Phone Fists‏

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events, but that's just life I suppose. The weather is still nuts here! It has been in the 90s for a majority of the week, but there were a couple of days where Sister Martinez and I needed to grab some sweaters because it was cloudy and windy. I think this week it is supposed to be in the 70s, so that should be a nice change of pace. 

I'll start off with the series of unfortunate events since it has to do with the miracles that we saw last week. The two investigators who were planning on getting baptized together have now become former investigators. The first investigator called us the other day and immediately started off by saying "I do not want and I can not get baptized. I can't meet with you anymore and I will not be returning to your church." Not the best way to start off the morning. She told us that her mom has forbidden her from meeting with us anymore and won't allow her to even step foot in the church building. She will not give her daughter permission to get baptized and she even threatened her daughter with bodily harm if she continued to meet with us. Her mom has always been very against the church but we didn't think very much of it because the daughter is 30 years old. It has all just turned into a really sad situation. We thought that maybe we could just try to meet with her on the street or something so we tried to bribe her with cookies, which she initially agreed to, but her mom shut that down real quick once she found out. There's just not a whole lot we can do in that situation.

A very similar situation happened with our investigator's friend. Out of the blue she quit showing up to lessons, stopped answering our calls, and didn't reply to our text messages. We called her on Sunday morning to invite her to church and her mom actually answered the phone. I have never been yelled at over the phone until this day. When I told her that I couldn't actually understand anything that she was saying because she was talking too loud and fast, she got even angrier and started chewing me out in an over-exaggerated, slow, baby voice. I have never been talked to in such a disrespectful manner in my entire life. I have never wanted to punch somebody through the phone before, but nothing would have satisfied me more in that moment. Missionary work is supposed to bring people joy, including the missionaries, but in some instances it just brings a lot of anger and frustration. Not very Christlike, I know, but I was literally furious. I never really understood the phrase, "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me," because I was really hurt by what she said to me. I'm having a really hard time forgiving her because in her mind she was doing exactly the right thing and she probably doesn't feel bad about it in the slightest. We have the atonement to be able to forgive people, forgive ourselves, and recieve forgiveness, but I've been "struggling in the spirit" these past couple of days and it's been really hard to even have a desire to forgive her. I'm sure with time and a lot of prayer everything will be fine. Missionary work is pretty hard. Anyways, so that's another sad story. All we can do is keep praying for them and trusting that the Lord will work everything out.

Alright, enough of the sad stuff. We did have a series of fortunate events happen to us this week! This first story is kind of weird, but it will make a little bit more sense later. While Sister Martinez and I were contacting around our area, we met these two nice old ladies who were totally down to talk with us. We had a nice conversation about family and religion with them and then one of the old ladies left after taking a few brochures and a Book of Mormon. After talking to the second lady for a little while we noticed that she was a little bit drunk, not visibly drunk but we could definitely smell it. She started crying after her friend left and confided in us that she wanted to give up drinking. She told us that she had tried giving it up for years but she just couldn't do it. We told her that she would be able to give up alcohol and we would tell her how if she met with us that night (when she was less drunk). We set up a meeting with her, wrote it down for her, and reminded her about it a million times so that she wouldn't forget. Yeah, she forgot. She didn't show up that night, so Sister Martinez and I decided to just go knocking. At least it was an almost-miracle!

While Sister Martinez and I were knocking, we met one of the nicest ladies I've ever met in my life! We decided to go knocking because it was cold and windy outside (and we got dropped), and the lady who answered the door invited us in because she thought we were freezing to death or something. Apparently she knows English, Spanish, and Russian really well, so she got to practice her different languages with us while we chatted. Her and her husband actually live in Spain, but she lives with her mom for half of the year to take care of her. She loves traveling and has a strong love for humanitarian work. When we talked to her about why we're here and what we believe, she was very receptive and agreed to meet with us again. She was so sweet and she has so much potential! I am so excited to see what happens with her!

This week we had a zone conference and Elder Porter from the Quorum of the 70 came and spoke to us. It was really great and really inspiring, but what was even greater was that me and Sister Martinez got to hang out with his wife and son for the evening. His son served in this mission about 14 years ago and he wanted to come visit some of his former investigators and converts. He served in the area where Sister Martinez and I are, so we got to chauffer him and his mom around. It was really great meeting some of the less actives that I didn't even know existed that he baptized, and we received a lot of referrals. Such a cool day!

Lesson that I learned this week: Don't scratch your bug bites, regardless of how many or how itchy they are. One of the bug bites on the upper part of my calf that was pictured last week got infected. Really infected. At the beggining of the week, Sister Martinez and I had some Sisters over for exchanges when I started noticing that one of my bug bites was gradually getting larger. A couple days past and it didn't go away. I figured it was just getting irritated by my skirt hem constantly rubbing against it, so I just ignored it. By the time the Sisters were about to go back home at the end of the week, it was pretty massive. It was red, swollen to about the size of a tennis ball, and it felt like a baby furnace on my leg. Definition of infected. One of the Sisters that I was on exchanges with was disgusted with my calf and made me call Sister Schwab and tell her about my creepy leg. Yep... infected. Now I am on some lovely antibiotics and my leg is looking a lot less creepy. The members were all whispering behind me and pointing at my bug bite at church yesterday, so it definitely isn't gone, but it will be soon! Don't touch your bug bites!

Last note... Russian ice cream is amazing. I ate it multiple times this week to the point where I had to make myself a "1 cone a day" rule because I ate 4 in one day once. I do not want to look like a fat woodland animal when I get home, so this rationing is necessary. Amen.

Welp, that's all folks! Don't let people yell at you on the phone and please wear bug spray when you are outside!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff