Stress, Success, and Tornado Warnings

Hello Everyone,

This past week was stressful....I mean WAY-more-than-the-average kinda stressful. I was in 3 musical numbers, we were opening Blinn Campus for an LDSSA, plus missionary work and service and practicing. It all got done. It was just really hard and exhausting and stressful. But missionary work is hard and hard work makes things worth it.

Monday we were finishing up the poster for Blinn. This thing is huge just so you know. it's probably like 3x8ft. I'll send a picture of it soon. We will be pulling it out a few more times before semester ends. So the Elders were kinda helping and I was working on the musical number Elder Fa'a and I and a few others would be doing on Thursday for Zone conference. It was a merge of "Lead, Kindly Light" and "I Need Thee Every Hour".

Tuesday was THE big day. The Tradition's YSA Elders and Sisters came down to help us, the Brenham Elders and Sisters, with the campus and talking to people. We got 71 names, numbers and emails of people who are interested in coming closer to Christ. This pretty much blew everyone's mind. President was truly inspired when he gave us this daunting task. People are ready here in Brenham. We were just looking in ALL the wrong places. I've seriously been dreaming about this since the time I got here to Brenham...and now I'm living it. It's awesome to be living your dreams. That afternoon we went and helped Sister Jackson out and got to know her better. Dinner was with the WONDERFUL Jensen's. Sis Jensen and I practiced our musical number that I was performing for Sunday night at the Mission Presidents Fireside. That evening we went to the Relief Society activity because Trisha was the speaker at it!! YAY! she did so great.

Wednesday morning before "Big-Day #2" we went over to Alma's and reviewed the 10 commandments with her. She's awesome. Then we went to Blinn to set up and to get more names and numbers for the club. We and the Elders got about 30 making a grand total of 100 names. It's awesome!! After lunch we went to Kruze Village and helped out there. We made our way to the Beard's (after a few other stops) for dinner. We were able to practice another one of my songs that I was singing in church on Sunday. 

Thursday we were up and at 'em early for Zone conference in Cypress. We reviewed the Plan of Salvation in great detail. I got to see some of my Parkway Ward members because they fed us lunch!! :)  Our musical number with Elder Fa'a and Su'a and Sis Powell Nuttall and I went fabulously. That night we had dinner with the Jarnagins!! Brock Jarnagin had just gotten back from his mission the night before. It was one of those bitter sweet moments to just see his nametag on the counter...just sitting there. It was also great to hear of some of his stories from Los Angeles CA. What's sad is to think that they are moving to Mississippi in less than a month!! Sports night that night consisted of us and the Elders, Bro Tolman, Brock, Tanner and Jordache. We all had a fun time. We played basketball.

 Zone Conference

Us on our year mark (in Houston) at Zone Conference!

MTC Buddies

Me, Sister Hassell, and Sister Fulmer 

Friday we had district meeting. service. finding. practicing at the Jensen's one last time. and weekly planning. Everything has been pretty topsy-turvy lately. BUT it's okay.

Saturday there were tornado warnings for the area...no big deal. We started out by helping to clear a cemetery for the BSA 100K hours of service. It was a mess and a little overwhelming at first, but as a branch, we were able to clear out a portion of it to make a night and day difference.

I'm the one in the bright orange and pink-camo hat :)

Back: Bro Knox, The Stouts, Sis Pugh, Elder Knight, Bro Llewellyn, Elder Fa'a, Bro Beggs Jr, Sis Bekah Plumb, Bro Ermis, Bro Tolman, Bro Millsap, Sis Millsap, Me, Ben Carlile

Front: Bro Beggs Sr Emma Llewellyn, _ Millsap, Michel, Beggs, Ellise Millsap, Grant Millsap, Hohlt Ermis, Charles Llewellyn, Sam Beggs, Dallas Millsap.

Sister Pugh and Me

We were able to find a few graves that were lost because of the thick overgrowth. (You couldn't see past where we stood. It was covered with overgrowth and foliage and all sorts of madness, mice, frogs, and poison plans.) THANKFULLY, none of us got poison oak or poison ivy. Halleluiah!! That afternoon we went out to Sis Carlile's for a last practice for the musical number in church. Then we drove to the Beggs...in the couple hours we were there helping out and having dinner, it rained like 6-8 inches. It was CRAZY!!

Sunday we had our regular church meetings and church where I gave my 2 musical number. Amanda came with us for the rest of the day and we went tracting with her (HER FIRST EXPERIENCE EVER!!! and we didn't even know until AFTER). WE FOUND A NEW INVESTIGATOR!! We also asked this lady if she was interested in learning more about her family history and her reaction to us was "Actually, I don't really care about my family history...they're all dead!!" We all had a chuckle about that. Then we headed up to college station for the Mission President's Fireside. I wish ya'll could have been there. It was amazing. Jordache spoke and gave an AWESOME testimony of his conversion. I gave my final musical number. The spirit was REALLY there last night. It was awesome to be apart of it!

Mission Presidents Fireside
Elder Visser, Elder Cloward, Elder Brittan, Elder Weaver, Elder Nevile
Sister Carling, Sister Pugh, Sister Andreasen

Finally, here is my gift you you: #sharethegift. Look for more opportunities to share it this Christmas season. This is like the #becauseofhim campaign, but believe me...this will be even bigger.

Keep on keeping on!!

--Sister Carling