for the next 2 hours standing outside her door talking to her. nevermind that i wanted to rip my spinal cord out of my back and chop my feet off they hurt so bad but it was worth it. she brought up that her mom had passed away the week before she that really impacted her. she said she had thought about us THAT morning and thought oh if the sisters come visit me should i go back to church?? she talked about how she regretted not spending more time with her mom and setting different things at a higher priority level than her relationship with her mother. her mom wasn't a member but she faithful attended another church and she talked about basically her faithful legacy that she left behind. she admired her mother's faith even if it was in another church. she talked about her conversion experience and said that when she got baptized her parents basically disowned her, they kicked her out of the house and cut money for tuition and everything else. eventually that was resolved though and she went on a mission. she talked to us about her mission experiences and she had a lot of hard times while she was serving. she has just struggled a lot with people in the church and receiving criticism and even though she knows that it's true it's hard for her to come back to church because she doesn't want it to happen again. it was so good for her to talk to us and tell us what she was feeling and we just listened. that was all she wanted. we just wanted her to know that we loved her and yes of course we want her to come back church, but even more than that we love her and the Lord loves her and knows her struggles. She was grateful that we took the time to listen to her and it was a miracle that we got the inspiration to visit her in the first place and than sister yang didn't answer the door.
on my mission i have been able to meet the most amazing people and i love them so much. i was talking to sister hoffman the other day and kind of got upset because i think that way that i show love for people is spending time with them. when i really love someone i just want to spend time with them. i thought of all the times i've gone over to kells house and we don't do anything important maybe make food or dessert but i just loved being with her. i think of the times that i was upset at school and all i did was call kaari and she would come pick me up or i would take a bus and spend the weekend at Krissy's house. i think of when i would take little grocery store trips with dad and just be in the car with him. all the times that me and jake have been consigned to our own hotel room and we just sit on the bed til late at night maybe doing different things but just being together. and when i would call mom on the way to school just to talk to her. we weren't together but i just felt like saying hi and that was the closest i could get to being with her. i spend time with the people that i love because i just like being with them. and as a missionary we can't do that. we can't just go spend hours with our members or our investigators and go and hang out with them. and i think it's really hard for other people to know that i love them because i'm not that great at emotionally expressing myself i think. i got a little discouraged feeling like i couldn't adequately express my love for all the people that i really do love so much. but i try to do the best that i can and hope that they can feel my love. but now i know and now i understand a little bit more about myself that maybe i wouldn't have realized before. i love you all and it kills me that i haven't been able to spend time with you over this past year and a half, but i know that i will have a whole future ahead of me to do that so it's okay. love you love you so so much!!
have a good week!
Sister Blickenstaff
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