Sister Mary-Ashley Esplin: The rains came down, and so did the blessings!!

HEY Y'ALL!!!!!

I hope that you have all had a wonderful week and that you were able to see the hand of God in your lives more clearly. I know that as we count our blessings, we see that there are even more blessings than we would have ever thought we had. This week has been seriously SO CRAZY!! I look back and just think, what happened? Hahah! Oh mission life. There really are a lot of days where it feels like Groundhog Day, but I tell ya what, there are also a lot of crazy things that happen. WHEW! I will get to it right now.

ACTION!!!

So this week consisted of yet ANOTHER exchange! This time I went to Bartlett with Sister Stringham. It was awesome. I had a wonderful time there and, oh my goodness, Sister Stringham taught me SO MUCH!! She is fantastic. She was SUPER sick but she just kept working (I mean I don't entirely agree with the whole work when you're dying sick thing, but it worked for her). She was so diligent she went out and worked and she put on a hospital mask. 😷 Oh man, I wish that I had taken a picture of that. Darn it. Anywho. We went and tried to visit a bunch of people and it was cool because at one point we pulled down a street and it was the wrong street and as we turned the car around to go somewhere else, Sister Stringham just turned to me and said, “We need to talk to that man back there". I just looked at her and said, "okay". I honestly didn’t see anyone there. We pulled the car back around and we parked farther down the street and then I saw the guy she was talking about. He was sitting on the side of the road and he was fixing something in the ground. I honestly couldn't tell you what. I think he said something about a meter? Anywho, we were walking down the street and I said hello and asked what he was doing. We talked to him for a while and he told us all about a bunch of miracles that have happened in his life. We talked to him about how Heavenly Father will help us to achieve our dreams as we ask for help and do his will. We were able to share a super cool Mormon message with him and he loved it! He said that he would love to meet with missionaries! Too bad he is neither in the Millington area or the Bartlett area! But good for the missionaries in the Germantown area! YAY!

Another cool thing that happened is this week Bishop Coombs texted us and told us that there is a 16 year old girl that is best friends with his daughter that wants to get baptized!!! So hopefully we can start teaching her soon. ALSO!!! We have been picked as one of 12 missions to be a SMARTPHONE MISSION. WHAT?!! We will be on Facebook and we will all be using smartphones! That is so cool. They said that it is because we are so obedient with our technology and just obedient in general. OBEDIENCE BRINGS BLESSINGS! Or, you know, curses. I really don’t know how I feel about it all. But it is cool. The mission is definitely growing and becoming something so so cool!

I wanted to share some of my studies with y'all. I have been studying a lot about patience this week and it was really interesting what I found. I found a great article by Elder Neal A. Maxwell (October 1980 Ensign) titled “Patience”. He said, " Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient we are suggesting that we know what is best-better than does God. Or, at least, that our time table is better than His". That really stood out to me. It made me think a lot. I would invite y'all to study that talk. It is SO GOOD!!!!

Oh also, we did get a ton of flash flood rain!, but no floods. We just got stuck at a member’s house. So we emailed our investigators and we did a bunch of online proselyting.

I love y'all so so so so so much!!!! I hope that you have a wonderful week. Y'all are all in my prayers. I hope that you are able to have more patience in your lives, as well. I love you guys! Have a good one. Oh, also, transfers are this upcoming week. So look forward to that fun stuff!

Love you lots!!!

Love,

Ash

Sister Esplin

Storm prepper (we helped a member prep her house for some flooding that might happen)

Elephant watcher

Someone who plays with baby pigs

A student of patience