09.28.2015

The rise of the TIWI empire

This week has been really busy and a lot has happened. Last Monday a

family in our ward took us out to eat at a Mexican food restaurant. It

was amazing!! No one out here cooks a big variety of food, so it was a

nice break from the usual beef and potatoes.

Tuesday we had a zone conference that took up almost the entire day. I

love being around other missionaries, and it was a great spiritual

day. We got TIWI installed in our cars. TIWI, aka "black boxes," are

pretty much monitors connected to the car that checks speed, braking,

turning, bumps, who is driving, and seat belts. If you are speeding or

do an "aggressive" maneuver then it talks to you and says stuff like

"check your speed" or "aggressive maneuver." It is also recorded and

sent to your mission president. At the end of each transfer you are

assessed by their system and given a grade based on your driving. So

this basically means you have to follow the speed limit and be a very

cautious driver. If I wasn't on my mission I would honestly hate this,

but I LOVE TIWI! I can finally get a good driving rating and evaluated

on something that is within my control. It also has made me feel a lot

safer as a passenger, so the overall driving experience has gotten

much better for me.

There was an update for our iPads, and unfortunately when I updated

mine it crashed and I had to restart my iPad. It kind of stunk because

for two days I couldn't access our area book, I brought my paper back

scriptures with me everywhere (I know, cry me a river), and I lost all

my pictures from the past month. On the bright side, I was able to get

most of my pictures I had from my companions so there wasn't too much

damage done.

As part of training we had to take a stress assessment test for how we

were feeling during the past week. I thought for sure that I was going

to do fine because I had been feeling better than I did at the

beginning of my mission. Well, the results came back and it said I had

a high stress level and was on the verge of having a breakdown. I was

kind of surprised but I could only laugh because knowing me it made

sense since I thrive off of stress.

Ok, so now some of the people we are teaching. We taught B again

and we had Sister K come along with us. B has so many good

questions that it's hard to stay on topic or follow a lesson plan, and

even though we managed to talk about everything in the Restoration

except for Joseph Smith, it was still a good lesson. Sister K had

some great life experiences that B could relate to, and I now

understand why it is so important to have members come to lessons with

us. He opened up a lot about some of his struggles, and I hope that we

will be able to help him more next week.

We had one of our young women come out with us Saturday morning and

she was able to go to two lessons with us. We were able to have our

regular lesson with C. We taught her about the Restoration and

asked her if she believed Joseph Smith saw Christ and Heavenly Father

and she said yes! She even agreed to come and watch a session of

General conference and take a church tour with us this upcoming

Sunday! I'm hoping that she will be able to recognize that even though

we teach her lots of things that are similar to her church, that our

church brings the spirit more and that this is the true church.

We also met with G. Last time we met with her she voiced some

concerns about where she is going once she died, which fit perfectly

into the second lesson, the Plan of Salvation. She already believed

that we lived with Heavenly Father before we were born, we were able

to help her understand the spirit world and how people will be able to

continue to learn about Christ during that time. She said that it made

so much sense and that it made her happy to know that others would be

able to have the chance to learn about the gospel. Sister Malo invited

her to be baptized and she said that she would when she felt ready! We

assigned her Alma 40 to read and learn more about the spirit world and

as we were leaving she said "I have a feeling that this book is going

to answer a lot of questions that I have that the Bible cannot

answer." That was music to my ears, I was so happy when she said that!

We testified that it would and that it would bring her great peace.

She is seriously so ready for the gospel, and she feeds off everything

we say.

Anyways, that's about all the big news that has happened this week,

sorry I don't really have a funny story to share with ynz, but Mom,

I'm sure you're happy about that :)

Sister Morrison

Had to carry around my paper back copies of everything.

This is M. She has her baptismal interview next Wednesday!

This is G and I. In case you wanted to know this picture was taken just moments after I spilt cool aid all over the floor. Whoops!

This is Zeus a 200 pound dog. I was terrified when we rang the doorbell and he came to the door. Good thing he is a gentle giant, although he still really freaks me out.