Jessie in Georgia: Bigfoot and Oreo the Baby Chicken

Hola Everyone!

What a nutso fun week. Let's get into it!

Monday: P-day! Sister Balls had yet another foot doctor appointment. More meh news. Prayers would be appreciated. We hung out as a district and celebrated Sister Jarvis' 21st with peach cobbler and ice cream!!! It was so fun. We played a new game called Five Crowns and it felt like a mix of rumikub and rook. Elder Griffin and Hoffman gave the craziest presentation on Bigfoot. I believe he exists now if that tells you anything. We ate dinner with the Ellisons and talked to Liam about starting home MTC this week! I was able to ease some of his nerves which was good :)

Tuesday: We started the day at the co-op where we yapped with Beanie about the youth group that was helping with the food pantry. They're from north carolina and are doing service every day of the summer in different places! How fun! We did lots of finding throughout the day and had dinner with Sister Flynn and Ginger :) Ginger gets her nickname from her childhood. She used to have strawberry blonde hair and her little sister couldn't say her real name so she just called her Ginger! We ate at Metro which is the cutest little diner that a recently returned missionary in our ward, Marcelo works at! He wasn't our waiter but he came over to say hi :) We dropped off some more brownies after dinner and headed to Book of Mormon study. Nobody showed so we sat and brainstormed with the elders how we could involve the ward in our work more :)

Wednesday: We headed straight for the carwash in the morning to beat the heat. We did not in fact beat the heat but oh well. Our car looked amazing. Lots of meetings and calls because we were trying to do missionary work while also not walking a ton in hopes that Sister Balls could rest her foot. We headed to the ward mingle for dinner and got to know the Bishop's wife's sister who just got back from being a mission leader in Brazil! She loved talking with us missionaries :)

Thursday: ZONE CONFERENCE! We learned some powerful stuff. The Dents talked about applying the doctrine of Christ to every aspect of our missionary work. So great. We were trained on how to make specific plans while still in lessons to help our friends keep commitments. It was so amazing and so so so helpful. We've been using it all week :) After Zone conference, we had dinner with Maddie Hall who is such a cool lady. After dinner, we had a lesson with our friend Faty [fah-tee] who is a mom of two under two. She is excited to learn more! We ended the night with institute taught by none other than Salem Palmer himself. Shoutout humidity for fogging up my glasses every time I step outside

Friday: What a crazy day. We started our day with DC and gained some really good insight into teaching within people's concerns. Shoutout Elder Hogan. Right after lunch at Jimmy Johns, we headed to weekly planning with basically our whole district in the same building lol. At some point we all ended up making s'mores on the church stoves with giant marshmallows that someone found in the clerk's office. Someone also somehow found chocolate and graham crackers. We had a good time :) Our elders are all going through it (Elder Hogan was stung by a bee on his eyebrow and the Tucker elders' ward is giving them a hard time) so I suggested that they all give each other blessings. They didn't want to at first so I quite literally taught them a lesson on priesthood authority and promised them blessings and they whisked themselves away to a private room to give each other blessings. They came back in after with the most grateful looks in their eyes and all thanked me individually for listening to the spirit. I felt so cool guys you have no idea. We headed to dinner with sweet Jackie and she fed us the most delicious ribs I have everrrr had. Jackie knows ball. We had her make a video for our friend Aria to invite her to church and she ended up coming and they sat togetherrrr!!! (Thank you zone conference) We did a blitz with the hermanas! I went with Sister Johnson so in case someone spoke spanish, we could still teach them. So fuuuun! We found a frog in a yard!

Saturday: HAPPY 4TH! Being a missionary on a holiday is SO HARD. Nobody is home and every business is closed so finding people to teach is really difficult. We had to be home by 8pm for safety reasons so we knew we'd have one less hour to work outside. I got to call my dad for his birthday!! Happy 56 papacito! I found a fluffy caterpillar at the park that looked like a wasp. I was so confused. We stopped by so many people and knocked so many doors and literally not one person was home. We pleaded to God in prayer to lead us where we needed to be and I got the strongest prompting literally ever that just said GO HOME. We followed it right away and headed home. After about 10 minutes of being home, it started storming so bad outside. We were so greatful to have been led home before getting caught in it! We even got a panicked call from our district asking if everyone was okay. Because we were stuck at home and couldn't knock doors (Sister Balls' boot can't get wet) we called some people who had been interested a while back. We called a cool fella who got into some anti about two years ago but was willing to listen to us now. We taught him about prophets and he gave us his new address and we set up a time to meet. BAM! After the storm died down, we were able to go to the Tucker ward BBQ and mingle with the Tucker ward! We talked with an awesome lady about the plan of salvation and covenants :) After getting home at 8, we made banana muffins (see cooking vid in google photos)

Sunday: Our friend Aria came to church but felt sick so she left halfway into second hour. Sad. We slept for our whole lunch hour because we were fasting. I love Sunday naps. We stopped by an old lady in a 55+ living who wasn't home but I need to tell yall about the elevator. It sounded like a ghost lived in there. If any of yall have ever been to Lagoon in Utah, it's the sound the Rocket makes before the ride drops. Like the really loud sigh of air?? Idk but Anna if you're reading this you probs know. Anywho we went to the Britos for dinner and if you know me, you know I'm terrified of eating seafood. I ate an entire thing of salmon. It was hard but lowkey so delish at the same time. I also ate a crap ton of asparagus. Sister Brito locked her son out of the house when she though he was going to show her a bug. She screamed and ran upstairs and said she loved us and could let ourselves out. I literally love her so much lol. Apparently he wanted to show her a blackberry he found on a bush. We had a member message with the Joneses after. Brother and Sister Jones (Actual brother and sister) told us all about their travels to Israel and when it started raining, Brother Jones walked us all the way down their long driveway with an umbrella over our heads. So kind.

Saturday: I LOVE EXCHANGESSS! I went to Berkley Lake (I'm writing this from there) and got to hang out with Sister Jarvis all day! We literally had the best day ever ngl. It was so weird but awesome. We started the day with stopbys and met the mother of the author of The Maze Runner, Sister Dashner. I was fangirling lol. We did a blitz of Lilburn so I got to go back to my own area during an exchange which was weird but fun. We knocked a street and met a fella named chris that wanted not one but TWO copies of the book of mormon. He really wanted to know where we lived. About three houses down after leaving him, we see chris running up to us telling us that he actually doesn't need two. He gave one back then asked what car we drove. Helllllp!!! We eventually got him to leave and then while walking to our car down the street, three little girls said they'd let us hold their baby chicken if we gave them pictures of Jesus. So, we held their chicken and gave them pictures of Jesus. Score. We had dinner with sweet old Brother Crawford at a mexican place. Sister Jarvis is from Mesa so she knows about mexican food. It was so fun to bond with her about Arizona!!! During one of our later stopbys, some guy was on his phone while driving and missed our car by an inch after slamming on his brakes. God kept our big old missonary van safe. We got ice cream on the way home :)

I'M SO EXCITED TO GO TO THE TEMPLE TODAY!!!!!!

I love yall, the Lord loves yall Email me!

xoxo, Sister Anderson