Monday, March 14, 2016

Sister Lawson's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. (I promise, this ends good though)


Yep, you read that title right!

I'm "done" with this week in every sense of the word.

1. WE GOT A NEW CAR!!!!!!! :) (**I would like to inform you all that I've had more cars than companions my whole mission). He's a beautiful, brand new, fresh-off-the-lot 2016 Ford Fusion... and he's bright blue. This is not a joke. Sister Howell and I have decided to name him Dayeqkwon (Day-Kwon) (it's an Atlantified name). As awesome as this might sound, it's not because brand new cars have lots of problems we found out this week, and this was the major cause of our stress and sadness. Most of our week was spent at the dealership dealing with "high tech electronic hydraulics systems and computer issues" and I don’t even know what most of those words mean. In other words--this week was bad because our car was majorly broken and un-driveable, and our appointments were way too far for us to even think about walking to them. (Sister Howell included more details on this in her email because I’m mad and don’t want to think about Dayeqkwon anymore)

2. Erika is probably heading to court right now and probably going back home, which is happy but also so sad...we were really close with her. Last night, we went to say goodbye and that was really tough--harder than I thought it would be! She comes from a really rough home life and has had some super traumatic things happen to her already, and she's only 11! As soon as Sister Howell and I got into the car, we just bawled and bawled the whole way home... it reminded me of a lot of the girls I had at Oakcrest--rough home lives, but never being able to find out what happens to them, if they'll be okay, or who they grow up to be. That was really hard.

3. SEVERAL other really bad and stressful things happened one after another that I don’t want to talk about.

4. To top it all off, the world forgot to tell the missionaries that DAYLIGHT SAVINGS WAS YESTERDAY. My question is: How are missionaries supposed to know about these things? Just use your imagination for what happened there.

Over all, nothing went right all week long.

BUT! I want to tell you all about the coolest drop of awesome (Being a missionary really makes you hate the word "miracle", therefore I call them "Drops of Awesome" instead.) of all time that happened this week. DO NOT SKIP OVER THIS PART. IT'S IMPORTANT. Seriously, you'd think you were reading an Ensign article or something:

For those who don't know how missionary planning works, every night we plan out our next day and pray about it. So Tuesday night, we planned out Wednesday, had tons of appointments set up and were excited for an awesome day. I prayed at the end and said "Heavenly Father, if there is anything we need to change about our schedule tomorrow, please do that for us" (I NEVER SAY THIS IN PLANNING PRAYERS, but something told me to this time).

So Wednesday morning, we are getting ready for the day and start getting text after text of people canceling on us and I was like "Oh great, here it goes. What did I pray for last night?" we had absolutely nothing left to do for the day. Our schedule was completely blank--this is bad news when you're a missionary, you should always be busy.

So we proceeded to try to find things to do for the day, and we were feeling really sad and sick and burnt out, so we decided to go take a breather and get some ice cream. While we were sitting there eating, I noticed this neighborhood that I have NEVER seen before. (SIDE NOTE: I have worked in this area for 6 months—I have been in every neighborhood, down every street, seen every house. Seriously, for me to see somewhere I’ve never been is a big deal). At that moment, I heard God tell me with a clear voice: "Go into that neighborhood".

We finished up our ice cream and walked over, knocked every door, had no success, and I thought, "okay Heavenly Father, what am I missing?" and we started to walk away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this little white truck with some guys sitting there eating their lunch. At that moment, my legs were completely magnetized to this car--something literally dragged me to it because I don’t remember a single thing about how I got over there. We started talking, and I randomly started asking these guys how they were really doing because I felt like something about their day was really sucky. They initially said they were fine and we got talking and joking around and stuff, and all of a sudden, this guy Willie gets out of the car and starts SOBBING. He had tears streaming down his face and he said to us, "you guys gotta help me. I am struggling so much, my life is a mess and I need your help. I know you were angels sent to me today" WHAAAATTT???? So so so crazy. Every single thing that happened that day led us to come and talk to this man and help him out. IT WAS AWESOME. It sounds fake, but this honestly happened.

Okay I have so many other spiritual thoughts and things I want to share with you about what I learned this week because I really did grow so much (even though I'm trying to be very light hearted about how hard this week was for me emotionally and spiritually) but I'm out of time! So I guess you'll just never know....

I'd like to leave you with this quick parable our District Leader told us in an attempt to make us feel better on our crappy day (it didn’t really work, but it's funny nonetheless):

The Parable of the Chopped Daisies by Elder Roper:
"Imagine for a second that you are surrounded by a field of beautiful daisies. It smells pretty, the sun is warm and shining, and you are happy. One day you wake up, and go to run through that same field of happy daisies, and discover that all of those daisies have been CHOPPED DOWN! You think "Oh no! What do I do?" Then the spirit tells you "Be happy and chill. THOSE FLOWERS WILL GROW BACK!" "

Moral of the story/interpretation: GOD GIVES US HARD DAYS AND WEEKS SOMETIMES. But we must always remember that it will always get better. ALWAYS.

I LOVE YOU ALL!
Stay sassy, Sister Lawson

1. CENTERVILLE DISTRICT (I'm officially the grandma of my original district...no one is left)
2. New WHIP: Dayeqkwon AKA Satan
3. Sister Howell taking a breather on a rough day
4 & 5. All Erika wanted to do was take selfies on our last night together so there ya go
6. Us and Erika! And me holding a baby as much as I'm allowed to
7. CUTE baby Bryan :)




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