Acclimatization

This week, we honed our skills at our best contacting approach...

"Hi, how are you! I'm Sister Cooper! We see that you, like us have lost your mind and are out wandering the streets in the damp cold muggy swamp weather. Do you want to talk about Jesus? Maybe family history..?"

Yeahhh... Or something like that.

I had the wonderful opportunity these week to get more acquainted with Navarre. I said last week in my letters home that I had fulfilled my two secret mission wishes. First, I wanted to be a campus sister, which I did for one day in Niceville, at our family history booth on NWFSC. Second, I wanted to train a new missionary, which I did for a week with Sister Seegrist. I failed to mention one other secret wish, that I've had ever since the day I received the Florida Tallahassee Mission map in the mail at BYU. I saw that there were some islands included in the mission and I was like... I want to go there!

Little did I know that those islands are not areas that missionaries are assigned to. Missionaries are assigned to wards and branches, not islands. But lo and behold, I got a chance to proselyte on an island this week because there is one in the Navarre area. It's where we went for beach day a while back, but there's also some neighborhoods there, and one less active we can go see. So there was another dream fulfilled!

I am getting used to all the normal, but foreign parts of being in a ward. My stomach is expanding again, and is not longer satisfied to eat dry cereal for dinner. (yep, I'm admitting what I did sometimes in Brewton). We have lots of member support, young families who have the energy to be involved, and lots and lots of streets to contact on. We met a cool new investigator by contacting this week. We will see where that goes. She is a middle-aged lady taking care of her adult son who has a brain injury. She is looking for God to be more a part of her life, in fact, she was praying when we walked up to her. 

Our district leader has challenged us to try to talk to people even in the most awkward situations this week. I think we can do it! I'll find some scriptural promises we can hope for in doing this.

"If ye shall interrupt someone riding a riding lawn mower, ye shall have eternal life"

Shoot, I can't find the reference for that. 

I've been feeling really inspired by the song, "If the Savior Stood Beside Me" lately. It's hard to remember he's walking with us everywhere we go, but it's true! And how much better would we be if we could see it. So I'm going to keep that in mind while we prowl the streets and teach the lessons this week.

Have a sweet one, followers!

-Sister Laura Cooper 

Neah Var Ray!

I don't know about you, but when I look at the word Navarre, I can't help but think it should be pronounced Neah (rhyming with the baby sound... that's the best way I can describe it). Var. Ray.

But it's not. It's Nah Var.

This has troubled me my whole mission.

What a precursor.

But indeed here I am in Navarre, FL. I have heard much about this place through my companion, Sister Smith, who served here, and because the zone leaders and a lot of the P-Cola Stake Leadership is here. It's a lovely town by the beach, much much much different than what I'm used to. I tell y'all, I am country folk now. I don't like the traffic, or the baby noises in church. Just having a church building was enough to get used to for me!

But even country folk can't resist the beautiful Navarre Beach! As a plus, the missionary work here is going really well. We are working with many people, especially part member families. (Part Members to work with are something that I really missed). We are helping an awesome lady quit drinking so she can get baptized in January. Sister Seegrist is a great companion, and is very bold and not shy for a newer missionary. :) We are just working on teaching together, and she wants help in using the scriptures, which I just love to dig up scriptures for everything, so that makes a good match.

The ward here is very supportive. I think I'm gonna like it here! (Annie reference, anyone?) Sorry this is short. Darn these stingy libraries and their timed computers. I'm going to have to start working on my blog the night before! I love y'all! Stay well and stay spiritual!

-Sister Laura Cooper

Collards and Primary Songs

Well, happy followers, my long ride in Brewton, Alabama is coming to an end this week. Due to the change to secret transfers, I have no idea where I am going or who I will be companions with, but I will know by Wednesday! It's going to obviously be a bittersweet ending, and a big adventure (all the clichés you can think of).

Sister Lloyd is going home in a few days and I'm moving out of the area, so two new sisters are coming here. That will be quite the challenge, considering the uniqueness of this area, but I'm sure it's inspired. I don't know if they will believe us at transfer spots if we get the chance to tell them that we meet in the Civic Center for church and are a group.

Halloween week led to some special proselyting... going tracting in dress down shirts. We handed out cards with candy and guess what... no one rejected them hehe. Brewton folks are smart. We met a lady that wanted to visit our church and find out what we have for the children. We were kind of like... we have everything but a source of children! But she is interested in checking it out and bringing like 4 kids so hooray if that happens. Something for the new sisters to follow up with.

