If Some Missionaries Take Down a Tree Will Anyone See It? 10.20.14

Hellur from LB!

What a week. It went by so quickly!

There was a baptism in the ward this week. His name is kelvin and he
is great. He's going to be a wonderful asset to our ward.

This week we had a scare off. The sisters scared the begeebers out of
us, so we got them back. It was pretty great. I'll try and send the
video.

Well also spent this whole STINKIN week working on power points for
active members. It's a lot more work than I anticipitated. But we will
prevail!

This week I learned a lesson in an odd way. I learned a lesson of
patience, endurance, and the importance of working smart.. We went to
do service at a member's house and they had a big tree limb hanging
inbetween their other trees. Well us missionaries got it in our minds
that we were going to get that branch down. We tried just about
everything. We hit it with baseballs, water bottles, footballs, and
just about anything else we could find. We even tied a water bottle to
a rope and threw it over. That worked the best, but it didn't get it
down. The members sat there on their porch and watched us. They called
it a spectator sport and though it was pretty hilarious, which it was.
About every 10 minutes the members whose house we were at would give
us some new tool to try and help us. At one point we even had a rake
tied to an end of a ladder and taped a water bottle beneath it to hold
it up. We tried just about everything. Most everyone wanted to just
give up, but we kept going. Somehow Elder Dean got the rope wrapped
around the tree trunk and pulled it down. That thing came down and
lodged itself in the dirt. It was like he sword in the stone, but
reverse. It was a massive miracle! The whole ordeal was quite comical.
This taught me a lot about life. It taught me that we cannot give up.
Even if it looks too difficult we have to finish. LIKE BEING ON A
MISSION. There are lots of times when I just want to give up, but I
can't. We have so many tools to use that Heavenly Father has given us
to do missionary work. None of them are given to hurt us or to hinder
us. They are given to us to help us succeed when we use them right. We
just have to find the one that will work best for us, and for our
investigators. It will be different for every single one. I also
learned the importance of using the tools in new ways. When we work
hard and we work smart miracles happen.

This week we also had a less active tell us why she doesn't come to
church. She doesn't come because she "just can't feel inadequate in
any other areas right now." HOW SAD. If I could put that in bold I
would. Church is not the place to feel sad and inadequate. If you feel
bad when you go to church, do something about it! I hope that we can
help her see how much she NEEDS church. She hasn't been for 18 years,
so she has probably long forgotten by now. Church is a place where we
go to remember how well we are doing and how much Heavenly Father
loves us. Sister Davidson shared this quote with me, "church isn't a
museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners." So true. Church is
where it's at, and where we all should be.

Hope you have a good week!

Love,
Sister Perkes

P.s. I've developed Sister Snelgrove's cough that she has had for like
a month. We saw brother Matt this week and it turns out that she has a
very mild form of bronchitis. Joooooyyyy.

What Happened to this week? 10.13.14

I should have know this week was going to be fantastic when it started off with dinner at the bishops. That was a whole lot of fun! We had a yummy dinner with them and then the other sisters taught the all the hand signs to remember the Ten Commandments in order. That family has to be the funniest people ever. We did number 7, which is don't kill and Bayler said, "don't kill....Unless you're going to eat it." It was too good. Then as we were leaving I gave Anisha, the bishops wife, a hug goodbye and this balloon that the kids were kicking around came right down out of the air and landed in between us. So we squished it as we hugged. It was pretty awkward... OF COURSE THAT WOULD HAPPEN TO ME. It was so funny. We just laughed it off. Gosh, who invites me places. 

This week we threw sister Davidson a birthday redo, since her only birthday on her mission was pretty stinky. We had tacos and decorated all cute like. It was really fun! We totally surprised her, which made it even better! 

So there is this cat at the church who frequents the relief society door. She looks like a house cat and is like the cutest thing of my life. If I wasn't a missionary then I would totally take her home. I have named her Frannie! I love her. She is so hungry she will eat anything. I fed her peanut butter and jell sandwiches, ritz crackers, and tortilla chips. She liked everything except the tortilla chips. I think it dried out her little kitty mouth. Sorry, Frannie. 

To continue on the animal tangent, it's time for this week's weird animal encounter!! We were standing at the door of one of our investigators (I know. We have one of those?) and this giant frog was just hanging out. I wanted to keep on eye on it to make sure that I stayed far, far away from it. I'm still getting over Mr bean, you see. Well this frog was a grade A fatty. Yuck.ers. So I was keeping my good eye on this frog when all of the sudden it ate another creature. I watched its giant froggy mouth consume the other creature's little body. Just plumb ate it!!! It was vile and I've been scarred. I shall never recover..............nope. 

