March 31, 2014

March 31, 2014 - "I'm fixin to break the Sabbath with some Taco Bell . . . want anything?"

Hey y'all!! 
This week has been great!

We had another mouse! Don't worry. He's gone now. Did you know that if
you're a missionary and you name an animal, it dies? If you have a
mouse, name it. If a member gets a pet and doesn't know what to name
it... don't help. Haha 

The last few weeks the Ross' haven't made it to church for various
reasons and Sis Tanner and I talk about it later and we both feel like
we should stop at their place on the way to church but we keep quiet.
Well. This week we did it! Haha. We made sure they were up and going
and they came!! They have a friend, Kayla, who is moving in with her
super adorable 14-month-old son. Kayla isn't a member and one of Sis
Ross' "requirements" for Kayla to live there is that she goes to
church with them. So we're reviewing the lessons with the Ross' and
teaching them to Kayla for the first time. Yay!! 

And of course the General Women's meeting! It crossed my mind that I
was watching the broadcast with all of the wonderful women I know all
over the world. It was tender 

Transfers have come upon us again! Fastest 6 weeks ever, am I right?!
I'm staying here in Hartwell and Sister Tanner is being booted out 
BUT! My new companion will be Sister Reese!! She served in my last
area at the same time as me! We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas
together! And the best part? I totally called it! I've never been able
to predict transfers before, but I've been thinking about Sis Reese a
ton lately. I'm really excited!  She will also be the first
companion I've had that has been out longer than 3 months!
But I'm gonna miss Sister Tanner a lot. We're basically besties. 

Well... I know this email is a short one. But I'm a short one too. 
Love y'all!  Happy General Conference! 
~Sis J.
Dinner. I finally made Lobster Biscuits!

Prettiest home EVER! We pass it every day on our way to Jane's. :) 

March 24, 2014

March 24, 2014 - " . . . Everyone in jail is doing it!"

^^ Subject line above referring to eating Ramen noodles with mustard and mayo...

Once upon a time.... I love missionary work. Every day is a missionary fairytale! :) Ooh. I like that. Next week I just might expound. Vamos a ver.

I love tracting. Seriously. There was an Elder here who once said, "If you want time with Christ, go tracting." Totally true. One of the fruits of our tracting this week was... the Hawkins family!! Yay for families!! :) We met the husband and had a really good conversation with him. We set up an appt for the next day. We met his cute wife and their son. We taught them and they were super receptive :) After we explained what church is like, the dad, "Thank you! There is nothin' y'all have said that I can argue with! This is just like Christ's church!" Yes, yes it is. If fact, it is Christ's church! Blessing! :)
I truly love this area with all my Hart! (Hartwell) (pun. haha) The church is a good 30 mins away from Hartwell, so we use Sunday as our visiting members and less actives-day. As we sat down at each home, I felt so much love. I am so grateful for the opportunity we have to be here. There is nothing more special than being able to feel of Heavenly Father's love for one of His children. He loves you perfectly even though you are not perfect. He wants your happiness. He wants your success. And most importantly, He wants you to return to Him, with honor. He sent His Only Begotten Son to suffer, so that we, His spirit children, have the option to return to him. Yeah. That's a lot of love.
I love y'all mucho! :)
~Sister "I'm never living in the city again" Jacobs :)

Photo 1: Coolest blanket EVER! :)

Photo 2: *cough* Sometimes I can't decide if we're the immature ones...
or if it's the Southern folk who named the roads.

Photo 3: Aaaah PG! Haha :) (The name of her high school)



March 17, 2014

March 17, 2014 - Ether 14:23

"And the scent thereof went forth upon the face of the [car], even upon all the face of the [sisters]; wherefore the [sisters.. and the vehicle coordinator.... and Pepboys] became troubled by day and by night, because of the scent thereof." (modified Ether 14:23)

