Sept 25, 2012

Hello family!! :) It's Monday once again and I'm sitting here
thinking, "Where in the world has this last week gone?? It's flown
by!!!" :) Oh, so funny story of the week, I finally gave S Tingey her
present that you guys sent her! IT WAS HILARIOUS!!! I had to do some
quick little adjustments on the bag so it would pull out a little
smoother, but then I told her that I wanted to record her opening it
on my camera, but that she would have to hurry because my battery was
almost dead. She was like, "open it really fast. .. okay!" Then she
yanked that little box right out of the happy birthday bag and
skittles EXPLODED EVERYWHERE!!!! Ha ha! I think she jumped like 3 feet
and then about peed her skirt!! Ha ha! I thought that E Tingey just
about had a heart attack and we had to help brother Elms up off of the
floor after he stopped laughing! Lol!! It was so great!! So , just so
you know it worked out perfectly!!! They were so excited they are
going to use it for their family party for Thanksgiving! :) I video
taped it and I'll see if I can copy it and send it to you soon! It was
hilarious!

So, like I said, this week has been pretty crazy! :) Monday we went to
the Ford Museum with the Tingey's. We giggled and took a bunch of
pictures and just had a great time! Then Tuesday was our Sister's Day
in Detroit. We met at the mission home with ALL of the sisters and
President and Sister Holmes, had breakfast, then went on a tour of the
city! It was fun to see all the sights and take a bunch of pictures
but honestly I think my favorite part was just being there with
everybody! I super super love these people so much!!! They are the
greatest!!!! :) All day it didn't matter what car you were in, who you
were sitting by or what you were talking about, we were all just best
friends and talked and laughed! Oh man! It was the BEST!!!! After
touring the city a little we went back to the mission home and had an
instruction about being BOLD and loving. Ha ha, I think that it was
perfect for a room full of Sisters. It was awesome though. We had time
for a Q and A session and lunch and then our day was over! I'll have
to send some pictures! It was beautiful and so so much fun! :) After
Sisters day, we all went on exchanges. I have such a powerful
testimony of exchanges!! I went to Fenton with S Farnsworth (Who was
the Sister I worked with last time too, but it was still such a great
learning experience!) and S Decker stayed on Hill St with S Godfrey.
It was kind of hard, I knew S Decker was a little nervous, and S
Godfrey was plain scared out of her mind, but they did it! THEY BOTH
DID IT and that was exactly what they both needed to know! :) In
Fenton S Farnsworth and I set some goals to do some tracting and find
them more investigators because that's one thing they were struggling
with and our other goal was to just have fun! I think that so many
times we get caught up in the "Work" aspect of missionary work that we
forget we are supposed to find joy in His work. It's easy sometimes to
be intimidated or get caught in a routine, but one thing I learned
that day was as you make it something enjoyable and fun AS you work
everything goes so much better! :) We had picked out a street to go
and tract and when we got there it was clear out in the boonies and
was mostly country! S Farnsworth can't walk a lot and I was a little
nervous. But we prayed and felt like that was where we needed to be,
so we slapped a smile on our faces and got out there! The first door
was amazing! The lady told us, "Sure you can share a message about
God, this is a God fearing house!" She was very kind and even though
she wasn't interested in learning more it was a good start! With that
attitude and faith and hope that the rest of the road would be the
same we carried on. The whole time as we were hiking up and down these
LONG drive ways we giggled and talked, we cracked jokes and really
just enjoyed our time! The weather was beautiful, the people were
super nice and we were doing what we needed to be doing where the lord
wanted us! It was one of the BEST feelings! We found a potential
investigator and even though we didn't see a huge miracle with
touching someones life, it was a huge miracle for both of us. I felt
like that experience was exactly what Heavenly Father needed for S
Farnsworth and S Bishop to learn. Meanwhile, our companions were
working hard and seeing lots of miracles too! :) When we met back up
that night, we were all glad to be headed back to our own areas with
our own companions, but had all learned some valuable lessons. :) I
LOVE exchanges!! :)

So then on Thursday we were getting all packed up and ready to go when
E and S Belnap called us. They brought us NEW MATTRESSES and new
pillows and a new broom and mop!! It was like Christmas morning!!! We
were so excited! But of course we were running late, so we just kind
of piled it all in the living room to sort out when we got home that
night. In the mean time, our appointment rescheduled for later in the
day and as we were driving to campus I had this distinct impression
that we needed to go through our area book and find some of our former
investigators. We turned around, went back and grabbed it, and spent a
little while prayerfully going through it and calling those that we
felt prompted to. It was the craziest thing. I've never had such a
clear, distinct prompting! We didn't have a lot of time, but from the
people we did call we were able to send a referral!! It was exciting!!
It's something we are still working on, because the formers haven't
been gone through in a LONG time, but I'm excited to see what other
miracles we will have from this!! :) Funny thing though, because we
were so busy all day, we didn't have time to take out our old
mattresses, so we put some sheets on them, pulled our blankets off our
beds and slept in the living room for the rest of the week!! Ha ha, it
was funny!! It was so nice though! Thank goodness for new mattresses!!
:)

Wow! I feel like i have so much more i can tell you, but as always our
time is running short! I will try to get a snail mail out today, but
i'm not sure if I'll have time!

Mom would you check my account? I think we are going to the Salvation
Army today to see if they have some warmer sweaters and I'm not sure
how much money I have in there?? If there isn't much would you just
transfer some from savings?? Thanks! That would be great!! :)

Thanks Family for being so great!!! You really are the BEST!!! I love
you all so much!!

Love,

Sister Bishop