We helped at the Library with the Halloween Fair, with me on the face paint again. Lots of strange paint requests for Halloween and many many requests for sparkles, even by boys. I think my favorite was the child who asked for a red dog with pink spots and sparkles. Kids and their creativity!

Yesterday was really good, even though it was really cold and I was plagued with a headache all day. Britney and Vicki both bore their testimonies, and they invited us over for dinner so they could say good bye to sister Lloyd. The Dad, James, cooked up a big southern meal of fried chicken, collards, cornbread, and a little peppered rice. Minus the rice, that is the exact same meal I had when I entered the mission field. It's like the go to meal here.

After dinner we practiced Britney's lines and songs for the Primary Program. It was a little cliché, but I have to admit there was a special spirit getting to sing the primary songs by the fire with this family, some of my favorite people I met on my mission. I sure will miss them.

Even though we weren't supposed to find out about transfers until this morning, the zone leaders called last night at like 10 and told us. I like these zone leaders. They get the info out. So I was not expecting to just be meandering around the apartment and all of the sudden have Sister Lloyd be like on the phone with the zls and telling me I'm leaving. Saved me the drama of the waiting through studies though haha!

I'll let you know next week where I'm at. Until then, peace and blessings to you!

-Sister Laura Cooper

20 Kids and a Bounce House

Back in DeFuniak Springs, I thought that there isn't really a population of children in backwoodsy towns. I recently realized that I was mistaken. It most certainly depends on the woods you live in. Here, everyone who's anyone has a little child in their arms or holding their hands or roaming the building. Granted, the family trees here can be a little more curled up a branch in all directions than the trees in some other places, but as for little ones, they are not in short supply.

That was made evident at the Fall Festival (not trunk or treat! Not enough people? Too many trucks instead of cars? I don't know why). Lots of people from Brewton and Jay made it there, including the part member family we are teaching-- the Morelys. They have a daughter and a baby boy, and the daughter went nuts over the little 2 person bounce house that someone decided to blow up.

The bounce house was only about 3 feet high and could fit one young child comfortably and 2 young children if they wanted to hold hands and bounce, but guess what... the kids all ate sugar and before we knew it there were 5 children the bounce house, ranging from toddlers to 10 year olds. They had the thing like sunk to the ground, but somehow still managed to make the poor little thing the highlight of the evening. Investigator kids, less-active family kids, recent convert kid (Britney!), and the regular member kids in the branch got to know each other in the brawl of the bounce house. I thought it was a fun and cliché but wonderful missionary moment demonstrated by the little ones.

As far as traditional missionary work this week (haha) we've started teaching the Plan of Salvation to Billy and he loves it. I used to think that people would just naturally have the questions that the Plan of Salvation answers, but it seems like most of the time, people don't really think about it until missionaries or someone else brings it up. The Bowlers brought a video to Billy's lesson that they wanted to watch with him. It went through a few different questions that the Plan of Salvation can answer. It started great discussion of what he hadn't been taught about in his Baptist upbringing, and what he did learn about, but didn't have the why of it. We are excited to teach the rest of it to him. He's expressed interest in the after death part, and how we believe in another chance for the dead. Should be some great discussion ahead.

In other news, our apartment is currently being inspected for leaks because of a mushroom that popped up out of our shower wall. True story. We might have to live with the Jay Sisters, which is not a very fun sleepover when we still need to work in Brewton. Hopefully it's for a day or less. Don't worry, I can still get mail in Brewton. Write away. ;)

Love ya peeps!

-Sister Laura Cooper

Festival Season

F is for Fall and Festivals and Finding down here! This week took us all over the place sort of unexpectedly as we travelled to interviews with President, around town trying to get our Halloween/Snake themed Family History Booth together, and down to Munson to do finding. We cleaned a very cluttered house and conquered the Froot Loop mountain therein.

The highlight of the week was definitely when we finally got to do our booth down in this little corner of the Jay Sisters' area... Munson. There isn't anything there really, except a campground. That's where we reported to do our finding. It reminded me of my middle childhood days, camping in Chester, CA. We dressed down and worked in the dirt, meeting people from all over the Panhandle and Alabama. Since our booth was Halloween themed, our sign said, "Are there any snakes in your family?" and we had a skeleton, and a skull that laughs and chatters it's teeth when you talk to it. All of that really caught everyone's attention. A lot of children ran over because they thought we would have real snakes. It's a good idea for our next booth.

While there we saw the best "_____ Life" sticker known to man. Better than all the others we have seen, which now includes Salt Life, Mud Life, Bama Life, Country Life, and Christ Life. On Saturday we saw one that said ETERNAL LIFE. It was the best thing ever. Every missionary had to sneak a picture with it while hoping the owners of the vehicle did not come around.

