1/19/16 An Eternity and a Half, and the Blink of an Eye

 I've said it before, and I'll say it again: time stopped behaving

itself when you put on a badge. This week, these past weeks, have
taken an eternity and a half, and have gone by in the blink of an eye.
We had zone conference on Wednesday, which is always fun. We only have
one every three months. Sister Tanner and I had to give a 45 minute
training on everyone's favorite subjects: goals, planning and
accountability. Yup, just like you might suspect, heads shot up with
excitement as we began. Sister Martinez fell out of her chair, she
could hardly contain herself. I think Elder Cannon had to be taken to
see the nurse, because he passed out he was so thrilled. Yay. Longest
45 minutes ever. Well, it did help to have President Bennion jumping
in and taking over for the last 15 minutes. He gets pretty excited
about accountability. He started this new accountability email he
wants everyone to email him, the zone leaders, district leaders and
sister training leaders every week, so he wanted to explain that and
answer questions. But the food was good. The Spanish branch made us
all a baked potato bar and a billion desserts to choose from :)

We also had a multi-stake broadcast from Salt Lake on Sunday to all
the southern states. We got a ride from Sister Joseph, our
investigator (she will be baptized one day and become the best RS
president ever), and got to hear from Elder Hales, Elder Rasband, one
of the 70, and one of the RS councilors. It was pretty good. Lots
about temples, families, children, and charity. Keeping your eye fixed
on the compass. How to keep your family and children strong in he
gospel. Sister Joseph really liked it. The stake president came up to
her afterwards and talked to her for a bit about what she thought,
what she was learning from us, and about the Book of Mormon. Before he
left, he made her promise to invite him to her baptism. She is so
special. She is going to be the strongest, coolest, most awesome
loving member in the history of ever when she decides to be baptized.
I think he could feel that :) I just need to be patient :/

We have had a couple cool miracles this week. We got in again with a
less active we found a while back. She is super cool. She is now
strong in the Methodist faith, and she let us know that, but she said
she wanted to take the discussions again to see how she feels about
them, to refresh her memory and to see if things have changed. We'll
take it. She told us her entire life story (she loves us🙂) and it
boggled my mind. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love to hear how
couples met and how they feel in love and how he proposed and
everything, but every 16 is kinda young to get married. Especially
when he is 24. I just picture my dear sweet little sisters, and my
brain rebels. It's don't date until you are 16, not don't get married
until you are 16! Sydney, don't even think about it. Anyway, they are
still happily married 50 years later, but still.

We've been getting a ton of requests for Bibles from mormon.org
lately. We stopped by this one lady we had called and set up an
appointment with, but she wasn't home. So we go to knock a few door
around her and meet Al-Dajsha. When we told her we were looking for
her neighbor to give her a free Bible she had requested, Dajsha said, "A
King James Version? Do you have an extra?" She had been praying for
one because she couldn't afford one and here we were! We were able to
share the restoration with her and give her a Book of Mormon as well
and she was so excited about us coming back to teach her more. I love
how God leads us to the right people!

Like, we were just checking out at the store today, and the register
lady comes over to us and asks if we have any small books for
children. Seeing our blank looks, she said it was so she could help
her grandchildren learn to thank God for everything. We gave her a
mormon.org card and told her to check out the website and videos on
it. Cool.

We found some cool service this week as well! We'd been doing little
things like helping out at the Salvation Army food pantry and picking
up trash from the side of the streets (Georgia is gross) but didn't
really have anything weekly. We found a extended care center (thank
you google maps) and were able to start helping out there weekly. So
cute! Everyone in there seems to be at least 90 and everyone is in a
wheelchair. We painted nails, helped them exercise (hahahahah!!!!),
and then just sat and talked to them. Not everything made sense, but
they were so cute and excited and fun to chat with. Best 2 hours ever.
One lady told Sister Tanner she liked her skirt 5 times in 10 minutes.
It was great :)

This week is the world-wide missionary broadcast with Elder Anderson,
Elder Bednar, and Elder Oaks. I'm so excited!

Love ya'll!
Sister Garver