Week 12

Hello family and friends! It's been another great week here in Potosi! I hope that everyone back home is having a wonderful first week of school:) 

One of my favorite parts about being a missionary is all the service that we get to do! People are able to feel your love for them as you serve them and in return you feel more love for them as well, it's the greatest! On Tuesday we were able to go pull some weeds for our investigator Ron. His whole fence was basically covered in weeds, it was crazy. But we had a good time working in the heat and he really appreciated it! Also, we helped our other investigator Julie clean out her basement because she is planning on moving in the next few months. When we left she said, "thank you guys so much, you really don't know how much I appreciate this. I just love you girls!" I always love hearing when our investigators tells us they love us because we love them SO MUCH!! 

We also met with Rose and Steve on Tuesday night. Rose told us that she wasn't quite feeling the whole "mormon thing" and didn't know how she felt about the plan of salvation last Sunday. So we went over to their house and talked about it with them and backed up everything we taught with bible verses because her husband Steve LOVES the bible. It was cool to see them understand it better and hopefully we can help them learn and understand more! They are the cutest couple though. They gave us like 50 cookies when we went over. not kidding! They told us to take them when we left so we have a bag full of cookies at the apartment. They always tell us how much they respect what we do and that we are always welcome at their home. I just love the people I get to meet out here!

This week we have dropped a few of our investigators because either they have not been progressing or we just haven't been able to meet with them because of busy schedules. So we have been looking for more people to teach which has been great. There are always people who are searching for the truth, we just have to find them! Sometimes it can be hard when we are unsuccessful after tracting for a few hours, but it's okay because the Lord blesses us for how committed we are to do his work. As long as we are obedient and faithful, he will bless us in his own time! 

So transfers are in two weeks and I am not looking forward to it because I love all the missionaries in our district so much! We have district meeting every Thursday and then all go to lunch together after, and this week we decided to do a potluck at the church and then have a talent show. Guess who's idea it was for the talent show, yes mine:) you know how much I love talent shows! Anyways we had a great time and the Elders had a funny talent and Sister Reed and I rapped for them. Missionaries can have fun too!

Friday night we met with one of our Less Actives named Tracy. She's been telling us that she's been feeling herself on the path leading her back to coming to church again so we are excited about that! We decided to read from the BOM with her and she was so funny about it. We asked where she wanted to start and she said I usually just close my eyes and flip to a page and read there, so that's what we did! It was awesome though because after we read the chapter she goes, "yep, that's exactly what I needed to hear." I love how the spirit can give us guidance no matter where we read as long as we are seeking with an honest heart! Afterwards she told us she loved doing that so much and she wants to meet every week to read from the Book of Mormon together. We were like um YES we would love to do that!! It's cool seeing people be able to regain their testimonies. There is power in the BOM!! 

On Saturday we got a new investigator! WOOO!! His name is Haden and he is 21. He had been meeting with the Elders from Fredericktown but moved into our area so we get to teach him now. He has a solid testimony and wants to get baptized so we are hopefully gonna set a date with him this week. He also came to church yesterday which we were happy about because it's been so hard to get any of our other investigators to come. 

I love this work so much and am beyond blessed to be able to be a missionary! I hope everyone back at home is doing well. Thanks for all the love and prayers.

I love you all!

XOXO

Sister Turpin 

Pulling weeds for Ron

Cool kids, district meeting!

I'm holding a tiny lizard!

Week 11 Eat the AWKO TACO

Hello Family/Friends!

I hope that everyone has been enjoying the last few weeks of summer! It's super nice not having to worry about going back to school this fall, the perks of being a missionary:)

This last week we had Zone Leadership Training down in Cape Girardeau. I always love when we get to meet together as groups of missionaries, it's the best! The sister training leaders had us reread our mission call letters together and it was so cool. The spirit that we felt in the room was so strong! I haven't read my call letter since I opened it in February, so it was a good reminder of what we are expected and trusted with as missionaries. Then the Zone leaders talked about how missionary work can be awkward. IT'S SO AWKWARD! But they taught us how we need to embrace the awkwardness and talk with everybody we see because that is our job as missionaries. One of the Elders told everybody to just, "eat the awko taco" haha so that's been our motto this week! Since then, Sister Reed and I have had SO MANY awkward situations! But it's okay because we just embrace it:) we always joke that we don't know the difference between awkward and normal anymore. 

So Wednesday we tried our best to talk to everyone we saw and we saw so many good things come from it! Sister Reed had to use the bathroom and so we stopped at a nearby gas station, while she was using it I was filling up my water bottle. Well this lady came up and started getting a soda so I started talking with her. She noticed my name tag and asked about it and I told her how I was a missionary and what we did and all that good stuff. She goes, "Oh can I just give you a hug?" It was really sweet! anyways she wanted to learn more, so after Sister Reed came out of the bathroom we went outside to talk with her and gave her a BOM and talked with her for probably a solid 30 minutes. It was really cool, she said "I usually would never give people like you the time of day, so I don't know why I feel like I need to sit and talk with you now." We exchanged info with her and hopefully will be able to meet with her this week! Good things come when we open our mouths and talk with everyone we meet!!

We haven't been able to meet with a lot of our investigators this week because people have been busy with summer ending and school starting, but we were able to have a good lesson with Ron. He is really our only investigator who is progressing right now. He set his baptismal date for November 14th because he said he wanted to be sure of everything. Well this week he said "Am I gonna be baptized into your church? yeah probably.. Am I gonna do it sooner than November? Yeah I can see myself doing it sooner too." It was cool! We are still working on solidifying his testimony more and helping him make those steps towards baptism! 

One last thing that I heard this week that I super love: Sometimes we want to know everything about the gospel at once, but that is impossible. We have to learn a little bit at a time. Just like you don't have to eat a whole pie to know if it's good, you don't have to know everything there is to know about the church to know that it is true. It all starts with one bite! 