At volleyball this week I did pretty good. I hit it over the net twice. I'm significantly improving. Huzzah! 

We are also going to do a missionary musical number this week. I will keep you posted on it, since right now it seems quite...interesting. I'm sure it will turn out. 

This week I also did something epic. I made a candle. It was out of beef fat and a piece of yarn. That is how you know that you are bored. It would have worked out great, but the fat didn't melt as quickly as the yarn, so it didn't last long. Sister Snelgrove told me that it could be a Yankee candle! I could totally see it. :) they'll put our a whole line of meat candles and the beef one will be the feature. They will put it right next to their best seller, "hot dog." Nailed it. 

This week a mighty miracle happened. We did ALL of weekly planning. Y'all, that is the miracle of all miracles. Holy cow. We haven't EVER finished all of it. There was some serious divine help going on there. 

We had a fantastic district meeting this week. We talked about desires and righteous desires. It was very eye opening and wonderful. This week in my studies I came across a wonderful quote that I would love to share with y'all. 

"Every challenge you face, every hard thing you confront, every bad thing that happens to you, every unfairness, every conflict, every sadness, tragedy, every disappoint, and heartache, every temptation and every opposition happens for one purpose only: to give you opportunity to respond by applying in your life the teachings of Jesus. As you do so you are changed to become more like Him."

Amen. It al happens for a reason. 

Hope y'all have a good week! Love you! 

Love,

Sister Perkes  

Back to the Butler 10.6.14

Hello all!
Good news! We are back in Lake Butler! Blessed day! I had no idea how
much I missed it until they made me leave. Country livin in the life
for me!

But the rest of the week in Gvegas was pretty fun! We went to
volleyball and institute. It was really neat to actually go to all of
the stuff that I couldn't while I was serving there.
We also had a lot of fun with Sister Conely and Sister Tsai. They were
tricksters and toilet papered our car. Stinkers. We also had a lot of
competitions and just had an overall good time in Gainesville.... even
though it was the weirdest experience ever. We DID get to go the gym
every other day AND we went to THE MAAAAALLLL. It was one of the most
wonderful and beautiful experiences of my life.

(Wow. I sure do have a lot to say, seeing as we did nothing this
week.... Sorry, y'all.)

We got to see Meet the Mormons this week! After we packed up our whole
apartment in Gainesville that we had been "glamping" (glamorous
camping) in for a week, we hauled taters to Lake City for Zone
meeting. The movie was  FANTASTIC! If you get an opportunity to see
it, take it! And take your nonmember friends with you! The icing on
the cake is David Archie singing the song at the end. Literally music
to my ears.
This week was also #theprophetspeaks event. Thank you mother for being
the only one who participated.

But we literally did nothing the first half of the week. Not one
thing. It was mostly filling the time between food. Really, we ate so
much food in Gainesville. Which was pretty much the cause for the
mighty rebuking that we all recieved in conference for not eating
healthy and not taking care of our bodies. When he said that we all
put down the bag of peanut m&ms (thank you mother) and the easy cheese
(mother again) with bacon flavored crackers (okay, that one was me)
quite quickly. What a thorough chastisement. Sorry everbody. We, the
Lake Butler missionaries, are taking the blame for that one.
I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of conference though. It was magical and
perfect, as always! It stuck out to me how important teaching the
gospel at home is. I think that the way the world is going the home is
going to become more and more important and will ultimately be the
only place of refuge that people will have. So when it gets to that we
will have to already have relationships, a solid foudation, and
already love each other a whole bunch. The choices that I'm making now
will not only effect me, but my family for the rest of eternity. It
also won't effect just my fmaily, but but the whole entire world. What
we don't and don't teach our children determines the destiny of this
world. Wowza. Really puts that into perspective.

This week it twas my year mark. It was weird. Sister Davidson and
Sister Donohue threw me a birthday party and all that jazz.  

They made dinner and it was actually quite wonderful! But then it hit me though
that I only had 6 months left and then I wanted to lay down and die,
so that my calling and election would be made sure. But I'm still
alive and still working.







Well, I hope that you all have a wonderful week!

love,
Six Month Susie a.k.a. Sister Perkes

The scabes 9.29.14

Greetings from Gainesville. 

Now some of you might be wondering why on earth I am in Gainesville....again. You might ask, didn't you just get transferred from there? And I would say yes. But y'all, I'm back. 