First of all, Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! :)
Second of all, at Zone Conference I got a sweet little envelope from the ward filled with wonderful cards! Thank you!! :)
This week has been slap full of adventures! The water here in Hartwell is gross. So we take our water jugs to church in Elberton on Sunday and fill them up and we have great water that could last us a couple of weeks. Well. A couple of weeks back we accidentally left the jugs in the back of our car. They stayed there all week. On Sunday (a week ago) our car started to smell funny. We thought it was the jugs getting mildewy. Nope. Last Monday it smelled worse. It was a great motivation to deep clean our car. So we did. Washed, vacuumed, waxed, scrubbed down mats, individually cleaned each seat, Windexed all windows inside and out... It reminded me of when we deep cleaned the suburban before we sold it. And the smell... was still there. It wasn't bad, just kind of mildewey/moldy. Which is never good. Tuesday it got worse. We called Elder Elder (They're like our grandparents/home teachers out here. I love Elder &Sister Elder). He suggested that it might be the air filter molding (yay humidity...). We called our vehicle coordinator, Elder Residori, about it and he told us to get it checked out at Pepboys after Zone Conference on Thursday.

On Wednesday Elder Elder sat in our car and turned on the AC. The stink at that point became a stench. He said, "Nope. That's not mold. That smells like a dead rodent." So he looked under our hood to check it out. We found crushed acorns and rodent droppings! We took the car to a carwash and Elder Elder sprayed everything under the hood with the pressure hose. No rodent. We searched and searched. No rodent. He checked the air filter. No rodent. So he sent us on our stinky way and we kept our windows down all day. Thursday was Zone Conference! and car inspections! Haha. After our wonderful meeting (more on that later), we talked to Elder Residori about our smelly friend. He said that he kept the doors open to air out the smell for a good couple of hours... and his only other thought was to check the cabin filter. We left zone conference in our stench-mobile and zipped over to Pepboys. We warned them of the smell, and off they went. About 5 minutes later, 2 guys came back to the front desk, "Dude. We gotta get something to get rid of that smell. It's rancid." Yeah. We weren't just being sister missionaries about it :P We asked them if they found our furry friend, and they did!! It was a mouse. In our cabin filter. Which is, according to them, only accessible from the inside of the car. ...? No idea how it got there. But all that matters is that he is gone and our car no longer reeks of death :)
None of our other critter encounters are nearly as exciting as the cause of our stench mobile... but Stenchy was only one of the three this week! It's spring time in the South! That's for sure! :)

Alrighty! Our investigator K. is still on the map! I know I kinda talk about her off and on, but she's awesome :) We finally got to meet with her husband and their 7 kids. He had tons of questions. He had already watched the Restoration DVD we left with K. and he asked us all about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. They are so awesome! The Elberton branch will have another family! It'll happen! With prayers and effort, I know it can happen :) They are so prepared and receptive :) Our lesson with them was one of the shortest lessons I've ever taught, but it was so meaningful and it gave me so much hope for the rest of this area! There are people everywhere ready to hear the Gospel! :)
Zone Conference!! Elder Kopishke of the Seventy came! It was so awesome! :) Before he started, he told us to each write a question or concern that we've had on our minds. "I don't have time to answer 124 questions, but the Spirit does." He talked just about the whole time. And my questions were answered! How about that! :) I decided to do that yesterday before church, and it made the meetings a lot more meaningful :) I challenge y'all to do the same! Every Saturday night or Sunday morning before you get to church, write down a question that you have. And then let the Spirit speak to you as you sit in your various meetings. The church is true!! :)
At lunch 6 lucky sister missionaries got to sit with Elder and Sister Kopishke. One of which was... yours truly! :) They are the sweetest people! Sis Kopishke told me that she likes Utah alright, but she misses the beauty of Germany. She spent the next few minutes reminiscing about Europe. She's so cute :) Elder Kopishke asked what Dad does. Sooo I told them about ancestry.com and they were super excited about that! :) So Dad, according to Elder & Sister Kopishke, You're a pretty cool cat :)
We also did some service this week... and for the first time ever, I split and stacked wood! Woot! :) It was lots of fun. The longer I spend in this area, the more I realize that even though Lindon is small geographically, it is definitely a city. I used to think it was a small town. Hah. Not really. :)

This week has been great! This upcoming week it gonna rock! And missionary work is my favorite ever! :)  Keep doing the little things that make the big difference! :)
Love y'all! :)
~Sis Jacobs.

Stenchy!

