Jessie in Georgia: New Car, Hurricane, and Welcome David!!

Welcome back everyone. Here's another bomb email from none other than Sister Anderson.

This week was so eventful and flew by sooooo quick.

Monday: I made banana bread first thing in the morning, then we got together as a district to make german pancakes and friendship bracelets!!!! We had dinner with the Duffields (Bishop's family) in their colonial mansion of a house. We had a great conversation about the blessings they've seen come from fasting!

Tuesday: NEW CAR YAYAYAYAY! As many of you know, we got hit and run last week. Boo. BUT, they decided to just give us a new car yippee! She's a beaut. Her name is Sheila. We went to the co-op and Sister Balls had to say bye to Beanie because silly old Beanie will be in Switzerland until after Sister Balls goes home. We took a cutie pic together tho! We got lunch at wendy's so Sister Balls could see two of her past comps who are now comps together!! They stopped to see us on the way to the doctor in our area :) We did service at an inactive member's house and literally cleaned up (played with) legos for an hour. So. Many. Legos. Wow. We made the place spotless don't you fret! We had dinner with the Casillas family. They have three little kids. I have never seen such a chatty 3-year-old. So precious. We taught them the 10 commandment hand signs!!!! They ate it up.

Wednesday: EXCHANGES WITH SISTER HAUCK! Guys she's actually nuts but I love her so bad. She ate popcorn for breakfast and candy for lunch. We tried to do contacts and had a chopped comp study at the library before heading to QT for diet coke. We visited with Andrew, a convert of around 9 months. He had a heart attack last week and had to have a quintuple bypass. He showed us the zipper in his chest from open heart surgery. He gave us a word of wisdom lesson because that's how he ended up in this mess. Waffle house and beer. Oh Andrew. We all (Sis Hauck, Elder Hogan, Elder Alder) bawled our eyes out when he was telling his story about praying his heart out (literally) before surgery. While doing a non-chopped comp study at the library later, we saw a guy that was literally carbon copy superman. You can't tell me it wasn't him. I pranked Sister Hauck by telling her we were going to dinner with a new member in the ward (She used to serve in this ward and knows everyone already) so she wouldn't know them but secretly we were going to the ward mingle with EVERYONE! She was so excited. There's a video in my google photos with her reaction :) We had a great lesson with Aria before exchanging back!

Thursday: What the holy hurricane. The day started out normal with District Council and Panda express. We saw Mike and Beverly from waffle house a while back at popeyes!! They recognized us and let us know they hadn't read the mormon book yet but he would now that he saw us again haha. We went to Sister Burke's house for dinner where we ate the yummiest chicken salad (chicken on top of salad not in it) and blueberry sorbet. Before we knew it, a storm had rolled in and we could barely see 5 feet outside the window because of how thick the rain was. Lightning was quite literally striking across the street and was SO LOUD. We ended up staying at Sister Burke's for two hours because heck to the no way were we going outside in that storm. We thought we were going to die when the power went out and it started getting super windy. Turns out we were in the eye of a huge storm that was traveling through the southeast. Ahhh!!! When it finally died down enough for us to leave, we drive through broken branches and saw so many trees tipped over. We couldn't get into our apartment complex for a bit because there was a tree in the road. Our power was out when we arrived home so we knocked on our sweet senior missonary neighbors to see if they were alright and if they had any flashlights. The power came back on as we were chatting with them!! They said they ate dinner by candlelight! So romantic.

Friday: Our gym door was all messed up from the storm and we couldn't get inside so we went on a walk!!! It was so niiiiice. I love being outside in the morning. We weekly planned later and the elders were on something I swear. They kept running in and out of the room pretending to kill each other, dragging each other on the floor, spinning around, burying each other with chairs, etc. Elders will be elders. We had this amazing plan to knock one billion doors, right? First door we knock we're standing there for an hour listening to this guy talk about how he loves Jesus and is a firm believer but REFUSES to call himself a christian because he says that word was made by satan. Anyways then we had yet another amazing lesson with Aria!!!!!

Saturday: DAVID GOT BAPTIZED! The Tucker Elders welcomed a new member of their ward! He is the cutest old man and has the best testimony. Aria came to it to get an idea of what hers will be like! She loved how personal and intimate it was. Sister Balls and I were inspired by our stake pres to play a game while knocking where you throw out a word to the other person before the door opens that you have to use in a first contact. For example, Sister Balls gave me the word "star" and I tied it to 3 Nephi 11:11-12. Jesus is the light and the life of the world. He showed us this when he was born, when a star appeared in the sky to guide others to him. He is our beacon!!!! Anyways I love this game. We had dinner with the Denis family and learned all about their conversion! I love hearing conversion stories, especially after hard days when we feel like our efforts were in vain. They're a great reminder that no effort is wasted. Seeds are constantly being planted and growing!

Sunday: Sister Balls and I did a musical number in Sacrament Meeting!!!! I played violin and she sang "Savior, Redeemer of My Soul". It was so great. The Lilburn ward rarely has musical numbers so they were gushing over it lol. We had an awesome lesson with Aria after church about temples! She was so intrigued and was asking so many great questions about how she could go. She is a GEM. After church, we were doing contacts in our apartment clubhouse and there was a family watching the world cup so we got to see the first hour and a half lol. Congrats Spain! We had dinner with the Blunck family! They have four cats that kept jumping on the table but honestly I don't blame them that food was delish as freak. We had a great conversation about the influence of the holy ghost in our lives.

Thanks for tuning in! I love yall, the Lord loves yall! Email me :)

xoxo, Sister Anderson