Mikayla Ockey: Pull up your socks.

Okay. the coolest thing happened. After three days of kinda wandering the streets attempting to do missionary work (I have some way funny stories about that though btw) but feeling like all our efforts were going down the drain we came home and did a little revamping. Aka: bring out the white board. Pray your hearts outs and make some new goals. And we came up with the new theme of "pull up your socks and get juiced." And someway somehow it just made me so much more pumped to be a missionary and there was a significant change in our perspective. We talked about all the past deals with God I have made in my mission- talk to every family, 100 Book of Mormon challenge, 100 Germans about gods plan, double the area book, etc. and for some reason how whenever we show our faith and work our tail off on our end, Heavenly Father always keeps his end of the deal. Always. So. Here's our new deal. We are goaling for 10 new friends to teach this week. And making members a high priority. We talked about this quote from president "finding is more of who you are than what you do." And how we really want to make missionary work a part of who we are. And already our schedule just became ten times more packed! Now just pray they don't all cancel on us. Those little stinks hehe. If they only knew that our whole lives revolved around them and their eternal happiness.

So here's the highlight: we get a message saying there is this girl, Marie, who went on an exchange in SAN ANTONIO TEXAS!! Gah. what are the chances? Talk about an instant connection. I had a little freak out sesh. You can ask Sister Litster....And she had stayed with a LDS family and went to temple square and all that jazz and really wanted to meet with us! And so we set up an appointment (and luckily our schedule was way free all of a sudden due to the fact that everyone cancelled on us hehe hidden blessings? I think yes.) and so we literally book it to the bus stop and then our train just happened to come in one minute and then we made the second bus connection and everything. Heavenly Father was just halting traffic to make this work for us. Isn't he the best? And she literally lives in the middle of nowhere.... No way missionaries would have found her if she hadn't found us. And we teach her the story of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and man... It was literally perfect. She is literally perfect. Ah. Everything is literally perfect. She has so much light about her like can you imagine when she has the spirit with her all the time? I didn't know it was possible to love someone that much. Oh man. My heart. #pray4marie

Sister Munoz and Sister Fiedler and Sister Lorredo are like the definition of fellowship. We went to visit Sister Fielder after she got out of the hospital and they were already there and so it just turned into a whole rocking party of singing Feliz Navidad as we chop veggies for the soup. Classic. Now I just have to learn how to say more than tortilla and uno in Spanish and then I'll be set right? Hehe but really. I see so much clearer how important those friendships are. True friendships. More than just a "hey see you next week" type of friendship. These people have been inactive for years and years and just get them a 1) friend 2) nourishing word of God and a 3)responsibility and they are set. Seeing it right in front of my eyes. Ah. I hope I can be like that. Someone who is a true friend to those who need a little extra reaching out to. Inspiring me.

President Stoddard challenged us all to read the entire Book of Mormon before the end of the year and I upped the challenge a bit to reading the entire Book of Mormon before the end of my mission so I have been power reading it and seriously learning so much. I think whatever part I am in I always say "oh this is my favorite part." Or "oh yeah. He is my scripture hero." But really. Every time I am just amazed with how much is packed into those little verses. I am doing it a little different this time around and marking every time it talks about Christ. So I can prove to myself that the Book of Mormon really is another testament of Jesus Christ. Holy cow. I have pages where the entire page is green purple and yellow from my colored pencils because there is just so much about him! Ah. I love that book. I am so grateful we get to strengthen our testimony of Jesus Christ everyday.

Thank you so much for all of you who shared your general conference thoughts with me. Man, I have the best friends and family in the whole world. I am the luckiest.

heaps of love.

xoxoxo

s. heywood