All the wood we helped split at Harold's. 

Learning how to split wood.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!





March 10, 2014

March 10, 2014 - "The greatest thing about prayer is you gotta use a Southern Accent!"

Fun quote: "I might could if you learnt me how!"

Hey all!

Where to begin?!
Oh I know! How about the Lord stretching me and putting me in situations to help me grow? Yeah. Okay. First of all. Playing piano at district meeting. And relief society. And Primary. ... Primary?! Yeah. Primary. And singing in Sacrament meeting. *and* singing on Thursday at Zone Conference for Elder Kopishke. The General Authority. Yeah, that guy. Super stoked!! :) I just know that Heavenly Father is blessing me... because there's no way these fingers could plunk how I plunked on Sunday. (And believe me. I was plunking, haha)

Earlier on this week, we got a call from Sis R. that said that she had good news (woo hoo!), that she had invited some ladies to church... and that on Sunday morning she was gonna go over to their homes and make sure they were getting ready for church before it started. What?!? :) It was so special! (Also. FHE at their home was great. I'm so excited to do it again tonight!) We've been texting Sis R. every day reminding her to say her prayers and you would not believe the improvement we've seen in that wonderful little family. They really made church a priority on Sunday! ....until a skunk sprayed their 2 dogs and 17 cats that morning and they couldn't even open a window or door without gagging! (welcome to the South...) Sister R.'s only comment was, "I know God created all things... but when he woke up this mornin to the stink of that skunk He must've said, "I made a bad decision when I created that one!!"" Haha. I love her :) The branch President wanted to meet with them, so they came a few hours after church when they could make it out of the stench barricade, haha. :)

Oh yes. And Elder Cook!! It was so good!!! I just wish I could copy all my notes and somehow send the Spirit we felt there! :) It was so wonderful. I loved singing the opening and closing hymns with such great power of 2 missions! (The Georgia Atlanta North Mission and the Georgia Atlanta Mission.) I totally saw Sis Amanda Fee there. :)) One of the things that stuck out to me was this quote, "Thank you little black name tag for giving me license to have intimate experiences with complete strangers." At the very end, he left us a promise that what we're doing here will bless us, everyone that we do love, and everyone that we will ever love. Wow. What a blessing. I didn't know it before, but I really needed that :)

Sunday was branch conference. It was all about families and I loved it. I took lots of notes for my "future journal" :) The Stake President focused on being a little better in Relief Society. He said that he'd been thinking and something that he could do is being nicer to his cat. "Will that keep me out of the Celestial Kingdom? Well. I don't know if cats will be there anyway..." Haha.

I love y'all!! The church is true!! :)

~Sis Jacobs.

We are family! I got all my "district" and me! :) All reunited at the Elder Cook meeting :)

Why yes, we are in The South...

One of our investigators and his prized possession.

March 8, 2014

March 3, 2014 - "I have an IQ. It's 2 points higher than a moose. But I have one."

Hey all!
Sometimes I look back on the week and I can't believe it's Monday again. But then I go through the week and I feel like the events that happened were forever ago!
Fact: From May to February is 9 months.
Fact: Feb 29th, 2014 doesn't exist
Conclusion: My "hump day" is nonexistent :)

Because of the marvelous month of March... we decided to do our own month of consecration, like the whole mission did back in July. We named it, "March Madness, Month of Miracles!" Our theme song is, "We are all enlisted" (One of President's favorites) and our theme scripture is Alma 26:12 :) Because obedience brings blessings, but exact obedience brings miracles!! :)
We continue to teach people and teaching is good.

The R. Family is still progressing and all Sis Tanner and I can talk about when we leave their home is how much the Spirit has changed. We're having FHE with them tonight. :)

These upcoming weeks are really gonna rock. We have Elder Cook coming to speak to both us and the Atlanta mission this Saturday (woot!), the next week is Zone Conference, and 2 weeks after that is General Conference!! Woo hoo!! :) Talk about a spiritual high!!
I love it out here :)
~Sis J.


Guidestones. Yup. Hartwell is really exciting :P

Vanessa rocks. And within the next few years I'm totally learning Armenian.

"Sister Hagopian" :)