Week 50... Mandarin 1st Ward

Greetings from Mandarin! Prepare for some caps lock action

Hey y'all!!

This week has been fabulous!! :)

It was transfers this week and Sister Carlson got shipped home!!! D:

It was very sad. And I miss her. Terribly. 

BUT THAT’S OKAY BECAUSE SISTER TOLEDO IS AWESOME. But seriously. She is awesome. She is quite shy but is randomly hilarious and very outgoing. It's awesome. She goes home this transfer too!! I'm just gonna kill ALL the missionaries :D serial killer!!!! Hooray!!! I love working with them though. They always have such wonderful wisdom and humility to learn from :) Sister T and I are having a ton of fun together, which makes me happy. Missionary work is so much better and fulfilling when you have a smile on your face and a good friend by your side. Thank goodness for companions. I have learned so much from each of mine I'm so thankful for all of them! (Shout out to Sis Waite, Sis Joseph, Sis Pasko, Sis Carlson, Sis Toledo.. :))

Okay so this week was chalk full of MIRACLES!!!! So many! It's been amazing! So. First. We met this guy making bullets.. (Hi mom..) and he said he was going to read the Book of Mormon! I was excited but like... A lot of people SAY they will read it. Do they usually read it? No. Haha. So my hopes were not the highest. But I still had faith!!!! Sister Toledo were biking along and I kept getting the prompting to go see tom. (Bullet guy) I didn't want to. I was a doubting Thomas!!! Nooooo! Well, I finally swallowed my pride and we went and knocked on his door and he answers and says "hi! I was hoping you'd stop by today!! I have been reading the Book of Mormon and I have lots of questions for you!" (Words every missionary lives to hear) woah!! Okay! So we taught him about Joseph smith and the restoration and invited him to pray about it. He says it could be true and he will pray about it. So that was awesome. It's moments like those where The Lord reminds me whose in charge. He is. If I was... Nothing would happen. Haha. AND THEN. I have been dying to go see a recent convert that just moved in, so we did. And she said she was feeling really sad and discouraged because she doesn't have any spiritual support in Florida. So that was sad. But it was so wonderful to share with her the gospel of Jesus Christ and how we can endure to the end through Him. I love this gospel so much. It truly does have answers for every question and every situation. It is the gospel of light and intelligence! It's genius! I think at the end we helped her understand that the Savior doesn't demand perfection.. Just progress, and patience with ourselves and his plan for us. He is in charge after all.

ANNND THENNNNN we taught John! Now John is awesome. He grew up Baptist! He has very strong faith in Jesus Christ and has a wonderful testimony of prayer. We brought Tara with us (whom I love) and she is so awesome. And bold!!! I love the passion and the power that recent converts have. It is SUCH a great example to me. Usually we can't see John on the weekdays because he is so busy with work but we figured that we would leave him with a copy of the restoration movie! Well, we went over there to leave it on his doorstep and he was just standing there on his driveway!!!! WHAAAAAT?! So awesome. God is in charge. We were able to teach him a short lesson. He said that he is 99.9% sure the Book of Mormon is true... But he doesn't know if Joseph Smith is a prophet.. Now I'm not sure how that adds up. But I'll take it!!! We saw him again on Saturday and something had definitely changed about him. There was such a difference in his countenance. A beautiful difference. He was much more smiley! And happy! He said he was EXCITED for us to come over! It's just SO AMAZING to see the light of the gospel come into people's lives! It is beautiful!! So darn tootin beautiful!!! Well, we taught him a wonderful lesson about the Plan of Salvation and I felt STRONGLY inspired to ask Sister T to bear her wonderful testimony of the atonement which she did. And the spirit was so thick. Thick like butter. You could spoon it. John said because of Tara's enthusiasm for the gospel.. He would come to church. He later called and said that Sister T’s testimony had filled his heart with something that was missing. No biggie. My companion is just a MIRACLE. She doesn't say much but when she does the spirit is like.. BOOOOM. POW TAKE THAT SATAN. WHAT IS UP.

*choir of heavenly angels*

So.. Sunday rolls around. I'm basically on cloud 9 because uh.. Investigator coming to church? Yes. please. I've just been waiting for this to happen since Bob came 2 months ago. Well we wait and we wait and we wait... Church starts.. We still wait.. No John. :( I'm slightly disappointed but didn't wanna dwell on it because that's depressive and destructive. AND SUDDENLY this woman comes in and says she is visiting for the first time. She said she joined the church in Brazil but when she moved to the United States with her husband she went with him to church and today she felt like she needed to go back to the true church. AWESOME!! She had the cutest kids which i just wanted to squish!! So cute! Eeeee! Sacrament ends and of course it was THEE PERFECT Sacrament meeting for John which talked all about prophets and why we needs them. I was over it. I turn around and guess who is standing right behind me with a big ole smile on his face?

.JOHN.

FLAWLESS MERRIMENT.
*cue black lady choir, book of Mormons riding on unicycles, Mormon.org cards raining from the ceiling, called to serve playing in the back ground, and Sister Chamberlain giving a speech about how God is in charge and that she shouldn't worry*  Yeah. That's what happened in my head.

Then my brain exploded when John said he was coming back next week and he was excited to learn more and then decided to tell us his two good friends who fell off the deep end were able to be brought back to the light because.. Hm.. Two missionaries knocked on their door and invited them to the LDS CHURCH AND THEY WENT AND THEIR LIVES CHANGED FOREVER. He forgot about that story until he was the one coming to the church and about to have his life changed FOOOORRREVVERRRR (read slowly)

OH MY GOODNESS I COULD PEE EVERYWHERE I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT MISSIONARY WORK. TAKE THAT IN THE FACE SATAN. IN THE FAAAACE. I sorta feel like my dog Baxter who when somebody comes home it’s like he has this mini heart attack and he jumps around and runs in circles because he is so excited. (He usually ends up hacking up some sort of grossness because he is so excited ... But I haven't done that. Yet.)

So that was my week. Pretty alright I guess. Whatevs.

Stay tuned for what happens to John! Pray that he gets baptized! Pray that To. Will get baptized! PRAY THAT EVERYONE IN FLORIDA WILL GET BAPTIZED. Okay, I'll calm down on the caps. It's gone too far.

TOOOO FARRRRRRR. Hahaha. I think I'm hilarious.

Okay. This email is long enough. (It's to make up for all the other lame weeks of boring emails)

But I hope y'all just know how much God loves you. He loves you! Just accept it! Don't try to run away from it or hide from it! Just bask in it!! It's okay to be loved and it's okay to love yourself and it's okay to love everyone around you! Why? Because life is awfully too short to walk around with a lil rain cloud over your head! JUST LOVE PEOPLE! (That includes yourself) At least put on some boots and jump in the puddles! Life can be great! Even when it's storming! Basically, what I'm trying to say... What I've tried to say this whole email is God is in charge. Let him be in charge and your life will be ridiculously awesome. Thank you.    *steps off soapbox*

Have a swell week y'all. :) I'll be praying for each of you. :)

Love, your favorite Sister missionary,

Sister Chamberlain :)

Sister Chamberlain and Sister Toledo