Hope everyone has a great week and good luck with school starting! Love you all:)

XOXO 

Sister Turpin

Posterity picture! Sister Haderlie trained Sister Reed so she is my "Grandma"

Week 10 Birthday Week

Thanks for all the birthday wishes/cards/letters/packages. Birthdays on the mission are just the greatest! I can't believe I am 20 years old now, bleh!

Anyways, we had another super awesome week here in Potosi! We got a referral last week from the Sisters in Colombia, Illinois. This lady Rose cuts hair at the great clips there, but lives in Bonne Terre so one of the sister missionaries was getting her hair cut and they got talking about the gospel and next thing you know Sister Reed and I are knocking on her door and teaching her about the gospel! Referrals are the best because they are usually people who are super interested and searching for answers. So we were able to meet with Rose and her husband Steve (they are probably in their 50s) and teach them twice this week! They are so nice and funny. They want to feed us dinner this week when we meet with them which is way nice! We are meeting with them again tomorrow and getting fed, which we always love:) haha but she has lots of good questions and is confused about which way to go regarding religion. so we are hoping we can answer her questions and help her find the truth!

Okay so do you remember the sweet lady Denney who gave us a ride last week when we were carless and walking to Bonne Terre? Well we decided to do something nice for her and leave thank you notes on her front door. Right when we were about to get out of our car she pulled into her driveway! She got out and was so excited to see us and goes "oh I've been looking for you girls and praying that I would get to see you again!" it was the sweetest thing ever! we told her we just wanted to leave a little thank you note and she invited us in to chat for a little bit. she is pretty set in her Baptist ways but she is still so sweet. she called us her "sisters in Christ" we liked that:) also she found out it was my birthday that Friday so she offered to take us to lunch. she told us we can call her day or night if we ever need anything and wanted us to make sure we told our family that she was keeping an eye out for us! she's the sweetest!

We also had an awesome lesson with our investigator Julie K. She was taught previously by missionaries but then got really busy and stopped meeting with them. so we've been meeting with her recently and we talked about the lessons she had in the past and what she remember. she told us she didn't remember much but she did remember one time the missionaries had her pray to know if this was the true church and she said she did and she got the best feeling ever and can't explain it really but that she's never felt anything like that before. we were like YES THAT IS THE SPIRIT!! it's so hard to recognize the spirit in our lives sometimes. We have been working on helping the people we teach to recognize when they feel the spirit and what that means. The spirit is key!!

Saturday was our mission wide "finding day." As a mission we made it a goal to find as many new investigators as possible. Sister Reed had remember this kid Kenny who told us he lived at apt. 19. So we go and knock and ask for Kenny and the girl says, sorry Kenny doesn't live here. Turns out Kenny lied!! But that didn't stop us. We asked the girl if she wanted to hear about our message and learn more and she let us right in. It was super cool we just taught her about the restoration and she was just taking it all in! She's a little bit younger so we don't know how interested she really is but she told us we could come back so we were excited to be able to find a new gator on finding day! WOO!

I hope that everyone back at home is doing well! Remember that worldly things can only bring us temporary joy but spiritual things can bring us eternal joy.

Thanks again for all the birthday wishes. you are all the best!!

XOXO

Sister Turpin

Birthday cake with Sister Reed, finally 20!

Birthday dinner with Audre and Sister Reed.

Birthday package from the Chambers Family, Thank you!

All my presents from my family! I had the best day, thanks!

Week 9 We Crashed The Car!

We had quite the eventful week this week!! Tuesday started out super great. We were able to have Audre come out with us for the day which we always love. Lessons seem to go better when we have members there too! We taught 4 lessons that day and were able to pick up 2 new investigators to teach that we are super excited about!! Anyways that night we were driving down the road and there were these people on their porch swing swinging SO HIGH! Like it looked like they were gonna fly off the porch! well so we all got a little distracted and looked at them and Sister Reed happened to be turning while it happened and turned a little too much and BAM! She ran into a parked truck. So it was kind of a bummer and we felt super bad about the whole thing but we figured it all out and nobody was injured at all so we felt really blessed! 

So Wednesday we started our adventure of having no car. I have so much respect for missionaries who don't have a car their whole mission and walk everywhere. I could not do it!!! We decided we were gonna make the most of our situation and we were gonna walk to Bonne Terre which is about 3 miles away from where we live, not too far right? Well we got about half way and we were DYING! but it was nice because there was a breeze pretty much all day so we know that God was looking out for us:) Anyways we were almost half way there when this super nice lady Denney pulled her car over and asked if she could give us a ride. We gladly accepted and were so thankful to her, she was definitely an answer to our prayers! We were able to get rides from members for the rest of the day which was nice because we were so worn out from walking that morning!

Thursday we had district meeting and thank goodness for the kind thoughtful elders in our district. We asked them if we could use their bikes because we don't have any, well they gave us their car instead and they have been on bikes for the past few days. Bless their hearts!! Also they felt bad for us and baked us a cake to celebrate birthday week! (sis. reed and I both have birthdays this week!) We were super grateful to them and are glad that we have figured everything out and been blessed through the whole situation. 

The week ended good though with Sister Reed's birthday on Sunday. We decorated our apartment with balloons and streamers to celebrate so that was fun! Sadly none of our investigators came to church. It's so hard to get people to church sometimes!! This week we have really been focusing on the Book of Mormon and how we can use it more in our teaching. The BOM is so awesome and we can really learn so much from it. We have had lots of blessings and miracles this last week and are excited to have another great week! hopefully we will have no more car crashes;) woops!

XOXO

Sister Turpin

The wreck!

The Elders baked us a cake, how sweet!

District lunch!