Sep 8 07

September 8, 2007

Six months from today we should be heading home. That means we have 26 weeks left on our mission.

This morning Robert once again waged war against the Arizona insects. He cut the weeds around the trailer in an effort to keep the grasshopper population away from us.

This afternoon we went visiting, but there was a funeral in town and so it was hard to find people at home. We did see Abbitt for a few minutes, delivered some pictures to Arnell, dropped a picture off to Shawna (We are distributing the massive duplicates we got from our computer disaster), and saw Paula Ivins. Paula is Cecil’s daughter (isn’t half the town?) and he told us she’s having problems with her kidneys and may need a transplant. She had also said she would like some counseling a while ago, but never came by. We’ve stopped at her house several times and she’s never been home, so we were pleasantly surprised today to find her there. She told us that her live-in made improper advances to her 14-year-old daughter. He has now moved out and she’s struggling with being alone but feels like she needed to protect her daughter from him. She says she’s going to come to church tomorrow and then would like to stay after for a few minutes for some counseling. Her neighbor had given her a video about an LDS woman whose daughter was abused by her husband. Paula said there were a lot of things in the video that were helpful to her. She said she has been praying for help, and then this lady gave her the video and then we stopped by. We suggested she ask her father to give her a blessing and she started to cry and said she’d thought about it but didn’t feel she was worthy. We assured her that everyone is worthy of a blessing. The times when we visit someone and they tell us they needed us to come right then are the big payoff times on a mission. They happen more frequently than we have recorded and it’s an amazing feeling when you know you have been sent to someone. I think those moments are great testimonies to God’s love and help us realize that He is truly aware of every single person and is reaching out all the time.

We had to make an emergency trip to Carrizzo today. The deli was out of ice and we were much in need of our afternoon soda.

When we got back to town we stopped by Myrna’s but she wasn’t home, so we decided to give up and go back home to spend a quiet evening relaxing. Why do we continue to make that mistake? We barely got back when President Bonito called and said he wants us to speak in church tomorrow.