I love getting to talk to a bunch of people I've never seen before and for most part will never see again! Not only are we going to meet the whole town of Brewton, but the whole population of the Pensacola stake. :)

Peace until next week. Read your conference talks! :O

-Sister Laura Cooper

Spiritual Confidence

I will theme this post around my favorite talk from Conference-- Elder Klebingat's talk, more than likely soon to be titled "Spiritual Confidence". I loved that talk, and it was a unique answer to a question that I had. You know those questions that everyone brings to conference, looking for a sermon just for them? This was the answer to mine. I wish the talks were already printed on lds.org, but alas they are not.

What I liked about this talk is the reflection about how we would feel if we had a personal interview with the Savior. I think I would be excited, and nervous, hoping that He wouldn't bring up my weaknesses, or how I have not always answered promptings, or how I have unrighteous desires to be on Pinterest right now, even though I am on the mission. The talk addressed what we can do to have spiritual confidence in ourselves, and know that we are doing our best. They are the basics-- prayer, scriptures, repentance, forgiveness, ect. If we faithfully do these things, we cannot believe the voice of the adversary in our heads saying we are not good, we are not accepted of the Lord, the reason we are going through trials or are not successful is because we are bad. If we do the basics of the Gospel consistently, we can know the Lord is pleased.

Much of the conference was about the prophet, am I right? I was noticing that the whole time. Also, Elder Callister's talk about parenting stood out to me-- yikes! I must be growing old!

The best part of Conference Weekend was that Billy, who has not been to an LDS church service since he was referred to the missionaries five years ago, came all the way to Jay to watch Conference! And he loved it. We have a few talks from the other sessions we want to watch with him too because one of his concerns is about prophets. Hopefully just coming and watching Conference, regardless or the topics of the talks, will help him resolve that. We are so excited for him. He makes both of us glad we are still here.

Interviews with President are tomorrow. Hope I have spiritual confidence haha!

-Sister Laura Cooper

Heaven's Eyes

You know what is crazy? The fact that God is watching over Brewton. It must difficult with all of them trees in the way, but somehow he does it. I have two evidences for the week that such is happening.

First, we had this most wonderful and strange day on Friday. We live right by the high school... and it's Homecoming. We held Weekly Planning because our street was blocked off for the homecoming parade and it would have been hard to get around. So in the middle of our planning session we went downstairs to watch the parade go by. Our house was aparently ahead of where spectators were allowed to stand, so we were the first people on the parade route, and we got SO MUCH CANDY. :D

You may be thinking that was the tender mercy I am referring to, but wait, it gets better. After the parade, we finished our planning session and got ready to go to a lesson with Billy. The parade had been over for like an hour, so you would think we would be able to get out of our neighborhood in a reasonable amount of time. Ha. Not so. Our usual 20 minute journey to Billy's place turned into an hour journey because of the backup running through not just our neighborhood, but all of Brewton.

Finally, we arrived and knocked on the door. He was down for having a lesson, but said the Bowlers (senior couple) were coming to visit him in just a few minutes. We sat down with him, and started to watch Lord, I Believe, in hopes it would help him work out some doubts he has, while emphasizing how we learn from the prophet and apostles. In the middle of the talk, the Bowlers showed up and joined our lesson.

When the talk was over, Sister Lloyd asked Billy what stood out to him, and he said that when we came over, he had just finished reading the story of the demon-possessed boy out of Jesus the Christ. (Yes, he is reading JtC). He said that when Elder Holland started telling that story, he knew he really needed to pay attention. He emphasized that it had not been like an hour or two since he read that, but "no more than five minutes". And then he told us that it helped him realize he needs to investigate more seriously, and that he feels God is leading him to do something about what we are saying.

Sister Lloyd and I are so excited for him, and the Bowlers are just tickled that they got to be there to see that. We were all timed just right by an inspired parade traffic jam! That is the real tender mercy I am talking about.

Second, we learned this morning that God must have some very important plan for us and Brewton... because we found out we are staying together for our 5th transfer. At first I was upset a bit, because I've been here so long, but there must be a super good reason. Can't question, just got to figure out what it is.

Now, why call this "Heaven's Eyes" of all things? Because how do we deal with having to wonder why the Lord does what he does? We listen to a song Sister Lloyd just recently introduced me to, from The Prince of Egypt, called by the same title of this blog.

Lai lai lai lai lai lai lai! It fixes everything. Listen to it.

-Sister Laura Cooper