Lenise sends prayers for Kelsy!

 

3-17-14

Dearest Family,

After a busy Sabbath Lenise finds out about her sister's leg break & surgery.
Looks like she has sympathy from the dog.

    I know I've said before that past weeks have been crazy. But I've gotta say this past week has surpassed them all....
    Lets just start by saying that last night, after an extremely long Sunday of teaching and churching, I pulled up my facebook to see pictures of Kelsy strapped to a gurney!!!!!! WHAT THE FREAK???? Give me a flippin heart attack why dontcha!!! As if I wasn't exhausted enough, suddenly my heart jumped into overload!!! I was freaking out!!!! Camry was like "What?! What's going on!?" So I was pretty worried...but the weirdest part for me was the fact that it had happened the night before and that she had gone into emergency surgery, and I hadn't known or heard a thing! Gosh, that really bugged me for some reason! You should have called the mission office and had them tell me! What the heck. Well I hope she is doing better. That has got to be absolutely NO FUN! I've been praying for her like crazy! And I had my whole district pray for her, so she should be feeling the super-power prayers from missionaries right about now!!! The ZL's were worried about me but I told them I was fine. It had already happened and Kels was already in recovery so there wasn't much I could do about the situation...So does she have to do graduation on crutches? How is she gonna be a lifeguard?...Oh man, does Tanner know??? He'll FLIP! Well we're praying for her and hope she heals up quick! What's the estimated time until she gets back to normal??
Okay, so this week:
    Last Monday....I kind of got pulled over for the first time in my life...

They are so busy, her comp hasn't had time to
unpack yet...thus surrounded by boxes.

I was  hyperventilating, but it was just a headlight out. The second I rolled down the window and the officer saw my name tag, it was all good! He said, "Where are you from? Washington huh? Cool! How long you been out? Okay just get your headlight fixed! Good luck with the work!" I was like "Wow...when President McCune says that our name tags are a get-out-of-jail-free card, he wasn't joking...." haha
Also I had a really embarrassing moment...

     So I'm not the best driver...and sometimes I think Camry should be the designated driver, especially since I get so turned around on the back roads we have to drive on!
We pulled up to Robert and Remo's house this last week (They are getting baptized this upcoming Saturday!! YAY!!! So excited for them!) and Robert was standing out in the yard texting and didn't even see us. So I try to pull the keys out of the ignition and they won't come out, so I'm yanking on them and saying "What the heck, these keys won't come out!" and all the sudden Camry is like "We're Rolling backwards!!!!!!" and I yell "AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" and then we both realize I never put the car in park....So yeah.. I felt really stupid. And Robert was there the whole time texting and never even noticed us screaming and bouncing in the car next to him! We laughed so hard I about died!
     We also were singing at the top of our lungs up the road to their house and we saw a girl walking past and she turned and looked at us funny, and we just laughed and were like "Good thing she doesn't know who we are!" ...and then she walked up to Robert and Remo's house! And she was our fellowshipper for the lesson! We about died laughing all over again!


Will this goat have babies today?

Letting no-show investigators they still love them!

    So, the elders a while back were bragging about how they got to birth a cow and we were really jealous! So ever since we've been trying to find animals to birth and we've found three different families that said we could birth their animals for them for service! April, one of our recently returned Less Actives, has two pregnant goats that she is waiting to have their babies! So we've been over there a few times for false alarms but those baby goats won't come out. We tried really hard to be the goat whisperers and sing to them so they would have their babies...it went from singing "I wanna see you be brave" but it turned into " I wanna see you give birth!!!"

    Haha best ever! That and one of our Ward mission leaders has cows that he said we could help birth...and then one of our investigator's dogs is having puppies! She said we could come to that too! YAY! BABIES!
    I love being companions with Camry!...oh sorry...Sis Balero...I've caught myself saying her first name soooo many times and it's a struggle! We sing together all the.  And we've been asked to sing at Robert and Remo's baptism this week so we are practicing for that...don't know what we're singing yet though...
    We had Zone training Meeting this week and it was awesome! We have such an amazing new Sister Training Leader (Although I miss Sis Nielson aka Megan) Her name is Sis Lolofie (Pronounced Lo-la-fi-ay) And she looks Polynesian and is super funny. But she has some amazing things to say all the time! Two of my favorite lines from her this week were "Love changes, love life. Hate changes, hate life. So just go forward with love and say "Challenge ACCEPTED!"" and then another one she said that hit me really hard for some reason was "You are NOT cast in stone. You can change."
      I've been learning a lot about change this week. It is a huge part of repentance. I've been studying repentance this week and read an amazing talk by Jeffery R. Holland (He's a boss) called "For Times of Trouble" And there was this amazing quote inside it:
    "Repentance is not a foreboding word. It is, following faith, the most encouraging word in the Christian vocabulary. Repentance is simply the scriptural invitation for growth and improvement and progress and renewal. You can change! You can be anything you want to be in righteousness. If there is one lament I cannot abide it is the poor, pitiful, withered cry, "Well, that's just the way I am." If you want to talk about discouragement that is one that discourages me... please spare me your speeches about "That's just the way I am!" I've heard that from too many people who wanted to sin and call it psychology....You can change anything you want to change and you can do it very fast. That's another satanic sucker-punch--that it takes years and years and eons of eternity to repent. It takes exactly as long to repent as it takes you to say "I'll change."-- and mean it!"
    I've seen that so much on my mission. I thought changing myself to be better would take forever! But it really takes the moment to realize I've been doing something wrong, decide to change, and from that moment live for it. I can't explain to you how much happier I feel with my life, now that I feel so light.  I no longer have the burden of so many sins or weakness or flaws, because I'm realizing repentance isn't something to be scared of, but something to be embraced! It's helped me feel so much better about myself and helped me to really smile and just be happy being me. Because I can change. And I have. I am not the same girl who walked on that plane 5 months ago. I feel so different, and I like it! I know my Savior lives and that His atonement made this all possible.
       I love you all forever! I miss you and I'm praying for you all like crazy!
Love Forever,
Sister Lenise Diane Volmer


Temple trip with district!