February 14, 2011 - Lafayette, Louisiana

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

Hello Family!

Guess what! For the first time since I have been on my mission, there is a Sisters biking area! Guess who is in it! You guessed it! Sister Stacy Jo Earl and Sister Adjo Elisabeth Aka. Yes. So with that, mom I am going to be writing you a separate little email. Anyway, this week was really exciting!

Yes, it was the week that I went to Baton Rouge for 4 days...man I want to go back ha, ha! Being in the mission home was like having a taste of home. We got to stay in a nice big house, and there were 4 of us Sister Missionaries, and then about 10 Elders upstairs. It was like having a bunch of funny brothers there! I loved it. It was a really inspiring 4 days. We had meetings from about 10am-4pm. I had so much fun! At the meetings they taught us about the 8 Fundamentals of Preach My Gospel which are:

#1: The Doctrine of Christ--My Missionary Purpose

#2: Revelation through the Holy Ghost

#3: Revelation through Prayer

#4: Revelation through the Book of Mormon

#5: Revelation through Church Attendance

#6: Teach People, Not Lessons

#7: We Invite, They Commit, We Follow Up

#8: How to Begin Teaching

It really was really neat to go to that. There was a lot of instruction, but I think it has helped me learn how to be a better missionary. It's a little overwhelming though...I have to remember everything and be able to teach it to my companion. Luckily we are having smaller meetings over the next 5 weeks to review these things. Yay!

At the end of every day, we went out to dinner and went to find people to teach so we could implement the things that we learned at the training. I learned that yes, you can go tracting at night and a lot of people saw miracles because of it! Tuesday Sister Dupaix (my companion for the 4 days) and I weren't able to see very much happen. Wednesday after the meeting a big group of us went to King Buffet and the Elders that were with us were able to commit a man eating his dinner for baptism! And we also met a less active member. However, I was really sick that day. That morning Sister Hislop and I went running and I had started my period! Yay ha, ha! Sorry if that is too detailed for some of you. At dinner I was just feeling super sick and icky. We get back to the mission home to grab our coats, and I am just too sick. I thought it was cramps but after about 10 minutes of being home, I realized it was not. I was sick. May have been food poisoning, I'm not sure, but I was pretty sure I wanted to die ha, ha! Thursday morning I got a blessing and I just wanted to be able to go out and work that night! I still wasn't feeling super hot by the end of the meeting Thursday, but I knew that I really wanted to go out and work, and I was determined to see a miracle. We got to Wendy's, and met a cool girl named Courtney, and Elder Lambert invited her to come and sit with us after she got off work so we could teach her, and about 5 minutes later a fight broke out in Wendy's between the manager and Courtney...yeah, she got fired...who knows, he gave her a card, so maybe she'll show up to church and her anger issues will be better :D After that we went and dropped Sister Hislop and Sister Gale off in their area (where they had an amazing miracle!), and then we parked and prayed about where we needed to go. We were looking at the map, and I was like "This might be a good place to go, but it's far away..." Just before that Sister Dupaix thought "I don't care how far we have to go to see a miracle." Well we went to Dividend Dr. in Baton Rouge, and we knocked on the first door (which looked dark), and we had seen some people inside. A woman came to the door and we talked to her for a second, and she said "Well I wish I could talk, but I have a really bad tooth ache and I just took some pain medication that is making me drowsy." Then I asked "Well do you have 5 to 10 minutes where we could come in and talk to you more about this?" She said sure! Her name was Tracy and she is awesome. We gave her a Book of Mormon and asked her to read and pray about it so she could know for herself if the Church that Christ established was on the earth again...Sister Dupaix committed her for baptism, and I'm excited to hear about what happens with her.

Friday we had a really wonderful meeting. The Spirit was just so powerful there, and it made me feel so much better about the work that I am doing. I am so grateful for President and Sister Woods. They are amazing, and I'm glad that they are here at this time, and that he is the real only mission president I will have.

Some highlighted moments that were funny this week....

• Waking up and seeing Elders doing a 4 man push up...weird. They had 4 of them and they put their legs on each other's backs and did a push up. It was cool. They also did arm wrestling...ha I don't know.
• Elder Clark now has the oil filter that Todd randomly sent me in the MTC! It's been fun passing it around and taking pictures with it.

Well, I'm sure there is more, but that is about all I can think of right now. It was a fun week, and I hope that I will be able to implement everything that I learned. Thank you for being such a wonderful family and supporting me in all that I do. I don't know what I would do without you. This week is going to be amazing! I love you! The church is true, and I'm so happy I'm a missionary!

Love,

Sister Stacy Jo Earl