Remember those scabies? Well they have brought me back here to gvegas. On Friday whilst we were power washing this lady's trailer we got a call from president Craig. He called and told us that they were moving us out of the trailer into some empty apartments in Gainesville IMMEDIATELY. All 4 of us. There had been 3 confirmed outbreaks, all of which traced back to our trailer. So they were quarantining all of us and fumigating our trailer. But before we left we had to wash every single piece of our clothing, so we used 2 different member's washers and we still got done and to Gainesville at 10.

 It was a crazy day. So much for a hasty exodus into the wilderness. 

So since then we have been stuck in Gainesville....literally doing nothing. We aren't allowed to go out since we could be contagious. None of us ACTUALLY have scabies, but we still have to be here. My lanta. We have nothing to do. But hey, we got to go to YSA yesterday! It was good to be back and see all of my friend. What a joyous time it was. President Craig was there and he spoke. Sister Conley and her companion, Sister Tsai, are quarantined too. They had a baptism yesterday and we got to go to that. It was wonderful. Oh Gainesville. 

Really other than that we didn't do much before we were sent here. WAIT. On Wednesday we went to Lake City to actually see if I have scabies. Well I don't. It's just poison ivy. The doctor told me to wash all my clothes to get the oils out and gave me some more pills. Huzzah. 

We did go to the school again and we had a great time. I made 3 copies of math text books. How invigorating. It took Sister Snelgrove 10 minutes to figure out the stapler. She thought I was straight magical when I opened it. 

 

Now for this weeks nasty animal encounter! Some nasty doodle frog jumped up inconveniently  at the time we were coming across the road, so he got stuck in our car vent and then he had the nerve to die there. Of course I wasn't going to to touch it. It made me want to vomit. So I politely asked the elders to remove it. They said that they would...and they did. But when we went to get it off our car the stupid frog was on my door handle. Um....YUCK. I about died. I had to move my side mirror so I couldn't see it, because every time I looked at it I wanted to vomit. 

So I spent the next day climbing in and out of the backseat or the passenger side in order to avoid Mr. Bean. That's what I named him. Mr. Bean. Finally Sister Davidson just moved him off the handle, but I made the elders scrub off all of the frog guts that were crusted onto my handle. YUCKERS. 

That's all from here... Wherever I am. 

Have a good week!

Love, 

Sister Perkes 

P.s.  Last night we got so bored that we made Sister Snelgrove chug kidney beans from the can. This is what my life has come to. 

Sent from my iPad

Fun at Target

I love spending all my money on prescriptions!

Sister Snelgrove taking a nap in her poncho from that nasty store
last week. We were at a members house doing laundry

What a golden day 9.23.14

This week was amazing! yesterday we met with elder golden and it
was....golden! I was so inspired and it was beautiful. His wife was
like a righteous Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter. I did not come up
with that. Props to sister Davidson, y'all.

Now for this weeks volleyball update. I hit it and did a good job,
y'all! It was beautiful. People cheered for me a whole lot.

I made fajitas this week and they were plum tasty. All I had was a
piece of steak and a some onions and green peppers. It turned out
delightful. I also made a darn tasty breakfast casserole with tater
tots, hamburger, bread, eggs, and cream of mushroom soup. It was
DEEEEELLIICIOUS. Yum. I guess maybe I can cook...

 Fajitas!

Sister Davidson with her homemade guac

We had some weird encounters this week with animals. We were wandering
around the country and saw a giant snake, then we shouted at some
goats. We also had a many a peacock encounter this week... At this
point I should really be used to weird animal stuff, shouldn't I?

Picture a Peacock

THE snake

My face when I saw THE snake

We also went to the library and helped make some decorations by
drawing stuff. I realize that I was pretty good at copying stuff.

Want to know what else I'm good at? DANCING. This week we had a dance
off for mutual and when we split up for teams no body wanted to be on
my team. Everyone wanted to be on elder deans team, since he is on the
ballroom team at BYU. Well guess what's up. WEEEEEE WONN!
YESSSSSS!! It was such a sweet victory. We even beat elder dean and
his Michael Jackson moves and his man split. Ha. STINKIN. Ha! Winning.

Well I hope that you have a good week!

Oh yeah, they think that my poison ivy is actually scabies. Bye!

Love,
Sister Perkes

p.s. We went to the only store in Lake Butler and they had some of the
ugliest shoes I've EVER seen. So of course we had to try them on. All
of them.